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[profeminist]

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[earlymoderngothic]

Queenship in Early Modern Europe

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how women, particularly Queens and aristocratic women, could gain power and influence through patronage and I want to continue looking at powerful women by exploring queenship in early modern Europe.

This post was originally much longer because queenship is a topic I’ve been interested in for a while but now it's just a quick look at some aspects of queenship.

This is my last Women’s History Month post of 2023 so I hope you enjoy it! As always, this post is available to read on WordPress and Ko-fi because it’s stupidly long. Footnotes and image credits are below the cut.

Counsel

Early modern women, even queens, were often excluded from the political system and, in 1558, John Knox wrote that women were ‘unconstant, variable, cruelle and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment’, demonstrating how women were viewed at the time. [1] However, women did participate in the counsel of both kings and queens at this time despite their apparent lack of political knowledge and experience and counsel played an important role in early modern queenship. There is little doubt that early modern queens enjoyed a variety of relationships of counsel as they counselled their husbands and fathers, offered counsel to other rulers, and received counsel from other women.

Bona Sforza, for example, was Queen of Poland from 1518 to 1548 and she is known for being an active political player during the reign of her husband. Katarzyna Kosior has suggested that Bona’s ‘political action was dependent on the success of her counsel’, thus demonstrating how Bona’s gender restricted her. [2] However, Bona was clearly, at times, a successful counsellor to Sigismund I, as long as her agendas aligned with his, and evidence of her counsel exists through the writing of both her allies and her enemies. She was forced to compromise by her husband, who accepted her counsel but was not as spineless as Marsupino suggested, and Kosior suggests that an example of this can be found in a letter from Sigismund I to Bona in which he asks her to consider their reputation in her pursuit of land for her son. It also appears that Bona had influence over appointments to offices, examples including Andrzej Krzycki, a court poet who claims to have been offered prominent churches offices due to his association with the queen, and Piotr Gamrat, who eventually became archbishop of Gniezno in 1541, which strengthened her position in court.

Through compromise and political intelligence, Bona actively sought to implement her own political ideas in Poland and she did so successfully. She worked from within the limits of her gender, limits enforced by the perception of women at this time, and utilised counsel in her quest to wield power.

Mary Tudor, Queen of France, also incorporated counsel into her queenship rather thoroughly, despite her short tenure. Helen Matheson-Pollock suggests that Mary ‘embodied the role of counsellor and quasi-diplomatic agent, taking her status beyond that of symbol—tangible or otherwise—to active participant in the maintenance of the friendship or fraternal relationship between Henry VIII and Louis XII’, thus marking her as a vital component in the relationship between England and France at this time. [3]

However, Mary’s queenship also relied on female counsel and she sought the counsel of women in her household to help her perform the role of counselling consort to Louis. Her authority was directly linked to the counsel of these women and these women, who acted as her attendants, took on a similar quasi-diplomatic role in the relationship between England and France as they linked Mary to her homeland.

Her short reign in France allows us to examine the importance of female relationships and the counsel of women in early modern courts and it demonstrates how counsel became a significant aspect of early modern queenship.

Symbolism in Portraits

Portraits were incredibly important in the reigns of early modern monarchs as they were imbued with symbolism and power. I think the most famous portraits from this era are of Elizabeth I who used portraiture to reinforce her ideals and her influence. We think of the Armada paintings and the tiny details within them that reveal so much about how Elizabeth viewed herself and how she wanted others to view her. Her portraits included heavily symbolism which historians have been decoding for years, as did the portraits of Mary Queen of Scots and every other monarch from this era, but Elizabeth’s tell us a coded story of the life a queen that we find so endlessly fascinating.

Starting with those famous Armada portraits, of which three survive today, a few of the main symbols here the globe on which she rests her hand, the mermaid carved into her chair, and the pearl on her bodice. The globe is said to represent England’s dream of colonising the Americas, something that did not happen during Elizabeth’s lifetime, and if you look closely, Elizabeth’s fingers are covering the Americas on the map, like she’s claiming them as her own. In previous years, Elizabeth had issued Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh with patents for overseas exploration in the New World and although this portrait is celebrating a victory much closer to home, Elizabeth’s ambitions are clear.

The mermaid has been interpreted in a couple of different ways: firstly, representing Elizabeth as a woman luring Spanish sailors to their doom and secondly, representing Mary, Queen of Scots, who was often compared to a mermaid, at this time a symbol of prostitution. If we understand that the mermaid is supposed to represent Mary, the fact that Elizabeth is facing away from mermaid may suggest that she has moved on from the execution of her cousin but that also makes us question why the mermaid is there at all. The pearl is said to represent Elizabeth’s purity and chastity, playing on her reputation as the Virgin Queen, perhaps in contrast to Mary, Queen of Scots, the mermaid. There are obviously so many layers to the symbolism in these portraits but they’re open to the interpretation of the viewer, even if Elizabeth did intend for these motifs to symbolise something specific to the viewer.

The Ermine portrait (c.1585) is a fascinating study because it is not subtle in the slightest! Elizabeth is portrayed costumed in black and white, with a profusion of jewels. Many of her jewels are pearls, again symbolism chastity and purity as in the Armada portraits, and she is accompanied by the Sword of Justice near her left hand and an olive branch, symbolising peace, in her right hand. Perhaps the most obvious symbol in this portrait, at least for an early modern viewer, is the ermine on her left arm. Ermines are stoats in their white winter coats and they are an incredibly old symbol. They can be found in many portraits from this era and they represent both moral purity and chastity, which reinforces the more subtle symbolism of the pearls she is wearing. The ermine in this portrait is wearing a golden crown-like collar, making it clear that the ermine should be identified with the queen herself. When viewed together, these symbols suggest that through her moral purity, Elizabeth I maintains peace whilst wielding righteous justice.

Symbolism and codes were an aspect of early modern queenship that cannot be overlooked as they are lasting visual signs of power and the legacy these women wanted to leave behind. Elizabeth used portraits to demonstrate her strength to both her allies and her enemies, leaving no doubt of her authority to anyone who looked at them. They also revealed her ambitions, some of which were never realised, and the impenetrable image that she designed for herself.

Public Image

Revolutions and civil wars were dangerous times for queens as their power and status were questioned and their every move, and every budget choice, was scrutinised not only by parliament or revolutionaries but by the general public. Their lives were opened up to speculation and examination and their public image was left in tatters. Marie Antoinette is probably the most famous of Europe’s queens to experience a revolution and we all know what happened to her but Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, survived to see her son, Charles II, ascend to the throne during England’s Reformation in 1660. Her role as queen shifted during the English Civil War but she tried to maintain power by projecting a specific image of herself to the public.

Henrietta Maria, known as Queen Mary during her reign, is a fascinating figure and her struggle for power during the English Civil War was well documented during her own time. Much of her correspondence with parliament was circulated in newssheets and Carolyn Harris has compared these letters to her private letters, revealing her attempts to manipulate public opinion and present herself in a particular light in order to gain public sympathy and power during a time when both were waning.

Harris noted that Henrietta Maria ‘made efforts to ensure that accounts of her flight from England, which emphasized her separation from her family, and her personal suffering were disseminated to a wide public audience.’ [4] Her queenship was called into question, as expected during a civil war, but her queenship actually revolved around her roles as a wife and a mother so her escape from England had to be presented as an unwilling parting from her family otherwise her status as a queen, a wife, and a mother would be called into question. She needed the public to believe that she was a wronged woman so that even when aspects of her queenship were overtaken by parliament, she would still have some support as a woman who had been forced away from her family by men. Harris has also stated that in these published letters, Henrietta Maria implied that she had received threats to her life, not just her liberty, but these threats did ‘not appear in Henrietta Maria’s private correspondence’ and are evidence of her ‘consciously develop[ing] a sympathetic narrative as a strategy to regain popular support.’ [5] Henrietta Maria actively worked to ensure her role as queen would be secure in the minds of the public even after her impeachment, using newssheets as a vehicle to spread information as quickly, and as far, as possible. Upon her return to England during the Reformation, Henrietta Maria did not regain her former power or status but her strategic manoeuvres years earlier allowed her to survive relatively unscathed.  

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I may return to this topic next year to look at other aspects of queenship because I do find the topic completely fascinating.

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Footnotes: 1. John Knox, The first blast of the trumpet against the monstruous regiment of women, (Geneva: J. Poullain and A. Rebul, 1558), pp.9-10. 2. Katarzyna Kosior, ‘Bona Sforza and the Realpolitik of Queenly Counsel in Sixteenth-Century Poland-Lithuania’, in Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p.16 3. Helen Matheson-Pollock, ‘Counselloresses and Court Politics: Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Female Counsel in European Politics, 1509–15’ in Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p.61 4. Carolyn Harris, Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p.158 5. Harris, p.158

Images: 1. Portrait of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon attributed to Jan Gossaert, c.1515 2. Bona Sforza, 1517 3. Portrait of Henrietta Maria de Bourbon, Queen of England (1609-1669) by Anthony van Dyck, c.1636 4. The Queen’s ball version of the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, c.1588 5. Painting of Elizabeth I of England, also known as the Ermine Portrait attributed to William Segar, c.1585

[earlymoderngothic]

Lady Caroline Lamb and Glenarvon

Welcome to another Women's History Month post! As the title suggests, I'm going to be discussing Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon (1816).

As always, this post is available to read on WordPress and Ko-fi because it’s stupidly long! Footnotes and image credits are below the cut.

First, some context. Lady Caroline Lamb, born 1785, was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat. In 1805, she married William Lamb, who would later become the 2nd Viscount Melbourne, in what seems to have been a love match. That didn’t stop her having very public affairs with well-known men but it was common for aristocrats at the time and her husband had his own affairs. (He was a bit more discreet about it though).

In 1812, she was close to the Holland House circle which allowed her access to a pre-publication version of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Lady Caroline was familiar with his previous works but she is said to have been so enamoured with the poem that she asked Samuel Rogers, who loaned her the copy of the poem, for an introduction. Scholars have noted that the poem prompted many women to fantasise about being Thyrza, even though it is now acknowledged that the poem is an expression of Byron’s grief for John Edleston, as Byron disguised the homoeroticism of the poem and misled his readers into thinking he was pining for a woman. Rogers noted that he was, at the time, inundated by “the manoeuvres of certain noble ladies” who wanted to meet Lord Byron and he attempted to dissuade Lady Caroline by claiming that Bryon was a nail biter with a club foot.[1] Charming. Even with this unattractive picture, Lady Caroline was determined to meet the poet who had so captured her attention with his genius.

Lady Caroline wrote her first letter to Byron on the 9th of March 1812, just six days after the first two cantos of the poem were published, and she continued to write to him until she captured his attention. They embarked first on an intellectual affair – Byron bought her books and they discussed philosophy and literature – before their relationship became intensely erotic. By 1813, their relationship was over but Lady Caroline’s obsession with Byron continued.

Why does this even matter? Well, the affair between Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron sparked her to write one of the weirdest Gothic roman-à-clefs that I’ve ever read. Her friends may have claimed that she coined the phrase “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” about Byron but through this book she transformed Byron into a vampire, a lasting legacy amongst his scorned lovers, and she utilised the Byronic hero against him most wonderfully.

We don’t talk about Glenarvon enough beyond their affair so I’m going to look at a few ideas and themes within the book in this post. Now, I would like to resign Byron to where he belongs, in the bin, for the remainder of this post but, unfortunately, he’s woven into every single word of Lady Caroline’s book so I can’t do that.

The basic plot of Glenarvon is that Glenarvon (vampire Byron) corrupts the innocent young bride Calantha (Lady Caroline) leading to their mutual ruin and eventual death. It’s set in Ireland, which is very important both due to Lady Caroline’s identity and Ireland’s identity as a nation in the nineteenth century, and it follows typical Gothic themes and tropes. It is very dramatic, very Gothic, and it leans heavily into sensationalism. It doesn’t quite work as a novel as we think of them today and I’d describe it as a rather frantic story but it does work as a roman-à-clef – a novel based on real people – which is usually what it’s categorised as.

Although it isn’t well structured, the book offers us some real insights into the act of writing in the early nineteenth century and the use of gossip (both real and fictional) in literature of this time.

The Act of Writing

Through writing Glenarvon, Lady Caroline sought comfort. This novel was an attempt to create a fantasy world in which she felt safe and understood. It was an expression of her desires, her problems, and her frustration with her relationships. She didn’t write this for money and it doesn’t seem to have been purely for creative reasons, although Lady Caroline was said to be creative as a child, but it seems to have been an almost therapeutic exercise.

We know many writers suffered from mental illnesses, physical illnesses, and addiction (often compounded by the mental and physical illnesses) at this time and academics and biographers have speculated that Lady Caroline may have had bipolar disorder, evidenced by “manic” episodes throughout her life. I’m never comfortable with this line of “reading” because none of us know Lady Caroline and what she was actually like but I agree with Paul Douglass’ argument that her ‘divided mental state’ after her relationship with Byron ended ‘began to be mirrored by the imaginative reveries she created to escape’ her life. [2] She was the heroine of her own fantasy, preyed upon by a monster which drains the life out of young women like her, and everyone else was to blame for her misery.

Douglass suggests that it was an ‘act of self-immolation’, a form of altruism in which she risked her own body and reputation to reveal the horrors of others, but it seems almost like a diary entry to me.[3] Or one of those stories you write to express emotions and ideas that belong to you and you alone. Perhaps it would have been more beneficial for her if she had not published the novel, as the controversy further damaged her and she never truly recovered from this relationship, but she must have believed she was exposing Byron for what he actually was – a monster – to publish it so willingly. Or perhaps she was looking for sympathy. I’m not sure.

It was a novel driven by despair and desperation, emotions that colour every word and action of her characters. For Lady Caroline, writing was not a way to gain fame or fortune like it was for so many, nor was it merely an expression of creativity – it was an expression of the self and a way to work through the anguish she experienced.

Gossip

Earlier I said that this book is a roman à clef rather than a traditional novel but I didn’t use that term to demean Lady Caroline’s work as some have done before. What we get through the use of this form in Glenarvon is a blending of the novel and gossip as Lady Caroline wove her scandalous reality into fiction. Roman à clefs could be dangerous, both politically and personally, due to their incorporation of gossip as they often revealed far more than anyone wanted them to reveal. They are mysteries to be solved by readers in the know and, as Lauren McCoy states, ‘Glenarvon is evidence of the pleasures of reading for gossip’ because Glenarvon promised to reveal the secrets of some of the most famous people in nineteenth-century Britain.[4] They sometime came published with keys, revealing which character corresponded to real-life figures, and although Lady Caroline didn’t publish a key with her novel, key circulated around her social circles as her readers were determined to figure out who was who.

While gossip is a major part of the novel in the idea that it is revealing something about real people, Lamb also used gossip in the novel itself to the same effect as gossip is the driving force behind the plot and the characters. I think this is very clever because, again, Lady Caroline was blending the real with fiction, utilising gossip – which was the main way information spread at this time – to make her roman à clef mirror real life. There are layers to this book that we often don’t appreciate because it doesn’t live up to our expectations of a good story and I think Lady Caroline’s use of gossip is one of those ideas that needs to be valued more.

Take this section, for example:

She heard, from your lips, the sugared poisons you were pleased to lavish upon her. You laughed at her follies, courted her confidence, and flattered her into a belief that you loved her. —Loved her!— it is a feeling you never felt. She fell into the mire; the arrows of your precious crew were shot at her — like hissing snakes hot and sharpened with malice and venomed fire; and you, yes —you were the first to scorn her: you, by whom she had stood faithfully and firmly amidst a host of foes— aye, amidst the fawning rabble, who still crowd your doors, and laugh at and despise you. [5]

This is clearly a moment of betrayal as the Princess of Madagascar (who was supposed to represent Lady Holland) has ‘flattered’ Calantha into believing her and loving her only to abandon Calantha to the ‘arrows’ of ‘malice’ spread by those who gossip about her, the Princess’ ‘crew’. If we didn’t know anything about the real events behind the novel, this would still be an excellent examination of flattery, gossip, and betrayal in the early nineteenth century as it reveals the tensions experienced in the upper circles of society.

Lady Caroline also used gossip to create her characters, especially Glenarvon, as she utilised negative gossip to undermine the people these characters represented. We may have expected that Lady Caroline would rely upon her own experiences with these people, as negative as they were, but she does go further by tapping into the rumours that surrounded them. This feels almost vindictive and it is rather ironic if she is condemning the gossip about herself while using gossip to destroy the reputation of others within the book. Lord Byron arguably gets the worst treatment, as expected, as Lady Caroline used gossip about his sexual proclivities and character flaws to suggest that he was politically dangerous and able to incite rebellion within communities. Lady Caroline characterises Glenarvon as an Irish rebel:

Irishmen, our country shall soon be free: —you are about to be avenged. That vile government, which has so long, and so cruelly oppressed you, shall soon be no more! The national flag —the sacred green, shall fly over the ruins of despotism; and that fair capital, which has too long witnessed the debauchery, the plots, the crimes of your tyrants, shall soon be the citadel of triumphant patriotism and virtue. Even if we fail, let us die defending the rights of man —the independence of Ireland. [6]

However, he downplays his English titles in the novel in order to become a God-like figure to Irish peasants, taking advantage of their situation to revel in his own glory. Or, as McCoy notes, it appears that he is ‘more intoxicated by his growing celebrity than the power of the radical movement surrounding him’.[7] Essentially, he believes the world revolves around him and this is potentially disastrous for those around him. This form of character assassination goes on throughout the novel, with Lady Caroline using gossip to attempt to break the bonds between Byron and those around him by feeding into the rumours that already surround him.

Gossip is a key theme of this book, both in the plot itself and in its reception, and this allowed it to live on as it became part of society, an oral tale to be spread and discussed alongside the text itself, and it is now part of our understanding of Lord Byron and his relationships.

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I could go on and on about this book and explore other things, like Lady Caroline’s decision to set the novel in Ireland, but I may return to it one day in the future.

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Footnotes: 1 Samuel Rogers, Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1953), p.190 2. Paul Douglass, Lady Caroline Lamb: A Biography (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p.137 3. Paul Douglass, 'The Madness of Writing: Lady Caroline Lamb's Byronic Identity Author(s)', Pacific Coast Philology, 34.1 (1999), 53-71 (59) 4. Lauren McCoy, 'Literary Gossip: Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon and the roman à clef', Eighteenth Century Fiction, 27.1 (2014), 127-150 (132) 5. Caroline Lamb, Glenarvon (London: Henry Colburn, 1816), Vol. 1, pp.247-248 6. Lamb, Vol. 3, pp.19-20 7. McCoy, 147

Images: 1. Unfinished portrait of Lady Caroline Lamb by Thomas Lawrence (c.1810) 2. Cover page of Caroline Lamb, Glenarvon (London: Henry Colburn, 1816), Vol. 1 3. Portrait of Lord Byron by Thomas Phillips (1813)

[earlymoderngothic]

Women, the Arts, and Patronage

Hello, I'm back with another Women's History Month post!

Patronage came in many different forms – artistic, religious, political, etc. – but we usually talk about the patronage of the arts and that’s what today’s post is about. I’m looking at women who acted as patrons for writers, artists, architects, and other creative people.

In this post, I’m going to focus on five women from different countries and time periods and I’m going to talk about what/who they patronised and why.

As always, this post is available to read on WordPress and Ko-fi because it's stupidly long! Footnotes and image credits are below the cut.

Emma of Normandy (c.984-1052)

Patronage of the arts was one of the ways in which women could ensure that they were remembered in the way that they wanted to be and Elizabeth M. Tyler has noted that literary patronage ‘includes not only commissioned texts that are rewarded materially, practically, or professionally but also texts that are the result of the intellectual or emotional support of a woman or the result of a woman’s searching for knowledge that is answered by the production of a text’.[1] Women did not merely pay for texts to be written, or support artists and writers financially, they actively engaged and participated in the creative process. These works were the result of collaboration between writer and patron.

I bring this up because one of the most famous examples of this attempt to control the narrative through patronage and collaboration is Emma of Normandy’s commission of the Encomium Emmae Reginae. (I’ve looked at this text here before so if you’re interested in reading a bit more, then do head over to that post!) Tyler has argued that Emma’s ‘literary patronage needs to be understood in the context of her multiple political identities and the multiple linguistic communities in which she, as a speaker of French, English, and Danish, participated’ as it works to unite her fragmented identity and smooths over the ‘factionalism threatening Emma’s position’ in England.[2] It was an opportunity for Emma to seize control and the text itself reveals this. For example, in the first section of the Encomium Emmae Reginae, we see various dedications to Emma, demonstrating her patronage and influence over the text:

therefore, the praise of the Queen is evident at the beginning, thrives in the middle, is present at the end, and embraces absolutely all of what the book amounts to.[3]

The Encomiast is writing this with a specific purpose and he doesn’t attempt to hide that. This book was, at least in part, created to present Emma in a particular light and Emma’s patronage of the Encomium allowed her to exert her influence over the text, ensuring that the Encomium worked in her favour. She took control of her own legacy through her literary patronage and, while it resulted in one of the most fascinating documents from this time period, it was ultimately about shaping how Emma’s people saw her and the way that the world would remember her, even though we know today that the Encomiast wasn’t always truthful.

I was going to talk about Edith of Wessex here too since she commissioned a similar work but I’m dedicating an entire post to her and her role in the Vita Ædwardi Regis later in the month!

Anne of Brittany (1477-1514)

Anne of Brittany is an odd one but I find her patronage very interesting. She reigned twice and in both she controlled the literary patronage system at the French court, although much more resolutely in her second reign than in her first. She was very supportive of literary patronage, making her a more sought-after patron than her husband, but she was also used by court poets and historians to reach the king. It also seems that she didn’t take much of an interest in the works being produced. Unlike Emma of Normandy, she did not take on a collaborative role with her writers. Instead, they dedicated their works to her.

That being said, even these dedications didn’t focus completely on Anne, despite her patronage, because many of the works dedicated to her are also dedicated to her husband, Louis XII. As Cynthia J. Brown notes, ‘she frequently ends up sharing centre stage with her royal partner’ and this is evident in the dedications of both Seyssel’s Louenges du roy Louys XIIe de ce nom and Lemaire’s Dyalogue de Vertu Militaire et Jeunesse Françoise.[4] Both of these texts glorify her husband’s military prowess and feature explicit dedications to her, in Seyssel’s case the book presented to Anne featured a woodcut dedicated solely to her while other copies featured a woodcut of Louis XII, which does confirm her role as a patron at the time but she does not stand alone in these dedications. Anne was a generous patron but her role did nothing to further her own political causes. In fact, many of the writers who she acted as patron for actually criticised her husband through Anne and Brown has argued that works like Jean Marot’s Voyage de Gênes actually served to ‘[undermine] the sociopolitical status’ of Anne and other women of power in late medieval Europe.[5]

I’d like to look into Anne of Brittany more one day because she seems fascinating.

Elizabeth Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (1588-1633)

Elizabeth was a well-respected writer in her own time but she was also a prolific patron to some of the best-known writers of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. She acted as a patron alongside her husband but the way the likes of John Donne and John Fletcher wrote about her demonstrates both her influence and the immense amount of respect they had for her.

One of her most notable acts of patronage was her decision to commission John Marston to write a day of entertainment to celebrate her mother’s visit to Ashby, the Hastings’ estate, in the August of 1607. The event consisted of a welcome for the Countess of Derby, followed by a masque featuring Cynthia, the moon, alongside four knights and four gentlemen, verses by William Skipwith that made up part of a lottery, and finally, as the Countess left, an eclogue between a nymph and shepherd. All of this showed off the Hastings’ wealth, influence, and power to the Jacobean court but elements are also said to mirror the Countess of Derby’s own Harefield Entertainment for Elizabeth I in 1602, thus acting as a reminder of her power and influence.

John Brinsley’s The Second Part of the True Watch (1607) indicates that Hastings had contact with texts before publication, thanking her for her ‘most favorable acceptance’ of his work but the most prominent evidence of her patronage is the Skipwith manuscript. This manuscript contains pageants by William Skipwith that may have been performed for Hastings but it also features poems by John Fletcher, Francis Beaumont, John Donne, Thomas Carew, Ben Jonson and so many others.

In one of the poems, John Fletcher describes Ashby as a place of support, really demonstrating Hastings’ patronage, but, as stated by Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, he also emphasises Hastings’ power, likening her to Eve before the fall, and he casts her as both muse and creator. For Fletcher, Hastings was well-read, quick-witted, intelligent, and generous. Everything a poet would want in a patron.[6] As writer herself, she understood the poets and playwrights she surrounded herself with and her network was full of influential men and women.

By surrounding herself with some of the Jacobean court’s most influential people, Elizabeth Hastings made herself a force to be reckoned with. She may never had taken the English throne, although she was third in line at the death of Elizabeth I, but she made herself a name within Jacobean court and Jacobean society that was reinforced by continued generous patronage.

Irene (c.1110-c.1152)

I didn’t just want to stick to western European women for this post and I ended up looking into the Byzantine Empire which was fascinating. Little is known about some of the women but they still left their mark through patronage. Barbara Hill has noted that ‘[l]iterary patronage in particular offered a further advantage which might have been attractive to imperial women: it kept their memory green’ but ‘the sources are usually not explicit enough to know whether work was commissioned or not’ making it difficult to trace the literary patronage of Byzantium and its neighbours.[7] One known literary patron, however, is Irene, a sebastokratorissa in the Byzantine Empire. Elizabeth Jeffreys states that Irene may be associated with three types of patronage: texts, illustrated books, and liturgical objects in churches of the Theotokos in Constantinople.[8]

Irene was the patron of many literary men, including John Tzetzes, a poet known as Manganeios Prodromos, and a monk. Jeffreys notes that about a third of Manganeios Prodromos’s literary output, of which about 18,000 lines still remains, ‘deals with Irene and her immediate family’, with poems ranging from ‘celebrations of marriages, votive dedications on behalf of an injured son, to pleas to the emperor for clemency’.[9] Irene seems to have commissioned pieces from these writers, paying them for the pieces she requested, and the writers often mention her generosity. Jeffreys suggests that the ‘books that Irene commissioned all function at an elementary level’, written in a ‘metre that is reserved for non-intellectual purposes’ which makes me think that Irene may have wanted these texts for personal pleasure rather than an exercise in expressing power and intelligence.[10]

Gülnuş Sultan (c.1642-1715)

Moving away from literary patronage, Gülnuş Sultan, chief consort of Mehmed IV, was a patron of architects. Her activities seem to have concentrated the conversion of churches and cathedrals to mosques in cities conquered by the Ottoman Empire but she also sponsored projects for building new mosques and fountains, as well as a soup kitchen, a school, and a tomb in Üsküdar.

Fountains were a major part of Gülnuş Sultan’s activities throughout the Ottoman Empire which, when compared to mosques, doesn’t seem as grand or visible but they are a huge part of her legacy. Muzaffer Özgüleş notes that ‘she built or repaired nearly 30 fountains in Edirne, Istanbul and elsewhere, and constructed the waterways which carried water to those fountains from far away sources’, bringing clean water to her people.[11] Some of these fountains were ornate, demonstrating the wealth and culture of the Ottoman Empire and her husband, but, as Özgüleş suggests, the decision to build fountains and provide people with clean drinking water ‘intensified her reputation among her subjects as a philanthropic and beneficent queen mother, bringing her perhaps more praise than her mosque-building activities because of the great number of people who benefited from these works’.[12] I’m not saying she built fountains for praise because she clearly took a great interest in the health and wellbeing of the people but I think we can see from this how patronage benefitted the patron as well as society.

Although the literary patrons I’ve mentioned had an impact on culture, Gülnuş Sultan had an impact on the community at large and on the landscape. Some of the buildings and fountains she sponsored still exist today.

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I learnt a lot about the patronage of women while doing research for this post but I really couldn’t fit it all in here. I haven’t even really gone into detail about any of the women, their lives, or their reputations because otherwise this post would be 90,000 words long. So, if you’re interested, here’s a list of academic books I read (which can be found through various sources):

English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000–c. 1150 by Elizabeth M. Tyler

The Queen’s Library: Image-Making at the Court of Anne of Brittany, 1477 –1514 by Cynthia J. Brown

Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England, ed. by Valerie Wayne

Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025-1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology by Barbara Hill

The Women Who Built the Ottoman World: Female Patronage and the Architectural Legacy of Gülnuş Sultan by Muzaffer Özgüleş

Female Portraiture and Patronage in Marie-Antoinette’s Court by Sarah Grant

Female Authorship, Patronage, and Translation in Late Medieval France by Anneliese Pollock Renck

Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England, ed. by Susan Frye

Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. by Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski

Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in The Middle Ages by Erin L. Jordan

Literary Patronage in England, 1650-1800 by Dustin Griffin

Bluestockings Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage, 1730–1830, ed. by Elizabeth Eger

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Footnotes: 1. Elizabeth M. Tyler, English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000–c. 1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), p.12 2. Tyler, p.52 3. Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. by Alistar Campbell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) p.7 4. Cynthia J. Brown, The Queen’s Library: Image-Making at the Court of Anne of Brittany, 1477 –1514 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), p.64 5. Brown, p.99 6. Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, ‘Reader, maker, mentor: The Countess of Huntingdon and her networks’, in Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England, ed. by Valerie Wayne (London: Bloomsbury, 2020) 7. Barbara Hill, Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025-1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology (London: Routledge, 1999), p.159 8. Elizabeth Jeffreys, ‘The sebastokratorissa Irene as Patron’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 60.1 (2012), 177-194 (183) 9. Jeffreys, 181 10. Jeffreys, 183 11. Muzaffer Özgüleş, The Women Who Built the Ottoman World: Female Patronage and the Architectural Legacy of Gülnuş Sultan (London: I. B. Taurus, 2017), p.140 12. Özgüleş, p.140

Images: 1. Emma Receiving The Encomium (c.1050s) – British Library MS 33241 2. Miniature depiction in the Great Hours of Anne of Brittany by Jean Bourdichon (c. 1503-1508) 3. Posthumous portrait painting of Rabia Gülnuş Sultan by an unknown artist (19th century)

[earlymoderngothic]

Women Poets I Fell in Love with in 2022

Happy Women's History Month! I'm kicking things off this year with a look back at the women poets I read in 2022.

This is a long post so you can also read it on WordPress or Ko-fi, if you prefer the formatting on those sites!

Louise Glück (b.1943)

Glück is an American poet and essayist who often explores trauma and desire through mythological and natural imagery. I was drawn to her poetic voice, which is strong and unique, and I found myself deeply affected by the poems that I read (which is exactly what you want when reading poetry!). Glück often uses free verse – no rhyme scheme or meter to be found – which is, admittedly, not my favourite type of poetry but there’s still a sense of rhythm to the poetry and her work is very readable.

You can read some of her poetry on Poetry Foundation but some of her other poems are available online! If you’re looking to read one collection, most of the poems I read were from The Triumph of Achilles (1985) but you can also pick up a collection of her works up to 2020 in Poems: 1962–2020*.

Two of my favourites were:

Penelope’s Song

Summer

Louise Bogan (1897-1970)

Bogan was an American poet and the first woman to be appointed Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress. She published six collections of poetry between 1923 and 1968 but she also published prose and translations. Her work tends to be lyric poetry, a formal style with regular meter and rhyme, and her style is beautifully subtle. Her work is understated but she was very deliberate in her choices and didn’t follow trends. I just think her poetry is wonderful.

Some of her poetry is available on Poetry Foundation and you can read her first collection, Body of his Death (1923), over on Internet Archive for free. I read a fair number of poems by Bogan in 2022 but my favourites were:

Medusa

Leave-taking

Women

Anna Seward (1742-1809)

I had encountered Seward before my poetry challenge in 2022 because I love Romantic poetry and Seward was an English Romantic poet. However, I’d never just read her work for please, it was always for classes, so it was really nice to be to enjoy her work without analysing it too much. Seward began writing poetry in the late 1750s but her first poem wasn’t published in 1780. She wrote sonnets and elegies, which were often autobiographical, and she wrote about female friendship.

You can read her works on Poetry Foundation and Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive!

Herva, at the Tomb of Argantyr. A Runic Dialogue

Sonnet

Eyam

Anne Hunter (1741-1821)

Hunter, also known sometimes as Anne Home Hunter (Home being her maiden name), was a poet in Georgian England who often entertained other members of the Bluestocking Society at her home in London. She was most well-known as a songwriter and lyric poet and many of her poems were set to music by Joseph Haydn. Hunter was a Romantic poet who wrote ballads and odes, exploring typical Romantic themes alongside domestic themes.

Her poetry is available on Poetry Foundation and Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive.

Fairy Revels

A Mermaid’s Song

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Millay was an American lyric poet and notable feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She was highly regarded in her own time but her work was later dismissed for using traditional forms. Millay used her poetry as a form of feminist activism and wrote on taboo subjects, such as female sexuality. What I enjoyed most about Millay’s poetry is that there was a sense of freedom to her works, even within the confines of the rhyme and meter of lyric poetry. Her works are creative, emotional, and beautifully written.

Some of her works are available on Poetry Foundation, Internet Archive, and Project Gutenberg but I really liked reading the Everyman’s Pocket Poets edition* of her works because it worked as an introduction to her poetry for me.

I read a number of her works last year because I was so enamoured with her but three of my favourites were:

Low-tide

Prayer to Persephone

Mariposa

Ada Limón (b.1976)

Limón is an American poet and the current Poet Laureate of the United States by the Librarian of Congress. She is of Mexican-American descent, making her the first Latina to become Poet Laureate. Her poems are mostly free verse, as is common now, but it isn’t fragmented or deconstructed. Her poems are thematically diverse but they’re often about self discovery. Limón’s poetry is an expression of her life and I love how powerful her poetic voice is.

She’s the author of seven collections – Lucky wreck* (2006), This Big Fake World (2006), Sharks in the rivers (2010), Bright Dead Things* (2015), The Carrying* (2018), The Hurting Kind* (2022), Shelter: A Love Letter To Trees (2022) – but her work can also be found on Poetry Foundation.

How to Triumph Like a Girl

Late Summer after a Panic Attack

Krystyna Dąbrowska (b.1979)

Dąbrowska is a Polish poet, translator, and essayist. She’s translated poetry from English into Polish and is the author of five published collections of poetry. Her poetry has also been published in the Poetry magazine, accessible through Poetry Foundation. The poems I read were translated into English by Karen Kovacik and I loved Dąbrowska’s use of celestial imagery in Kosmos.

You can also read a few of Dąbrowska in Solstice Literary Magazine and Versopolis.

Kosmos

Spirit of the Forest

Suji Kwock Kim (b.1969)

Kim is a Korean-American poet and the author of two poetry collections, Notes from the Divided Country (2003) and Notes from the North (2020).

I found her poetry very provocative but she focuses on the mundane aspects of life, elevating them and imbuing them with power. I liked the rhythm of her poetry too, despite the lack of set rhyme or meter, and her poetry wasn’t fragmented or disjointed. You can read a selection of her poems on Poetry Foundation and you can find some on Poets.org.

The Couple Next Door

Montage with Neon, Bok Choi, Gasoline, Lovers & Strangers

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)

Mansfield was a writer from New Zealand and is considered one of the most influential writers of the modernist movement. She’s best known for her short stories and essays but she also published a collection of poems in 1923.

‘The Opal Dream Cave’ (1911) was one of my favourite poems of the entire year because Mansfield’s use of natural imagery is stunning. Her masterful use of natural imagery made reading her poetry a joy, and I will work my way through the entire collection one day.

A few of her poems are available on Poetry Foundation but the entire collection Poems is also available on Internet Archive.

Camomile Tea

Autumn Song

The Opal Dream Cave

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

Akhmatova was a Russian poet in the 20th century who remained in the Soviet Union when her contemporaries chose to leave to escape censorship, and she is considered one of the most significant poets of her time. Her work was varied in length, from short lyric poems to intricate cycles, and her was thematically diverse but her much of her poetry shares a sense of emotional restraint which makes it unique. It’s stunning, yet understated. She was truly a master of the form.

I read D. M. Thomas’ translations of her works in the Everyman’s Pocket Poets edition* but you can find a few of her works online by other translators, particularly on Poetry Foundation and RuVerses.

Dante

Fragment

Legend of an Unfinished Portrait

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That’s it for this year’s first Women’s History Month post! I could have added another ten poets to this list but I restrained myself because it’s long enough already. Poetry isn’t everyone’s preferred literary form but these women truly made me appreciate different types of poetry and they defined 2022 as a year for me.

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This post contains affiliate links that are clearly marked with an asterisk (*). I will receive a small commission for purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you. Image credits are hidden under the cut.

Images 1. Ada Limón by Shawn Mille – Library of Congress 2. Anna Seward by Tilly Kettle (oil on canvas, 1762) – via National Portrait Gallery 3. Edna St. Vincent Millay by Carl van Vechten (1933)