I'll just add to what Mary Ellen says that Betty Travitsky's and my
anthology *Female and Male Voices* has a nice poem of hers on not trusting
men. Always useful to know, I guess. Again my thanks to the list. I now
have a little disk of suggestions and when I've done some sorting I can
tell the admirable Don Lepen at Broadview that my suggestions represent a
segment of the Renaissance community. Broadview did some market research
on who teaches what Shakespeare play, and ditto for major authors (Spenser
and Sidney are safe!), but not for lyrics. Finally, in this Sunday's
NYTimes magazine section note that the dean (I think it's the dean) at
Penn says that unions wouldn't really work for grad students because
somebody studying Spenser has nothing in common with a guy on the
maintenance crew (my copy is downstairs, but I think that's the example of
workingclass stiff he used). I'm not sure how I feel about this. Spenser
is classy, in this man's view. Also a tad effete? Disconnected, like an
escaped helium balloon, from the real world? I was glad to see Spenser
spelled right, though, even if he is the very symbol of everything the
lower orders are not. Artegall might be pleased; not so the Giant with the
Scales. Thanks again to everybody who sent in suggestions. Anne.
> Hi Germaine,
> In answer to your question about where to find Isabella Whitney's
> "Wyll":
> Betty Travitsky published an excellent edition of Isabella Whitney's poem
> as
> "Wyll and Testament" in ELR 10 (1980), 76-94. It has been anthologized in
> Randall Martin, ed. Women Writers in Renaissance England (London 1997) and
> in
> Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney and Aemelia Lanyer: Renaissance Women Poets,
> ed. Danielle Clarke, Penguin Books, 2000. There is a more complete copy of
> her poetry in a work with the long title of <The Floures of Philosophie
> (1572) by Hugh Plat and a Sweet Nosgay (1573) and The Copy of a Letter
> (1567) by Isabella Whitney>, intro. Richard J. Panofsky (Delmar, N.Y.
> 1982).
> The "Wyll" appears at the end of Sweet Nosegay (or Sweet Nosgay), also
> available on microfilms of the STC before 1640.
> There has been excellent recent work on this poem by Ann Rosalind
> Jones
> (several essays), Lorna Hutson, Wendy Wall, Patricia Phillippy, Rhonda
> Sanford (Maps and Memory), Kim Walker, Louise Scheiner, and others. I
> guess
> it's clear from this list that I am working on Whitney's verse myself.
> It's
> one of those poems that gets deeper and better each time you read it.
> Thanks for asking about Whitney!
> Mary Ellen
>
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