Affiliation:
1. TOKAT GAZİOSMANPAŞA ÜNİVERSİTESİ, FEN-EDEBİYAT FAKÜLTESİ
Abstract
This paper examines the poems in Isabella Whitney’s two poetry collections, The Copy of a Letter (1567) and A Sweet Nosegay (1573) to trace a pro-woman argument in her works. In her poems, Whitney’s themes and subject matter point out that she is a marginal woman poet of sixteenth-century England since she assumes the role of a counsellor for the inexperienced women who might be manipulated by men. Instead of writing in a low-key manner as expected from the woman writers of the sixteenth century, she adopts an assertive and critical style in her poetry. By articulating this pro-woman argument in her poems, Whitney attacks Ovidian tradition and she re-reads and sometimes rewrites the stories of the traditionally silenced female figures in myths and male texts. Whitney seeks solutions for women who are culturally and socially trapped in the patriarchal texts.
Publisher
Selcuk Universitesi Edebiyat Fakultesi Dergisi
Reference29 articles.
1. Akkerman, Tjitske, and Siep Stuurman (2005). Introduction: Feminism in European History. In Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman (eds.), Perspectives on Feminist Political Thought in European History: From the Middle Ages to the Present (pp. 1-33). London: Routledge.
2. Balmuth, Miriam (1988). Female Education in 16th and 17th Century England. Canadian Women Studies, 9. (3-4), 17-20. Retrieve from https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/view/11719
3. Boro, Joyce (2014). Introduction. In Joyce Boro (ed.), Margaret Tyler, Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood. (pp.1-36). London: Modern Humanities Research Association.
4. Clarke, Danielle (2000). 'Formd into Words by Your Divided Lips': Women, Rhetoric and the Ovidian Tradition. In Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (eds.), ‘This Double Voice’: Gendered Writing in Early Modern England (pp. 61-87). London: Macmillan.
5. Ellinghausen, Laurie (2005). Literary Property and the Single Woman in Isabella Whitney’s A Sweet Nosgay. SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 45. (1), 1-22. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/178579