culture and rhetoric of the answer poem 1485-1626

The Culture and Rhetoric of the Answer Poem: 1485-1626

SECTION 1: POLEMIC: FLYTING, LIBEL AND SATIRE

Chapter 1: Responses to Libel and Satire

  1. The Verse Libel
    1. A Sociological Perspective
    2. Verbal Duelling
    3. Proclamatory Answers
  2. The Verse Satire
    1. Self Publicising Tudor Satirists
    2. John Skelton
    3. John Marston

Chapter 2: Domestic and Cross-Cultural Flyting

  1. Cross-Cultural Flyting
    1. Anglo-French Flyting
    2. Anglo-Scottish Flyting
  2. Domestic Flyting
    1. John Skelton and Christopher Garnish
    2. Thomas Smyth and William Gray
    3. Thomas Churchyard and Thomas Camel
    4. John Taylor and William Fennor

SECTION 2: MARRIAGE, FRIENDSHIP COURTSHIP/COURTIERSHIP

Chapter 3: Answer Poetry and Marriage: 1550-1570

  1. Pros and Cons of Marriage
  2. Duties of Husbands and Wives

Chapter 4: Late Tudor Amicable Verse Exchanges

  1. Barnabe Googe
  2. Isabella Whitney
  3. John Donne

Chapter 5: Women's answer-poetry and the female-voiced response

  1. Henrician Answer Poetry
  2. Late Elizabethan and Jacobean Answer Poetry
    1. Elizabeth I
    2. Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
    3. Lady Mary Cheke
    4. Lady Mary Wroth



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subjectsSir John Cheke, New testament, Tyndale, translation, biblical, exegesis, Cambridge, theologian, Church fathers, Augustine, Origen

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267

respondent then this was a particularly impertinent address to her since her first husband, Sir John Cheke, whose name she kept following the death of her second husband, had been a distinguished Cambridge theologian, and like Tyndale had begun a translation of the New Testament. 427 Tyndale, the first translator of the Bible into English, advocated the accessibility of scripture for all and derided the quiddities of biblical exegesis fostered by Church fathers such as Augustine and Origen, asserting that “scripture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense”. 428 He had boasted famously that because of his translation the lay community could become as familiar with, and as understanding of, scripture as the inept clergy, or “popish doctors of dunce’s dark learning” who, through their sophistry, had deprived people of access to the word of God. 429 No doubt he would have approved of Harington’s making his uneducated preacher a figure of fun, but the humdrum literal interpretation he provokes from Cheke is meant to highlight equally the absurdity of entrusting interpretation to the lay community, and especially women.




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Lady Mary Wroth

Shee frameth her iestures so discretely, that in speakyng, shee seemeth to holde her peace, and in holding her peace, to speake. (Civile Conuersation, II. sig. Pvv)

In his Civile Conuersation Stefano Guazzo’s interpretation of Castiglione’s version of the

427 It is not difficult to believe that Harington conceived of these two men as readily associable with one another since both went to great lengths to stipulate the way that the meaning of words ought to be rendered transparently in vernacular language accessible to the common man. Whereas Tyndale sought to bring the literal meaning of the Bible to the masses, Cheke taught that inkhorn terms should be avoided, as should anglicising words from foreign languages, and he applied this principle to his translation of Matthew. See Hugh Sykes Davies, ‘Sir John Cheke and the Translation of the Bible’, ES, n.s. 5 (1952), 1-12 (pp.3-5 and p.7).

428 ‘The Obedience of a Christen Man’, in Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures by William Tyndale, ed. Henry Walter (Cambridge: CUP, 1848), pp.127-344 (p.304).

429 Tyndale’s ‘New Testament’, Translated from the Greek by William Tyndale, ed. David



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