'Anne Lock's Anonymous Friend: 'A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner' and the Problem of Ascription'

Despite much scholarly interest and a great deal of diligent searching, the corpus of texts by early-modern women writers remains small. Anne Lock?s (Lok, Vaughan) short sonnet sequence, The Meditation of a Penitent Sinner (1560), has its own intrinsic claims for attention: it is, for instance, the first sonnet sequence written in English. However, as a work by a woman, it has become a focal point for a small industry of critics writing about its implications for work on women?s textual communities, their medical practice (it displays familiarity with medical terminology), and the relationship between a woman?s social status and her writing: Lock, unlike many of the prominent female authors of her day, belonged to the mercantile classes rather than the court. It is thus potentially a blow to women?s studies to find (in an MS marginal note which has not, to my knowledge, been discussed in print) that the first of Lock?s sonnets appears in a late-sixteenth-century Scottish psalter (BL MUS Add. 33933) with an inscription which associates the text, not with Lock, but with a man: Christopher Goodman, the Protestant preacher, friend of John Knox, and client of the Sidneys. Since Lock notoriously did not claim the authorship of the sonnets (she says they were ?geven [her] by a frend?, a statement usually interpreted as a modesty trope), this reference to Goodman seems to offer a solution for her failure to claim the sonnets as her own. This essay explores the authorship of the sonnets, and offers an explanation to the mystery posed by Lock?s attribution of the text to the unknown ?frend?

Milton and the Tradition of Protestant Petrarchism

Scholarly accounts of Milton?s engagement with Petrarch often suggest a hostile reading of the Italian poet?s work. The Protestant ideal of Adam and Eve?s companionate marriage in Paradise Lost has been seen as a rebuke to the unfulfilled petrarchan lover and his chaste mistress; the seductive language of petrarchan pleading has been traced in Satan?s tempting speeches. In Of Reformation (1641), however, Milton invoked Petrarch as an authority in the Protestant cause. This paper seeks to reconstruct the alternative tradition of petrarchism which underlies Milton?s reference. It explores the international network of Protestant polemicists and writers among whom it originated, and looks at its influence on works in English, including Spenser?s earliest poems, which precede Of Reformation; it considers the bibliographical evidence for Milton?s reading of Petrarch; and it argues that the politicized and protestantized Petrarch provided an important model for Milton?s own religious sonnets

'That Private Labyrinth': the books that made Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond

Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles are among the defining works of twentieth-century historical fiction. This paper discusses Dunnett's creation of a renaissance man by examining her hero against the meticulously-researched background of his sixteenth-century context - in particular, the formative effect of his reading

The Book of Psalms and the early modern sonnet

Psalms and sonnets were the most popular lyric genres in early modern English writing. Little scholarly attention, however, has been paid to the common ground between the two forms, largely because they have been perceived as incompatible, with one epitomizing the sacred, and the other, the secular, literature of their day. Nonetheless, sixteenth-century writers often moved from one genre to the other; the first sonnet sequence in English (Anne Lock's A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, 1560), takes the form of a translation of Psalm 51; and paraphrases of other psalms appear in sonnet sequences by Barnabe Barnes and Henry Lok. The figure of David as psalmist and poet is invoked in sonnets as well as psalms, and the diction of the biblical texts was harnessed and remade for the secular tradition. This essay argues for a close relationship between psalms and sonnets, and through an examination of the influences exerted on both genres, including contemporary poetics and Petrarchism, it suggests that both the biblical Book of Psalms, and the broader tradition of psalm translation, provided an important model for the early modern English sonnet sequence

Talking Heads

A review essay on perceptions of Ireland in the early-modern period, discussing The Severed Head and the Grafted Tongue: Literature, Translation and Violence in Early Modern Ireland, by Patricia Palmer, Cambridge University Press, 193 pp, �50, ISBN: 978-110704184

Richard Nugent's Cynthia (1604): a Catholic sonnet sequence in London, Westmeath, and Spanish Flanders

The title of Richard Nugent?s sonnet sequence, Cynthia (1604), would seem to suggest that it formed part of the tradition of celebratory verse which compared Elizabeth I to the virgin huntress and moon goddess who was variously called Diana, or Phoebe, or, as here, Cynthia. However, Nugent?s collection is aligned to an alternative centre, that of his Westmeath home, and his Cynthia cannot be readily reconciled with courtly depictions of Elizabeth I. In this essay, I explore how the sequence is affected by the political, geographical and religious complexities of early-modern Irish identity. Nugent was well-versed in the traditions of the sonnet sequence, so it seems unlikely that the love story outlined in Cynthia is straightforwardly autobiographical: despite the speaker?s claim to have loved an Irish maiden for four painful years, before going into exile for her sake, the account is too typical of the genre to be read as confessional. Instead, some of the anomalies of the sequence suggest other possible readings. The first anomaly is the title. It seems clear that Nugent?s Cynthia is not to be read as coterminous with the English Queen in her role as virgin huntress. Nugent?s Cynthia is firmly depicted as a native of Ireland, and described as a secret concealed safely in the Irish landscape, and protected by the surrounding seas. Furthermore, Nugent?s political sympathies make a poem of praise for Elizabeth I unlikely. By 1600, spies were recording his presence in the camp of Hugh O?Neill, who was actively engaged in war on England; when he died in 1604, Nugent was part of the Irish regiment in the Spanish Netherlands. Nonetheless, through his choice of a title with such strong Elizabethan overtones, Nugent seems to have used his poem to explore the shifting allegiances of his family and their complex identity as bilingual Anglo-Normans on the borders of the Pale: certainly, in a sequence which includes allusions to the Irish poetry of his father, the poet Uilliam Nuinseann, issues of identity and language are close to the surface. Nugent?s journey from Westmeath to Spanish Flanders highlights another presence in his work. Much Elizabethan iconography was adopted from Marian devices, and the figure of the virginal Cynthia had been aligned by the Christian moralisers of classical myth with the Virgin Mary. Although it is well established that many Elizabethan sequences utilised Marian imagery in praise of sonnet mistresses (including Elizabeth herself) the use of the same images in respect of their Italian originals, Laura or Beatrice, had been deliberately intended to recall the Marian association. Within the recusant poetry, these images were being reclaimed. Nugent?s work suggests a similar endeavour: his epithets for Cynthia incorporate the standard terms of praise, which veer between the secular and the Marian, but more specifically, they recall the explicitly Catholic titles of the litany of Loreto. Thus, Cynthia can be read as a Catholic as well as an Irish text, and its language aligns it with continental, Counter-Reformation spirituality. The poems emphasise the strong connections between sixteenth-century Ireland and Spain, running counter to English influence in the country. Their shared poetic traits argue for an important continental influence in early-modern Catholic poetry in English

A single volume bound by love

Review essay discussing tradition of translating Dante, focusing on The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, translated by Clive James, Picador, �25, ISBN: 978-144724219

Wild birds of the Italian Middle Ages: diet, environment and society

Wild birds are intrinsically associated with our perception of the Middle Ages. They often feature in heraldic designs, paintings, and books of hours; few human activities typify the medieval period better than falconry. Prominent in medieval iconography, wild birds feature less frequently in written sources (as they were rarely the subject of trade transactions or legal documents) but they can be abundant in archaeological sites. In this paper we highlight the nature of wild bird exploitation in Italian medieval societies, ranging from their role as food items to their status and symbolic importance. A survey of 13 Italian medieval sites corresponding to 19 ‘period sites’, dated from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, reveals the occurrence of more than 100 species (certainly an under-estimate of the actual number). Anseriformes and Columbiformes played a prominent role in the mid- and late medieval Italian diet, though Passeriformes and wild Galliformes were also important. In the late Middle Ages, there is an increase in species diversity and in the role of hunting as an important marker of social status

Isotopic analysis of faunal material from South Uist, Western Isles, Scotland

This paper reports on the results from stable isotope analysis of faunal bone collagen from a number of Iron Age and later sites on the island of South Uist, in the Western Isles, Scotland. This preliminary investigation into the isotopic signatures of the fauna is part of a larger project to model the interaction between humans, animals, and the broader environment in the Western Isles. The results demonstrate that the island fauna data fall within the range of expected results for the UK, with the terrestrial herbivorous diets of cattle and sheep confi rmed. The isotopic composition for pigs suggests that some of these animals had an omnivorous diet, whilst a single red deer value might be suggestive of the consumption of marine foods, such as by grazing on seaweed. However, further analysis is needed in order to verify this anomalous isotopic ratio

Fair game: exploring the dynamics, perception and environmental impact of ‘surplus’ wild foods in England 10kya-present

This paper brings together zooarchaeological data from Neolithic to Post-medieval sites in England to explore the plasticity of cultural attitudes to the consumption of wild animals. It shows how, through time, game has been considered variously as ‘tabooed’ and ‘edible’, each having implications for patterns of biodiversity and wildlife management. The essential points being made are that deeper-time studies can reveal how human perceptions of ‘surplus foods’ have the potential to both create and remedy problems of environmental sustainability and food security. Perhaps more significantly, this paper argues that understanding the bio-cultural past of edible wild animal species has the potential to transform human attitudes to game in the present. This is important at a time when food security and the production of surplus are pressing national and global concerns