Reformation, Reformation propaganda, metonyms, marriage, single life, courtly decorum, amorous discourse, social groups, choreographed
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context as Reformation propaganda. To simplify, in these exchanges the answering poems, whether advocating marriage or emphasising the paternal duties of husbands, serve as metonyms for the values of the Reformation, while the poems answered serve as metonyms for Catholicism. As pairs they exploit the social dialogism of the answer-poem in order to confirm normative reforming values in favour of marriage over the single life.
In Chapter Four familiar, amicable verse conversations between friends are considered; specifically ones centred around Barnabe Googe, Isabella Whitney and John Donne. The participants in these exchanges trade in mutual assumptions that confirm and support the cohesion and coalescence of their social groups. Such mutual assumptions might be mundane clichés that provide a straightforward means of establishing common ground, but they might also be developed more subtly through the course of an exchange. What is remarkable about these verse conversations is the extent to which they might be choreographed by one central member who imposes an agenda upon the group.
Chapter Five explores the extent to which conventions of courtly and/or amorous discourse in verse simultaneously enabled and inhibited women’s literary creativity. In the first section a selection of female-voiced answers from manuscripts and printed miscellanies associated with court poets of the 1530s are examined with particular attention to the ways in which such answers serve as thermometers of the adherence of the poem answered to codes of courtly decorum. In the second section the verse responses of three Elizabethan women poets (Elizabeth I, Frances Prannell Seymour, Countess of Hertford and Lady Mary Cheke) and one Jacobean (Lady Mary Wroth) are examined for their capacity to undermine, manipulate or resist conventions of courtly or amorous discourse in order to cultivate personal voices. The constraints under which they work are considerable even when these conventions are challenged. Thus, while the answer-poem might provide women with a legitimate literary role, it is simultaneously a cultural symptom of the
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