Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship

An original investigation of courtship in Elizabethan love poetry by male and female writers, first published in 1999.

Ilona Bell (Author)

9780521158725, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 December 2010

280 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

"I applaud Bell's attempt to hear women's voices amid the conversation of men." Modern Philology

This 1999 book offers an original study of lyric form and social custom in the Elizabethan age. Ilona Bell explores the tendency of Elizabethan love poems not only to represent an amorous thought, but to conduct the courtship itself. Where studies have focused on courtiership, patronage and preferment at court, her focus is on love poetry, amorous courtship, and relations between Elizabethan men and women. The book examines the ways in which the tropes and rhetoric of love poetry were used to court Elizabethan women (not only at court and in the great houses, but in society at large) and how the women responded to being wooed, in prose, poetry and speech. Bringing together canonical male poets and women writers, Ilona Bell investigates a range of texts addressed to, written by, read, heard or transformed by Elizabethan women, and charts the beginnings of a female lyric tradition.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. An introduction to Elizabethan courtship
2. An Elizabethan poetics of courtship
3. The practice of Elizabethan courtship
4. The lyric dialogue of Elizabethan courtship
5. Anne Vavasour and Henry Lee
6. A female lyric tradition
7. Daniel's lyric dialogue of courtship
8. Spenser's Amoretti
9. Epilogue
Notes
Works cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]