‘Sing and let the song be new’

Abstract

AbstractIn many aspects of early modern women’s lives, Christianity was a severe constraint. However, there was one area in which spiritual experience may have had an empowering effect: the writing of devotional verse. This chapter traces the development of women’s devotional lyrics, from Anne Locke and Mary Sidney to the woman known only as ‘Eliza’ and Julia Palmer. It is important to consider how further factors may have played a vital role in the female poets’ development of this genre, such as material circumstances or doctrinal allegiances. This chapter concludes by asking two questions about women writers’ relationship to devotional poetry. To what extent is it possible to discern a line of development in this genre as it emerges in women’s hands across nearly two centuries? How far do the surviving material witnesses of these texts give us an idea of why and for whom the poems were written?