Making Space: Gardens and Social Identity in Early Modern English Literature
Munroe, Jennifer Ann
This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/81402
Description
Title
Making Space: Gardens and Social Identity in Early Modern English Literature
Author(s)
Munroe, Jennifer Ann
Issue Date
2004
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Carol Neely
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, English
Language
eng
Abstract
"While prescriptive manuals self-consciously tie themselves to actual gardens, poetic texts use representations of gardens to negotiate social position in other domains. Chapter Three analyzes how Spenser uses representations of gardens in The Faerie Queene (1590) and A View of the State of Ireland (1633; written in 1596) to establish the preeminence of male authority vis-a-vis a female sovereign over Irish subjects, and over the Irish landscape the male colonizers sought to make ""English."" By the beginning of the seventeenth century, aesthetic gardening permitted women creative agency in separate garden-spaces isolated as their own in the prescriptive manuals. Hence, Aemilia Lanyer's representations of gardens in Salve Deus and ""To Cooke-ham"" depict how women might imagine another context for holding land and real property. In my fifth chapter I show how in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621) Lady Mary (Sidney) Wroth uses settings and images that represent women gardening, embroidering, and writing, to emphasize that they are all equally examples of ""chaste art"" that prove women to be creative agents, desiring subjects, and fully feminine at the same time."
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.