Manuscript Verse Collectors and the Politics of Anti-Courtly Love Poetry (original) (raw)
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A New Manuscript Copy of a Poem by Queen Elizabeth: Text and Contexts
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I n 1570, after the abortive Northern Rebellion, Queen Elizabeth wrote her powerful lyric, "The doubt of future foes," threatening capital punishment for future would-be rebels, most pointedly Mary, Queen of Scots, on whose behalf the northern forces fought and who was at the time under house arrest-put in this situation by Elizabeth after Mary's flight south from Scotland in 1568 to seek refuge in England. Fifteen years earlier, the situation was the mirror opposite. In 1554 in the wake of the failed Wyatt's Rebellion against her, the Catholic Queen Mary, who believed that the then Princess Elizabeth sanctioned this attempted coup, had Elizabeth confined at Woodstock Palace near Oxford. Wallace MacCaffrey has described the conditions under which Elizabeth was forced to live there: "she was lodged in a gate-house, a building in poor repair, where four rooms had been hastily fitted up for her use. Her keeper was Sir Henry Bedingfield.. .. Inexperienced in the court world, stolid, dull, and literal-minded, he took his responsibilities with great seriousness, nervously anxious to carry out his instructions. He was attended by a garrison recruited from his own servants and tenants.. .. [Elizabeth] was confined to the house, allowed to walk in the garden, in Bedingfield's company; there were to be no messages and no conferences with any person out of Bedingfield's hearing." 1 The Princess found these circumstances intolerable. MacCaffrey notes that "she accused [Bedingfield] 'in the most unpleasant sort that ever I saw her since her coming from the Tower' of preventing her communication with the Council." 2 We would like to thank Jaime Goodrich for her perceptive advice about this essay. 1.
The Circulation of Poetry in Manuscript in Early Modern England
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This study examines the transmission and compilation of poetic texts through manuscripts from the late-Elizabethan era through the midseventeenth century, paying attention to the distinctive material, social, and literary features of these documents. The study has two main focuses: the first, the particular social environments in which texts were compiled and, second, the presence within this system of a large body of (usually anonymous) rare or unique poems. Manuscripts from aristocratic, academic, and urban professional environments are examined in separate chapters that highlight particular collections. Two chapters consider the social networking within the university and London that facilitated the transmission within these environments and between them. Although the topic is addressed throughout the study, the place of rare or unique poems in manuscript collections is at the center of the final three chapters. The book as a whole argues that scholars need to pay more attention to the social life of texts in the period and to little-known or unknown rare or unique poems that represent a field of writing broader than that defined in a literary history based mainly on the products of print culture.
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Antiquarian poetry and royal performance
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In 1749, King Frederik V visited Norway, the northernmost part of his kingdom. It was a short journey, restricted to southeastern Norway and accomplished in a couple of weeks. From Christiania (present-day Oslo), the King travelled to Kongsberg to inspect the silver mines. He also visited the cities of Fredrikstad and Fredrikshald with their fortresses before returning to Denmark. En route, he was celebrated by his loyal subjects and shown all the tributes worthy of a monarch. The King himself is nonetheless reported to have been mostly interested in gambling and in the theatrical company that he had brought with him for his entertainment. 1 When the royal entourage stopped at Hokksund in Eiker on its way to Kongsberg, the vicar Christian Grawe welcomed the King with a poem of his own composition. It bore the title Salve & Vale-Prisca & nova Egerana (Hail and Farewell-Ancient and New Eiker). In 55 four-lined stanzas and with a large array of footnotes, Grawe delivered a description of the parish with numerous antiquarian details. When the poem appeared in print some months later, he could sign it not only as a vicar but also with his newly acquired title: professor antiqvitatis patriae. In the present world, poetry is not often used to communicate research results or to document scientific work. In the early modern period, on the other hand, as the present volume abundantly shows, historical writing employed a wide range of genres and forms. During the same period, literary forms were also used to discuss natural philosophy and the findings of natural history, even if such expressions long have been overlooked in the history of science. 2 The heyday for this type of literature was the seventeenth century. The genre to which Grawe's poem more particularly belongs, topographic descriptive poetry, was established during the same period, developing into romantic landscape poetry in the subsequent century. 3 The aim of this chapter is to look into the specific "genre of historical writing" that Grawe chose for conveying his topographical and antiquarian knowledge about the parish: The poem with footnotes. The first part of this chapter will examine the poem and the knowledge it presents. What does it tell us about Grawe's historical and antiquarian work? And how did he make the rhymed stanzas and their apparatus of notes serve as tools for historical
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This thesis is about reading. Working on the understanding that all texts read other texts, it aims to uncover something of how English poets from 1590-1650 read the Song of Songs, by analyzing when and how they use it in their poetry. By looking at poetic readings, rather than theological ones, it also explores the connections and distinctions between reading literature and reading Scripture. As both Scripture and lyric love poetry, the Song of Songs has participated in theological and literary discourse over a long period. The Introduction gives background on both kinds of reading, and how they have been applied to the Song of Songs. It also sets out the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 surveys theological writing about the Song of Songs produced during the period. The material includes sermons, commentaries, household advice books, hymns and translations, including poetic translations. There is a stable core of interpretation, which reads the Song as primarily about the relatio...