Female Roles Revisited in Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

Yıl 2023, Cilt: 12 Sayı: 1, 93 - 103, 30.06.2023

Azime Pekşen Yakar

https://doi.org/10.54282/inijoss.1119689

Öz

Lady Mary Wroth (1587-1653) was an English noblewoman and one of the significant literary figures of
the English Renaissance. She is renowned for her works, namely, Love’s Victory (c. 1620), The Countess
of Montgomery’s Urania (1621), and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621). In Pamphilia to Amphilanthus,
Lady Mary Wroth challenges the patriarchal ideology that excludes women both as sonneteers and lovers
who are able to express their love in Petrarchan sonnet tradition. The dominant tradition centralizes the
male lovers and marginalizes women as idealized silent beloveds. Thus, it transforms female characters
into docile objects to be loved by their male lovers. In order to confront the misogynistic treatment of
these concepts of female author and lover in the sonnet tradition, Lady Mary Wroth writes within and
against the sonnet tradition and manipulates the masculine genre to insert the female voice into it. First,
she assumes submissive roles the dominant tradition appropriates. She negotiates these roles and
accordingly manipulates them to her own advantage. Her contestation and later manipulation of these
traditional roles create opportunities to resist the oppression she faces by rewriting the disempowering
tradition. Hence, she subverts the limited roles of female characters in the dynamics of sonnet tradition
by employing specific strategies. In this regard, this article analyzes Lady Mary Wroth’s strategies of
subversion of the conventional roles for female characters in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus and explores
Wroth’s poetic innovations that challenge the gendered concept of the male poet in the sonnet tradition.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Lady Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Renaissance poetry, Sonnet tradition, Female poet

Lady Mary Wroth’un Pamphilia‘dan Amphilanthus’a Başlıklı Eserinde Kadın Rollerinin Yeniden Ele Alınışı

Öz

Lady Mary Wroth (1587-1653) bir İngiliz asilzadesi ve İngiliz Rönesansı’nın önemli edebi figürlerinden
biridir. Lady Mary Wroth Aşkın Zaferi (Love’s Victory) (c. 1620), Montgomery’nin Urania Kontesi (The
Countess of Montgomery’s Urania) (1621) ve Pamphilia’dan Amphilanthus’a (Pamphilia to Amphilanthus)
(1621) başlıklı eserleriyle tanınır. Pamphilia’dan Amphilanthus’a başlıklı eserinde Lady Mary Wroth
kadınları hem şair hem de aşklarını Petrarca sone geleneği çerçevesinde ifade edebilen âşık olarak dışlayan
ataerkil ideolojiye meydan okur. Egemen gelenek erkek âşıkları merkezileştirirken kadınları idealize
edilmiş sessiz sevgililer olarak marjinalleştirir. Böylece kadın karakterleri erkek âşıkları tarafından sevilecek
uysal nesnelere dönüştürür. Lady Mary Wroth, sone geleneğinde kadın yazar ve âşık kavramlarının
antifeminist muamelesine karşı koymak için, hem sone geleneği dahilinde hem de ona karşı yazar ve eril
türü manipüle ederek ona kadın sesini dahil eder. İlk olarak, egemen geleneğin benimsediği itaatkâr rolleri
üstlenir. Bu rolleri tartışır ve akabinde güçsüzleştiren geleneği yeniden yazarak bunları kendi yararına
olacak şekilde manipüle eder. Bu geleneksel rollere karşı mücadelesi ve daha sonra bu rolleri
manipülasyonu karşılaştığı baskıya direnmek için fırsatlar yaratır. Dolayısıyla, belirli stratejiler kullanarak
kadın karakterlerin sınırlı rollerini sone geleneğinin dinamikleri içinde altüst eder. Bu bağlamda, bu makale
Pamphilia’dan Amphilanthus’a başlıklı eserde Lady Mary Wroth’un kadın karakterlere biçilen geleneksel
rolleri yıkma stratejilerini incelemektedir ve Wroth’un sone geleneğindeki cinsiyetçi erkek şair kavramına
meydan okuyan şiirsel yeniliklerini araştırmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Lady Mary Wroth, Pamphilia’dan Amphilanthus’a, Rönesans şiiri, Sone geleneği, Kadın şair

Kaynakça

• Aydoğdu Çelik, M. (2019). Female Agency and Criticism Of Marital Practices in Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess Of Montgomery’s Urania. MOLESTO: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2(1), 35-59.
• Bear, R. S. and Bear, M. (1992). “Pamphilia to Amphilanthus: Lady Mary Wroth.” Renascence Editions. University of Oregon. www.darkwing.uoregon.edu
• Bolam, R. (2003). The Heart of the Labyrinth: Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Michael Hattaway (Ed.), A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Clare, J. (1998). Transgressing Boundaries: Women’s Writing in the Renaissance and Reformation. In M. Shaw (Ed.), An Introduction to Women’s Writing: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day. (pp. 37-64). London: Prentice Hall.
• Ferguson, M. W. (1996). Renaissance concepts of the ‘woman writer.’ In Helen Wilcox. (Ed.), Women and Literature in Britain: 1500-1700. (pp. 143-169). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Fienberg, N. (1991). Mary Wroth and the Invention of Female Poetic Subjectivity. In Naomi J. Miller and Gary Waller (Eds), Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early Modern England. (pp. 175-191). Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.
• Hannay, M. P. (1991). “Your vertous and learned Aunt”: The Countess of Pembroke as a Mentor to Mary Wroth. In Naomi J. Miller and Gary Waller (Eds.), Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early Modern England. (pp. 35-67). Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.
• Hannay, M. P. (2010). Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth. Surrey: Ashgate.
• Hutcheon, L. (2006). A theory of adaptation. Routledge.
• Lewalski, B. K. (1991). Writing Women and Reading the Renaissance. Renaissance Quarterly, 44(4), 792-821.
• Marotti, A. F. (1982). “Love is Not Love”: Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences and the Social Order. ELH, 49(2), 396-428.
• Masten, J. (1991). “Shall O turne blabb?”: Circulation, Gender, Subjectivity in Mary Wroth’s Sonnets. In Naomi J. Miller and Gary Waller (Eds.), Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternative in Early Modern England. (pp. 67-88). Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.
• McClinton, J. A. (2001). Rewriting empire: Rewriting canonical British texts from a postcolonial perspective. PhD Dissertation. The University of Oklahoma.
• Mermin, D. (1990 Summer). Women Becoming Poets: Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch. The John Hopkins University Press. ELH, 57(2), 335-355.
• Miller, N. J. (1996). Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.
• Pekşen Yakar, A. (2021). Anne Finch and Lady Mary Montagu as “thieves of language". Uluslararası Dil Edebiyat ve Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi, 4(2), 198-208. https://doi.org/10.37999/udekad.910917
• “rewrite.” (2022). https://www.lexico.com/definition/rewrite.
• Rich, A. (1972). When we dead awaken: Writing as re-vision. College English, 34(1), 18-30.
• Roberts, J. A. (1983). Introduction. In Josephine A. Roberts (Ed.), The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth. London: Louisiana University Press.
• Waller, G. (1993). English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century. London: Longman.