Amy
D. Stackhouse
Book
Review
Margaret J. M. Ezell, ed., “My Rare Wit Killing Sin”: Poems of a Restoration Courtier, by Anne
Killigrew. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 27, ITER (Toronto,
2013), 184 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7727-2152-5
Orinda, (Albion’s and her Sex’s Grace)
Ow’d not her Glory to a Beauteous Face,
It was her Radiant Soul that shone
Within,
Which struck a Luster through her
Outward Skin;
That did her Lips and Cheeks with Roses
dye,
Advanc’t her Height,
and Sparkled in her Eye.
Nor did her Sex at all obstruct her
Fame,
But higher ‘mong the Stars it fixt her
Name;
What she did write, not only all allow’d,
But ev’ry Laurel, to her Laurel, bow’d!
—Anne
Killigrew,
Upon the saying
that my Verses were made by another
1> The widely-read and beloved
Katherine Philips -- the "Matchless Orinda" Anne Killigrew describes
above -- in her own poems praises Platonic friendship and adopts the language
of the Petrarchan poet to admire the mistress's spiritual value through a
blazon of her physical characteristics. Notable among Philips's Society of
Friendship was the eccentric writer Margaret Cavendish, whom Philips praises
for her virtue and beauty, while remaining oddly quiet about her writing.
2>
Philips was not the first seventeenth-century woman to use the language of male
poets to praise the virtue of women. In 1611, Aemilia Lanyer dedicated Salve Deus Rex
Judaeorum
to women courtiers, the princess, and the queen, as she sought patronage
through Petrarchan address. Unlike Philips who showed little interest in the Querelles
de femmes, Lanyer's circle of friendship was exclusively female and Lanyer
argued both in her dedications and in her poems themselves for what we would
now call a proto-feminist agenda. However, like Philips, Lanyer did not seem
particularly interested in these women as writers; their virtues were more
abstract, as Lanyer portrays them as the victims of a misogynistic culture.
3>
At first blush, Anne
Killigrew seems to join Lanyer and Philips in traditional, masculine praise of
women. However, her emphasis in her description of Philips is not on Orinda's
beauty -- although she does include a conventional blazon even as she denies it
is the cause of Orinda's glory -- but on Orinda's writing. Orinda's sex does
not prevent her from writing -- any more than Killigrew's does -- but it raises
her name higher in glory and fame. Since the subject of Killigrew's poem is a
defense of her own writing, which she feels has been brought into question
because it is understood among her male contemporaries that women are not good
poets, Killigrew attempts to show that Philips is not famous simply for being a
female poet; she is famous for her poetry itself, poetry so accomplished that
all other laurels bow to Philips's. Despite the hyperbole, by implicitly
comparing herself to Philips, Killigrew
hopes that not only can she shake the whispers that someone else must have
written her poetry, but that she can rise above her male contemporaries.
4> Killigrew
had quite a bit to work against, given the Restoration court's attitudes
towards women. As Margaret J. M. Ezell describes in her scholarly and
thoroughly readable introduction to this beautifully edited volume of
Killigrew's poetry, Anne was a unique voice among the poets of the “hedonistic,
libertine life-style followed by many of both the male courtiers and the women
associated with them” in the courts of King Charles II and James, Duke of York
(1). Dr. Ezell gives the reader a taste of those hedonists in Appendix D where
she includes typical poetry of these male courtiers, including the Earl of
Rochester.
5>
After tracing Anne Killigrew's family connections to the court in
the Introduction, Dr. Ezell next dives into Restoration history, politics, and
religion, followed by Restoration court culture (art and literature) and the
courtiers, and then Anne Killigrew's life, writings, and paintings. Dr. Ezell
concludes with Killigrew's literary afterlife. Dr. Ezell's Introduction is
informative and useful for the undergraduate reader, as well as for the
graduate student who is beginning her studies of Restoration literature. The
appendices which conclude the volume -- poems about Anne Killigrew, poems
appended to her volume that were not written by her, poems written about the
death of Killigrew's Aunt, and poems by Killigrew's male contemporaries --
provide a clear literary context for Killigrew's work, and gently nudge
burgeoning scholars into the types of questions they might be asking as they
begin their own research.
6> These appendices also give the
reader clear insight into what Anne Killigrew was working with and against. The
title of Ezell's volume, My Rare Wit Killing Sin, is Edmund Wodehouse's
"Anagram on Mistress Anne Killigrew," and the appendices along with
the Introduction frame Anne Killigrew in this light. The volume is one in the
series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, and
Ezell shows how Killigrew is an Other voice: she was in Restoration court
culture, but not of Restoration court culture.
7> While John Milton notoriously
complained about the quality of his portrait in the 1645 volume of his Poems,
mocking the engraver by having him engrave in Greek an insult about his
engraving, Killigrew is allowed control of her own image in this volume, as
much as can be expected for a poet dead for 330 years. The cover art of the
volume is Isaac Beckett's engraving of Anne Killigrew's self-portrait. Before
the reader even gets to Dr. Ezell's Introduction, the reader is greeted by the
color plate of Killigrew's Venus Attired by Graces. In other words,
before any other voice can co-opt her, Killigrew is allowed to present herself
to the reader, who has no choice but to accept the talent of this Restoration
courtier. The placement of Killigrew's art is a brilliant statement on the part
of the editor.
8> The only criticism I had of the
volume was the glosses on the poems themselves. While the Introduction and the
supporting materials seem appropriate for an advanced undergraduate or a
graduate student, the audience for the glosses was less clear. For example, on
page 46, Dr. Ezell helpfully annotates the queen referred to in the title of
Killigrew's "To the Queen" as Catherine of Braganza, but right before
that she glosses the word "strook" as "struck." Granted,
"strook" is an archaism, but the context clues and the closeness of
the word in sound and spelling to the modern "struck" shouldn't be
too difficult for an advanced undergraduate or a graduate student to understand
without the gloss. Again, on page 53, in "The Third Epigram On an
Atheist," Dr. Ezell glosses the word "boot" in the lines
"His Impious Courage had no other Root, / But that the Villain, Atheist
was to boot." Dr. Ezell points out the phrase means "in addition
to." Certainly, that is what it means, but I'm not sure who would be
reading the volume without being able to figure that out on their own if they
weren't already familiar with the term in the modern day: it is still used in
some parts of the United States.
9> Despite the occasional unevenness
of the glosses, the brilliance of the title and choices of art, the clear and
useful Introduction, the helpful Appendices all make the volume well worth a
place on the bookshelf of any reader of Restoration verse.
_____
Dr. Amy D.
Stackhouse
is the Associate Dean of Arts and Science at Iona College in New Rochelle, New
York, as well as the editor of The
Shakespeare Newsletter. Dr. Stackhouse’s research focus is on John Milton
and seventeenth-century British literature. She also writes fiction and has
recently completed a Young Adult novel.
_____
APPOSITIONS:
Studies in Renaissance / Early Modern Literature and
Culture,
http://appositions.blogspot.com/, ISSN: 1946-1992,
Volume Eight (2015): Dialogues
& Exchanges
_____
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