A woman taking up the pen: Anna Weamys and A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia

Abstract

A popular romance by a popular courtier, Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia was the best-selling prose fiction of the 1590s England. Sidney wrote the Old Arcadia, which consisted of five books, earlier than the New Arcadia. In the New Arcadia, a revision of the Old Arcadia, which was composed of three books, he followed the original plotline while he also added new episodes and reshaped some narratives. The product of an arduous work, it broke off mid-sentence due to Sidney’s untimely death in 1586. This incomplete text was published in 1590. In the posthumously published 1593 Arcadia, a merger of the Old Arcadia and the New Arcadia, Sidney invited the reader to continue his text (the original ending of the older version). Even though he used the male personal pronoun to address his successors, Anna Weamys was the only woman to take up the challenge. Writing at a time when female romance reading and writing were frowned upon by the patriarchal culture and authorship was predominantly considered to be a male activity, Weamys not only interpreted the narrative threads Sidney left unfinished from a female point of view but she also produced her own independent work. Within this framework, taking into consideration the question “Is a pen a metaphorical penis?” Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar pose, and the cultural understanding of romance and women’s preoccupation with the genre in the seventeenth century, this paper examines how Weamys shatters the hegemony of Sidney in A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1651) in order to establish her literary authority as a female author.  

Keywords

• Anna Weamys,Sir Philip Sidney,romance,authorship,women’s writing

Kaleme sarılan bir kadın: Anna Weamys ve A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia

Abstract

A popular romance by a popular courtier, Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia was the best-selling prose fiction of the 1590s England. Sidney wrote the Old Arcadia, which consisted of five books, earlier than the New Arcadia. In the New Arcadia, a revision of the Old Arcadia, which was composed of three books, he followed the original plotline while he also added new episodes and reshaped some narratives. The product of an arduous work, it broke off mid-sentence due to Sidney’s untimely death in 1586. This incomplete text was published in 1590. In the posthumously published 1593 Arcadia, a merger of the Old Arcadia and the New Arcadia, Sidney invited the reader to continue his text (the original ending of the older version). Even though he used the male personal pronoun to address his successors, Anna Weamys was the only woman to take up the challenge. Writing at a time when female romance reading and writing were frowned upon by the patriarchal culture and authorship was predominantly considered to be a male activity, Weamys not only interpreted the narrative threads Sidney left unfinished from a female point of view but she also produced her own independent work. Within this framework, taking into consideration the question “Is a pen a metaphorical penis?” Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar pose, and the cultural understanding of romance and women’s preoccupation with the genre in the seventeenth century, this paper examines how Weamys shatters the hegemony of Sidney in A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1651) in order to establish her literary authority as a female author.  

Keywords

• Anna Weamys,Sir Philip Sidney,romance,authorship,women’s writing

References

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