Introduction

The antisocially dialogic verses examined in Part One only tell half of the story of answer-poetry’s literary presence during the Tudor and early-Stuart periods. Answer-poetry also played a significant role in consolidating the bonds between members of a diverse range of literary and social communities and provided a means of exploring and representing relationships between the sexes and between groups of friends. In this section I will examine some of the means by which social identities, relationships and cultural practices are constructed, affirmed and/or contested in answer-poems and the poems they answer covering the broad themes of courtship/ courtiership, marriage and friendship.

Following Marotti’s epithet I have grouped these poems roughly under the heading of “socially dialogic” verses. What sets them apart most noticeably from the antisocial answers of Part One (the clandestine anonymity of libel, the brazenfaced animosity of flyting and the antisocial, self-sufficient cynicism of formal verse satire) is their treatment of intimate social relationships. The distinction is not perfect. Most noticeably, the last pair of poems I examine in Chapter Five (although they draw together the themes of courtship, Petrarchanism and gender relationships with which this section is concerned) are libels. They are of relevance for what they show about male-female literary relationships and the extent of women’s freedom to participate in exchanges of verse, and also draw together neatly some of the main themes of the two parts of this thesis.

It is often a nexus between or meeting of minds that is the defining characteristic of socially dialogic verse exchanges; perhaps best illustrated by the contrast between the aggressive intellectual independence of the antisocial satirist and the fraternal, communicative reasoning evident frequently in verse epistles exchanged between friends.