Sondergard, Sidney L. Sharpening Her Pen" Strategies of Rhetorical Violence by Early Modern English Women Writers. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna UP, 2002. Print.

87“asaptation of dialectic structures” (Sondergard 87)employs “an impressive array of argumentative stategies specifically designed to serve the female writer” (Sondergard 87)

Barbara Lewalski — Lanyer’s poem could be read “as a thin veneer for a subversive feminist statement” (Lewalski, “Jacobean 219).

Lynette McGrath- Lanyer’s book engages “an acceptably conventional topic or genre to conceal a level of subversive discourse” (McGrath 341). McGrath—Lanyer “pursues the revolutionary possibility of self-defintion” (McGrath 341)

Astrologist Simon Forman’s private diary contains intimate details on Lanyer’s.personal life. [Q-reliability of Forman as a narrator???]

Sondergard formulates a view of Lanyer’s character from the rhetorical/lyrical techniques she employs in her poetry and the few references to her in surviving 17th century documents. She suggests Lanyer’s poetry acts as “self-defintion”- the use of self-defining metaphors (Sondergard 87).

“Lanyer codes her poem’s polemic on female authority with the accepted signifiers of Christian spirituality, remaining autious about linkint them with unambiguous self-reference”extrapolate

88Barbara Bowen —Lanyer “to reconceptualize the mater narratives of her culture” “ (Bowen—“forced to negotiate culturally gendered boundaries even as she works to transgress or to dissolve them” (Bowen 277-278).

Sondergard-The rhetorical strategy Lanyer uses in visualizing a 17th century society of women “weakens the thrall of the existing male social hierarch through a dual strategy” (Sondergard 88_

FN 10 Sondergard- Lanyer “promotes a bynocentric sstructure that exists apart from male influence”Naomi J. Miller—Religious devoutness is a commonality of the women, creating an intangible barrier that separates the genders and strengthens “female social bonds”. (Miller 149).

“in relation to female homosocial bonds” (Miller 149).“exhibits the potential not only to liberate them ffrom the sexualized forclosrue of female subjectivity implicit in earthly heterosexual relations, but alos to connect them with one another in spiritual homosocial bonding>” (Miller 149).“”group identity of female worshippers” (Sdergard, FN 10

Lanyer “introduces the unlikelihood that any ancestral lineage can be considered beyond reproach or doubt when considered in the full context of history (Sondergard 880.)

“to complement thie leveling technique, she recodes the royal court, the center of English culture” (Sondergard 88).

‘social superiority” (Sondergard 88)

the possibility of redefining gendered power relations is clear in Lanyers use of//lines (Sondergard 88).

Simultaneously empowers women while 88

89of “ Analyzes 7-10 for “To the Queen’s”— “the existing hierarchy can be manipulated, as Lanyer demonstrates, to give power to women like Queen Anne, but the structure as concept remains problematic because such power comes potentially at the expense of other women, like Lanyer herself” 89

Second Strategy that challenges “the male social hierarchy is to redefine power through the example of Christ’s sacrifice” (SondergardSEE Lines 45-46 In “Queenes” poem. FN11As the daughter of musician and mistree to ----, the cousin of Queen Elizabeth I, Lanyer was familiar with court life—“its pettiness and its attraction, its risks and its rewards” (Sondergard 157).

FN13 (Sondergard 157)Leeds Barroll—Lanyer IS “’COMPETING IN A VERY TOUGH ARENA, AGAINST ACCOMPLISHED MALE POETS (ALREADY PRIVILEGED BECAUSE OF THEIR GENDER” (BARROLL“problemaized the examination of gender issues without concomitant analysis of class conflicts” (fn 13 Sondergard 137).Lisa Schnell—(qtd in Sondergard 158) Schnell suggests Lanyer “is marginalized —self-consciously, it seems—both as a woman and as a member of a socially inferior group” through her poetic dedications (Scnell 26).qt in FN AND Ng 4340.Su Fan Ng notes the “class tensions” in Lanyers negotiation for patronage (NG 434).Shannon Miller —suggests “Lanyer directs her text’s dedication to ‘a multiplicity of patrons’ because she ‘divides the form of influence each woman has on the text,’

manipulating the superior class status of the dedicatees to her advantage, wit the effect that different women, though most particularly Queen Anne and Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, appear at moments to be the ‘primary patron’ (Miller 137-8)” (Sondergard 157).

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