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"Did Women Have a Renaissance?" A Medievalist Reads Joan Kelly and Aemilia Lanyer
Author(s): Theresa Coletti
Source: Early Modern Women, Vol. 8 (Fall 2013), pp. 249-259
Published by: Arizona State University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23617853
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Early Modern Women:
An Interdisciplinary Journal
2013, vol. 8

"Did Women Have a Renaissance?"

A Medievalist Reads Joan Kelly and Aemilia Lanyer

Theresa Coletti

The past four commitments

intellectual decades of humanities scholarship
that Joan Kelly's attestboth
famous question to the vital
anticipated and mobilized. When Kelly identified four criteria — attitudes
toward female sexuality, women's economic and political roles, women's
cultural roles, and ideologies about women — for gauging the social power
and historical experience of Renaissance women, she furnished a blueprint
for that scholarly response.1 With impressive economy, her essay provided
paradigm-shifting analyses of intersections of gender and social class and
laid the groundwork for the interdisciplinary scholarship that continues to
advance her field of inquiry. The very existence of the journal Early Modern
Women fulfills the promise of Kelly's foundational research.
Decades of scholarship on early modern women have also exposed
the complexities of Kelly's question. Whereas Kelly responded to her own
query with an unvarnished "no," research inspired by her rhetorical chal
lenge has offered more nuanced assessments. The extraordinary range and
variety of early modern women's cultural agency and creativity have come
into focus in ways that Kelly could hardly have imagined. Theoretical and
methodological developments in the humanities have also underscored the
need to revisit the analytic categories informing Kelly's investigation. Chief
among these are ideas of the Renaissance and Middle Ages that structure

1 Joan Kelly, "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" in Women, History, and Theory:
The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 20. Subsequent
quotations from this essay are cited in the text.

249

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250 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Theresa Coletti

her argument. My contribution to this forum examines K

tion of these categories in order to consider how conceptions
periods have framed the study of early modern women in the
Kelly first posed her question about women's putative Renais
understandings of medieval and early modern periodizati
can animate contemporary approaches to early modern wome
Kelly's scholarly legacy by revising the central terms of her a
Kelly challenged historians of women to interrogate
schemes of periodization" (19). Her provocative question—
have a Renaissance?"— assumed the fundamentally Burckhard
lation that, ca. 1350-1530, social, economic, and political d
in Europe, and Italy in particular, brought about a decisiv
the medieval past and ushered in the modern world. Her
in this narrative lay not in the terms of her question but ra
response. Resisting Burckhardt's "notion of the equality o
women with men" (20), Kelly's critique drew a sharp dividing
a medieval era that encouraged women's "sexual and affective
and a Renaissance in which women "experienced a contrac
and personal options" (20). Kelly's comparative argument
re-signified traditional associations of both historical periods
sis, the customarily unenlightened Middle Ages produced
progressive possibility for women that eventually would be n
domestic and cultural politics of the Renaissance. Juxtaposing
autonomy of eleventh- and twelfth-century French aristocra
especially as represented in medieval courtly ideology, w
deemed the more circumscribed experience of women under
of Renaissance humanism, Kelly charted — in gendered terms
transition from medieval feudal society to the early modern
Four decades of scholarship in the humanities provide a n
purchase on Kelly's question and the temporal divide that
Theoretical attention to philosophies of history and modernity
increasing scrutiny of periodization itself, especially of the M
and Renaissance as historical and conceptual categories whose
to each other formed the basis for one of Western culture's d
nizing narratives. As every medievalist and early modernist kn

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Did Women Have a Renaissance? 251

terms that we employ to designate these

of pre-Enlightenment historiography (and
are intensely fraught.2 If Kelly were posin
phrase it differently, aware of all the cult
the word "Renaissance" carries. Beyond this
interrogations of the familiar historical div
historiography of medieval and early moder
of difference and dependence, rupture and
diachronic — and dialogic — notions of rep
tion, renewal, revival, and reciprocity.3
How can these new perspectives on his
fresh analytic paradigms ushered in by the
eval and early modern women that inspir
this question from the field of English lite
I have taught and written about medieval w
more broadly construed medieval, feminine
tation and social practice. From the perspec
have more often found the Middle Ages abs
on early modern women compared to Kelly
side of the sharp period divide. One need
reasons for this situation. First, there is the
ting that inevitably attends our scholarship
privilege the difference of our intellectual
new rather than elaborate prior traditions.
moreover, important attributes of early m
culture genuinely distinguish it from its m

2 For an overview that engages essential theor

Margreta de Grazia, "The Modern Divide: From E
Early Modern Studies 37 (2007): 453-67; for an analy
literary studies, see David Matthews,"The Medieval
New Medieval Literatures 10 (2008): 223-44. Julia
debates about the valences of "Renaissance" and "earl
Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature
Press, 1996), 4-6.
3 See the extensive bibliography in Matthews, "

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252 EMWJ 2013, vol 8 Theresa Coletti

the impact of print and of the Protestant reformation, t

ume of women's writing in the early modern period, and
of known, named women authors.4
A more deliberate look at women's literary culture in
early modern England, however, can identify reasons to e
bering rather than forgetting. Despite the differences that
one can easily point to fundamental similarities. Scholars
early modern women, for example, collectively recognize
period divide, women's participation in literate culture invo
of literacy more capacious than an individual's ability t
Communal and mediated forms of reading and writing
literate practices of both medieval and early modern wom
distributed conception of literary activities, especially thos
al production, also informs medieval and early modern ide
Margaret Ezell's observation that we see "a much livelier l
for early modern women""[o]nce we leave behind the noti
as an act defined by solitary alienation and the text as an
landmark" just as readily applies to the scene of medieval
activities.5 Across the period divide, the material conditio
reading and writing, especially the persistence of manuscr
after the advent of print, provided opportunities for colla
and reception of texts.6

4 For a more theoretical approach to the woman writer across

early modern divide, see Jennifer Summit, Lost Property: The Woman
Literary History, 1380-1589 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press
5 Margaret J. M. Ezell, "Women and Writing," in A Companion
Women's Writing, ed. Anita Pacheco (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2008
p. 92. See also Margaret W. Ferguson, "Renaissance Concepts of the
Women and Literature in Britain, 1500-1700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cam
University Press, 1996), 143-68; Julia Boffey,"Women Authors and W
Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century England," in Women and Literat
1500, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
6 For example, see Melinda Alliker Rabb, "The Work of Wom
of Electronic Reproduction: The Canon, Early Modern Women W
Postmodern Reader," in A Companion to Early Modern Women's Wri

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Did Women Have a Renaissance? 253

Joan Kelly focused her analysis on secu

texts, but much of the scholarship followin
that attending to medieval and early mod
and experience can produce différent ans
studies over the past few decades has rec
a major resource for medieval and early mo
spiritual subjectivities as well as texts.8 C
in that sphere, I contend, contribute comp
tion, appropriation, endurance, and reviv
early modern that marks the new thinking
literary history. Recent studies by medieva
Bradley Warren illustrate the promise o
Whereas Wallace tracks correspondences
projects of heroic, historical religious wome
modern divide, Warren argues that the in
gies, textualities, and politics of medieval E
an important continuity with early modern
some implications of Warren's groundbreak
piece of her inter-period tapestry of early
textual cultures, Aemelia Lanyer's Salve Deu
The religion represented in Salve Deus
resembles other features of a work that
meditation with dream vision and panegyric
comparable verve, images of Cleopatra an

7 So Kelly acknowledges in "Early Feminist Theo

in Women, History, and Theory, 68-69.
8 For an excellent overview of recent medieva
Nuns Read: The State of the Question," in The Cultu
G. Clark (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 20
of what religion means for the study of early mode
Willen, "Religion and the Construction of the Fe
Modern Women's Writing, 22-39.
9 David Wallace, Strong Women: Life, Text, an
Oxford University Press, 2011); Nancy Bradley W
Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)

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254 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Theresa Coletti

scholars often observe, hybridity also characterizes it

sional allegiances. The daughter of an English mother
father, possibly of Jewish heritage, and the acquaintance
tioner of Protestant aristocrats as well as those with Cath
Lanyer had ample opportunity to cultivate the complex u
religious language and belief that she articulates in Salv
exploits the ideas and idioms of the capacious religious
to her, Lanyer moves imaginatively beyond confessionalis
biblical precedent to make a case for women's agentia
connections to the crucified Christ, Lanyer's primary arg
Deus Rex Judaeorum suggests the limits of confessional c
gendered projects such as hers. In so doing, Lanyer offers
way of thinking about gender and historical change in
early modern periods. Warren's attention to Lanyer's evoc
religion" in Salve Deus and this work's affinities with locut
women's monastic devotion help us to think about wha
relationships might mean.11 Her analysis of Lanyer's inca
and textualities sheds important light on confessional comp
crucial index to women's literary and cultural relations ac
and early modern divide.
Locating Lanyer's work within the frame of refer
by recent revisions of medieval and early modern per
ingly invites broader considerations. Lanyer's imaginat
scriptural narrative — in one critic's account, her "radical
Passion" — is rhetorically and exegetically reminiscent of

10 On Lanyer's complex confessionalism, see Warren, Embod

Catherine Keohane, '"That blindest weakenesse be not over-bold
Radical Unfolding of the Passion," ELH 64 (1997): 359-90; Susanne
Renaissance Woman Poet (New York: Oxford University Press, 19
and Achsah Guibbory, "The Gospel According to Aemilia: Women
Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon, ed. Marshall Grossm
University of Kentucky Press, 1998), 191-211.
11 Warren, Embodied Word, 52. For the complete discussion, s

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Did Women Have a RenaissanceP 255

to tell and retell that story.12 Her expansion of

Pilate's wife, and her sympathy with other subj
the Virgin Mary, repurpose rhetorical strategies
texts in various genres. Lanyer's commentary o
ment by his judges and persecutors echoes the
figures in medieval English dramatic staging
cal plays of York that come to mind in this con
include an attempt by Pilate's wife to stop the C
scripture along gendered lines and fashioning n
efit of women and humanity, Lanyer tacitly sta
tradition of medieval women, English and co
occupied sites of religious experience, speech,
their claim on cultural and spiritual authority.1
had explicit knowledge of this tradition, her
renews — a past that likewise recognized the cr
of women's speech and writing from a religiou
My inclusion of Lanyer in this tradition g
features that link Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum to
idiom of medieval women's literate cultures. Th
est throughout the work in female communitie
to overestimate the importance that Lanyer
women. The verses to friends, patrons, and "all
(12-16) that lead up to Lanyer's poetic accou
her desire for an actual society of like-minded

12 Excellent analyses of what Lanyer does with b

in Keohane, "Aemilia Lanyer's Radical Unfolding"; G
Aemilia"; and Janel Mueller, "The Feminist Poetics of
Grossman, Aemilia Lanyer, 99-127.
13 Guibbory's notice of Caroline Walker Bynum's wo
makes this connection briefly; "Gospel According to A
that tradition, see Alastair Minnis and Rosalynn Voad
in the Christian Tradition, c. 1100-1500 (Turnhout: Br
hardly qualifies as a "holy woman," and her distinctly lit
from religious women speaking and writing well before her
affords to women's expression that interests me here.
14 Warren, Embodied Word, 50.

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 256 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Theresa Coletti

draws spiritual sanction from the community of bibli

remained loyal to Christ. In its social composition, the
community of historical acquaintances that Lanyer envisio
eval aristocratic women's networks of literary patronag
often the case for those networks, communicating religio
ter — the life of Christ — also inspires the formation of
community. The poet unites friends and patrons through
for the Bridegroom (Isa. 62:5, Matt. 25:1-13) that her w
ebrates but in effect incarnates for them in the form of h
Riddy borrows a phrase from Bunyan to characterize thos
works; they involve "women talking about the things of G
England, elite convents like the Augustinian foundation a
Suffolk, provided both opportunities for such convers
aristocratic women who primarily populated it and served
literary production.18 Lanyer gestures toward a virtual fe
united along similar lines.

15 Karen K.Jambeck/'Patterns of Women's Literary Patronage: E

1475," in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June H
GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 228-65; Carol M. Meale,
that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch': Lay Women and their Bo
England," in Meale, Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500,
relation to her imagined community, see Kimberly Coles, "Aemilia La
Professional Poetic Vocation," in Religion, Reform, and Women's Writ
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 152.
16 See Warren, Embodied Word, 47-50. Lanyer's metaphors tex
body become figures of her own text. For example, see Salve Deus Re
85; 17, lines 8-12; 31, lines 217-22; 35, lines 27-31, etc. Here I ci
Salve Deus Rex fudaeorum, ed. Susanne Woods (New York: Oxford
1993).
17 Felicity Riddy, '"Women talking about the things of God': A Late Medieval Sub
culture," in Meale, Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500, 104-27.
18 On the elite population and literary culture of Campsey Ash, see Jocelyn
Wogan-Browne, Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture c. 1150-1300: Virginity
and Its Authorizations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), especially chap. 1; and
Virginia Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of TEthelthryth in Medieval England, 695
1615 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), chap. 4. Both

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Did Women Have a Renaissance? 257

The community of biblical women wh

Christ underwrite Lanyer's gendered criti
looks back to medieval interpretations o
ences, even as it presciently glances forw
biblical scholarship. Carla Ricci's study of
capitalizes on Lanyer's intimations by argu
community that gathered around Jesus.19
argument, not surprisingly, we find Christ
view by two hundred years. I am not the
relationship to the person often identified
fessional woman writer. Janel Mueller mak
comparatively about the respective project
Christine.20 Appropriately figuring in Mu
Livre de la cité des dames. This work not on
authorial identity and defense of women t
in its third book focusing on women saint
gestures toward the embodied female, spiri
draws its power from holy women's closen
that motivates Lanyer. The relationship
women writers merits further investigatio
that Lanyer's bold assertions in "To the
ing Christ's personal, social, and spiritual
women echo an important moment in C
Dieu d'Amours. Christine's God of Love ob

Sweet Jesus ... was abandoned by all exc

ty of the faith remained in a single wo
who defames women is extremely foolish
reverence required by the Queen of Hea
goodness, which was so noble and worth

Keohane ("Aemilia Lanyer's Radical Unfolding," 3

link Lanyer's vision of female community with that
19 Caria Ricci, Mary Magdalene and Many Oth
trans. Paul Burns (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Pr
20 Mueller, "Feminist Poetics," 102-4.

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 258 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Theresa Coletti

to carry the son of God. God the Father conferred great

on women by choosing a woman to be his wife and mo
[And] he who mocks women . . . can find no instance
the good Jesus reproached women; rather he loved and
them.21

My argument regarding what the recently canonical, thoroughly early

modern Aemilia Lanyer might contribute to revised understandings of
periodization in early English literature reverberates in additional direc
tions to which I can only gesture. Chief among these is Lanyer's brave
and fascinating invocation of the Virgin Mary. Her approach, as Susanne
Woods and others have noted, is cautious: Lanyer's Mary never emerges
as intercessor or as subject of devotion. At the same time, Lanyer ventrilo
quizes her praise of the Virgin through the scripturally sanctioned Gabriel
and prominently figures Mary in terms of tropes of enclosure, enflesh
ing, and clothing of the deity that were central to late medieval traditions
representing the incarnational relationship of Christ and his mother.22
Lanyer's imaginative occupation of Mary's response to Gabriel's visitation
calls to mind late medieval attempts to represent and even participate
in the Annunciation.23 Lanyer's provocative, gendered interpretation of
Christ's Passion, her venture into the realm of what can only be called
theology, reverberates with Julian of Norwich's very different though com
parably unique endeavor. Their respective engagements with rereading and
rethinking scripture merit comparative attention from the perspective of
English literary history.
I have attempted to situate Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus RexJudaeorum
in the crucial revision of medieval and early modern periodization that
has emerged since Joan Kelly articulated her game-changing insights.

21 Christine de Pizan, The God of Love's Letter, in The Selected Writings of Christine
de Pizan, trans. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Kevin Brownlee and ed. Blumenfeld
Kosinski (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 25.
22 See Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and
Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 155-66.
23 See The Revelations of Saint Elizabeth in Women's Writing in Middle English, ed.
Alexandra Barrett (London: Longman, 1992), 76-83.

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Did Women Have a Renaissance? 259

Remembering the medieval by gesturing i

of English women's literate activities and
eval women's impressive interventions in t
reading of Aemilia Lanyer and to her pos
Whether or not she knew it, Lanyer, in a
recuperated and revitalized medieval trad
sentation. That this effort also accompan
to her contemporary, masculine literary
as a woman writer more intriguing. In lig
early modern borders that she identifies
observes that the "revisionary power" of
alization in medieval and early modern wo
rethink analytic categories and scholarly
scripts for our own critical and profession
observation and with a very respectful no
that much of what makes Aemilia Lanyer
echo Susanne Woods' titular phrase, migh

Warren, Embodied Word, 12.

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