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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subjectsCupid, Fortune, Ralegh, Elizabeth, Petrarchanism, Boethian philosophy, Narcissistic, self-love, Consolation

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253

fortune that rules on earth and earthly thinges
hath taken my loue in spight of Cupids might
so blinde a dame did never cupid right. (ll.17-20)

In substituting subjugation to Cupid for a struggle for freedom against indomitable Fortune Ralegh executes a transition from Petrarchanism to Boethian philosophy that encourages Elizabeth to reestablish contact with him within a context that offers the opportunity for a response that goes beyond Petrarchan cliché. Thus, he fulfils the Petrarchan objective of gaining audience with his beloved in a rather roundabout way. He writes,

With wisdoms eyes had but blind Cupid seene
Then had my love my love for ever bene
But love farewell though fortune conquer the
No fortune base shal ever alter me. (ll.21-4)


The echoing “my love my love” construction reminds the reader that we are still in the territory of Narcissistic self-love and Petrarchan deprivation. We also discover that his failure to see through Wisdom’s eyes, instead of through those of the Petrarchan lover, has led him to become divorced from Elizabeth. Thus, it is such a sagacious perspective that she is led to provide as a corrective to Ralegh’s point of view.

It is worth noting that the verse exchange contains a faint echo of a line from the beginning of Elizabeth’s Consolation that encapsulates the theme of right and wrong ways of perceiving around which both conversations revolve. When Philosophy first diagnoses Boethius’s malady the cure she prescribes is to “wipe his yees overdimd with Cloude of erthely things” (Consolation<, I.ii.14, Pemberton’s italics). Similarly, Elizabeth accepts and echoes Ralegh’s complaint that “Fortune rules on earth and earthly thinges”, confirming that she indeed “rules & raignes on earth and earthly thinges” (l.10). Then, in the next two lines, she translates the secular, earthly perspective of Ralegh’s Wisdom into the vigilance of Christian “vertue” for whom she claims mere Fortune is no match: “But neuer thinke fortune can beare the sway,/ if vertue watche & will her not obay” (ll.11-12, Black’s italics). Thus Ralegh should wipe away the tears that cloud his vision: “Pull vp thy harte suppresse



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