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.
Anna Weamys Sir Philip Sidney romance authorship women’s writing
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.
Anna Weamys Sir Philip Sidney romance authorship women’s writing
Birincil Dil | Türkçe |
---|---|
Konular | Sanat ve Edebiyat |
Bölüm | Türk dili, kültürü ve edebiyatı |
Yazarlar | |
Yayımlanma Tarihi | 21 Kasım 2019 |
Yayımlandığı Sayı | Yıl 2019 RumeliDE 2019.Ö6 - Bandırma Onyedi Eylül Üniversitesi Uluslararası Filoloji Çalışmaları Konferansı |