ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

NOTES TO PP. 207–13
25 See, for instance, Alan Rudrum, “Vaughan’s ‘The Night’: Some Hermetic Notes,”
Modern Language Review 64 (1969):14–15. In his 1976 Penguin edition of Vaughan’s
poetry, Rudrum attempts to fortify this position further (and in turn a Behmenist
reading of “The Night”) while nonetheless citing the OED’s authority to the
contrary. His reasoning seems to be that since Vaughan often views creatures
sympathetically, it is therefore “typical of Vaughan that he should refuse to adopt a
convention of speech which would imply contempt of one of God’s humbler
creatures.” But Vaughan could occasionally view the creatures contemptuously in
order to indicate his criticisms of man (see “Idle Verse,” for instance, or the “mole”
in “The World”), and he seems to have done so on this occasion. It is perhaps
indicative of the shaky argument that Rudrum introduces his gloss with a “perhaps.”
Pettet’s remarks (also cited) would not seem to support this position either since
Pettet, somewhat illogically, is speaking of a “worm” rather than of a “glowworm” in
the gloss he produces from Psalm 22 (“But I am a worm, and no man.”)
26 Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing. See also the particularly interesting essay by
Janet E.Halley, “Versions of the Self and the Politics of Privacy in Silex Scintillans,”
The George Herbert Journal 7 (1983–4):51–71.
27 Watson, “The Temple in The Night’,” 154–5, takes up the issue of persecution in
some detail. For Calvin’s place in this debate, see Carlos M.N.Eire, War Against the
Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986, ch. 7.
8 FROM WROTH TO PHILIPS
1 The most useful introduction to the subject remains Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of
Seventeenth-Century Women’s Verse, ed. Germaine Greer et al., London: Virago Press,
1988. Helpful recent critical surveys include two complementary essays in Women
and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700, ed. Helen Wilcox, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996: see ch. 8 by Helen Hackett, “Courtly Writing by Women,”
and ch. 9 by Elizabeth H.Hageman, “Women’s Poetry in Early Modern Britain.” For
the most part, criticism of women’s poetry has been conducted without making
literary value judgments, but notions of a “canon” are beginning to emerge in works
like Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England, ed. James Fitzmaurice,
Josephine A.Roberts, Carol L.Barash, Eugene R.Cunnar and Nancy A.Gutierrez,
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Although poetry is only one of
the genres represented here, the anthology provides a useful critical and
bibliographical assessment of the state of scholarship in the field as well as relevant
bibliographies for each author.
2 Quoted from Margaret J.M.Ezell, “The Myth of Judith Shakespeare: Creating the
Canon of Women’s Literature,” New Literary History 21 (1990):583.
3 See Patricia Crawford, “Women’s Published Writings 1600–1700,” in Women in
English Society 1500–1800, ed. Mary Prior, London: Methuen, 1985, p. 214.
4 Ben Jonson, ed. Ian Donaldson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 599.
5 The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, ed. Josephine A.Roberts, Baton Rouge, LA:
Louisiana State University Press, 1983, p. 32. See also Wendy Wall, The Imprint of
Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1993, ch. 5.
6 Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, 1673; repr. Los
Angeles: The Augustan Reprint Society, no. 202, William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library (1980):20. Makin’s listings are not always easy to follow; Ladies Russell,
Bacon and Killegrew are probably three of the five, not four, daughters of Sir
Anthony Cooke and Anne Fitzwilliam Cooke. Along with the DNB entry for
Cooke, see Frances Teague, Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning, Lewisburg, PA:
303