Aemilia Lanyer

Una McIlvenna*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

This chapter argues that links with visual art can help us see the craft, unity, and virtuosity of Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) and illumine her formal and aesthetic decisions. Aligning Lanyer’s passion poem with Caravaggio’s Deposition (1600–1604) and The Taking of Christ (1602), we see how Lanyer uses visual language and forceful pointing (positional, temporal, and spatial deictics) to bring her readers into an imagined scene or composition as if it were taking place right in front of them. Her seemingly anomalous three-part form (dedications, passion poem, country-house poem) draws on the Renaissance altarpiece triptych to foreground patrons, frame a central sacred scene, and associate events and people widely separated in space and time. But Lanyer also genders her poetic space, and her rapidly shifting and at times ambiguous deictic markers unsettle the aesthetic, as well as the social-cultural environment in which she is grounded.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Oxford History of Poetry in English
Subtitle of host publicationSeventeenth-Century British Poetry
EditorsLaura L. Knoppers
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherOxford University Press
Chapter20
Pages262-272
Number of pages11
Volume5
ISBN (Electronic)9780198930259
ISBN (Print)9780198852803
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

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