Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum by Aemelia Lanyer

PRIMARY SOURCE: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611)
Context

• Publication: SDRJ was the first overt bid for patronage from an Englishwoman. After the death of Alfonso Lanyer (1613), Aemelia seems to have spent some time in the house of Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland. "The Description of Cookham" predates "To Penshurst" in publication (Greenblatt and Abrams 1314). EEBO link.
• Scholarship: Scholars read Lanyer's poetry both for the origins of country house poetry and for a women's history of literature. Lanyer participates in the so-called querelle des femmes, especially on the matter of Eve's sin and the virtue of women (Greenblatt and Abrams 1314).
• Why I'm reading it: The counter-canon, women's writing, rhetorical figures, country house poem, the court.

Content

1.[Prefatory poems]

1. "To the Queenes Most Excellent Majestie"
2. "To the Lady Elizabeths Grace"
3. "To All Vertuous Ladies in Generall"
4. "To the Ladie Arabella"
5. "To the Ladie Susan"
6. "The Authors Dreame to the Ladie Marie"
7. "To the Ladie Lucie"
8. "To the Ladie Margaret"
9. "To the Ladie Katherine"
10. "To the Ladie Anne"
11. "To the Vertuous Reader"

• Form: Varied. Mostly iambic pentameter verse with alternating rhyme. "To Queenes" alternates single lines with five-line stanzas. Stanzas often have a rhymed volta.
• Genre: Dedication.
• Conceit: An appeal to a different interpretive audience with each dedication.
• Lanyer invites Anne to read Eve's apology.
• Lanyer compares the "first fruits" of her writing to Elizabeth's youth and potential.
• Lanyer alludes to her own scandald with Hundson while commending the courtiers to live purely.
• Lanyer praises Arabella for her powers of re-birth: Arabella is an enfant terrible for the Stuarts.
• Lanyer claims her poetry is a reflection of Susan's virtue.
• Lanyer addresses Marie in an ellaborate dream vision, without interpretation, as recognition for Mary Sidney's poetic powers.
• Lanyer implies that Lucie can accept these poems as she accepts Christ.
• Lanyer juxtaposes Margaret's inheritance with her own status as an aspiring poetess.
• Lanyer seems to have mercenary motives towards Katherine, but also pursues Katherine's daughters as an audience.
• Lanyer claims the book is a mirror to Anne's virtue, as with Susan.
• Lanyer addresses to virtuous women some remarks on women's virtue, both in these poems and in Biblical history.

2. Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

• Form: Iambic pentameter. ABABABCC.
• Genre:  Religious argument, political essay, polemic.
• Conceit: A woman's history of the passion
• invocation of Margaret ("from the Court to the Countre . . . retir’d")
• defense of Women ("faire Virtues" over Helen's beauty)
• the Passion (betrayal by an inner circle)
• tears of daughters of Jerusalem ("Poore women seeing how much they did transgresse, ... labour still these tyrants hearts to move")
• sorrow of the Virgin
• Pontius Pilate (Pilate's wife defends Christ)

3. "The Description of Cooke-ham"

• Form: Iambic pentameter, couplets.
• Genre: Country-house poem
• Conceit: Frequent references to proto-feminist themes: Philomela, equality in grace, the dowry. The poem is about the estate where Lady Anne of Pembroke stayed while fighting for her daughter's inheritance.
• Other notes: Extensive use of the pathetic fallacy.

4. "To the Doubtfull Reader"

• Form: Brief essay.
• Genre: Address to the reader.
• Conceit: Dream-vision (origin of title)

(NB: written with anthology notes.)
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2012. Print.