Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction and Acknowledgements
- 1 The Labyrinthine Baroque
- 2 The Female Baroque
- 3 Catholic Female Baroque
- 4 Protestant Baroque
- 5 The Female Baroque in Court and Country
- 6 Lady Mary Wroth: The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
- 7 From Baroque to Enlightenment: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn
- Postscript
- About the Author
- Index
6 - Lady Mary Wroth: The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction and Acknowledgements
- 1 The Labyrinthine Baroque
- 2 The Female Baroque
- 3 Catholic Female Baroque
- 4 Protestant Baroque
- 5 The Female Baroque in Court and Country
- 6 Lady Mary Wroth: The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
- 7 From Baroque to Enlightenment: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn
- Postscript
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Mary Wroth's major literary works, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania and the poetry collection Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, are distinctively Baroque: Wroth repeatedly, obsessively, demonstrates a fascination with multiple narratives, the blurring of fiction and history, and eruptions of magical or miraculous interventions. She establishes the contours of a female Baroque subject, who has to absorb and attempt to transcend enculturation by the dominant male discourse. What happens when a woman enters the predominantly male discursive poetical playground of Petrarchism? Could a woman envisage anything more than her own fragmentation? Would hers be the ‘same’ anguish as that articulated on behalf of the dominant male subject position? What cultural forces speak through her in addition to those she attempts to control?
Key words: Mary Wroth; Urania and Romance narrative; Baroque culture; Petrarchism and women writers; Pamphilia to Amphilanthus; ‘female’ experience in poetry.
Let's tell stories. Let's write them down …women never stop telling stories.
‒ Julia Kristeva1The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania
I turn now to Mary Wroth's most substantial and most spectacularly Baroque work, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania. My recurring (some might say hyperbolic and to an extent melancholic) obsession with the ‘female Baroque’ is strikingly appropriate for elucidating the Urania and deepening the links between Wroth's writing and broader cultural developments. I do not pretend to provide a definitive reading of the Urania, or indeed of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus; I am concerned primarily with the islands of utterance Wroth's writings share with the Baroque, and therefore with the wider ideological movements of the age.
Clearly some Baroque characteristics fit different women's writings more easily than others. In this case, it would be straining my argument to speculate on connections between the Urania and Catholic piety, although in the Urania we can see hints of the obsession with scenes of martyrdom and torture shared by Catholics and Protestants alike, especially where women are exhibited as victims, as an indicator of Baroque hyperbole. These affinities are most notably seen early in the work in the story of Limena, who suffers a brutal physical attacks and torture by her husband for presumed infidelity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary CultureFrom Mary Sidney to Aphra Behn, pp. 205 - 234Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020