Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- “Strange Serious Wantoning”: Early Modern Chess Manuals and the Ethics of Virtuous Subterfuge
- “Both Use and Art”: Motifs and Method in Astrophil and Stella
- Embodied Love(rs): Injury and Comedy in Mary Wroth’s Urania
- Edmund Spenser’s Automaton Alchemy: The Case of False Florimell
- Who Edited the 1571 Mirror for Magistrates?
- Statues Living and Conscious: Hermetic Statue-Magic in The Winter’s Tale
- Transmutation and Refinement: The Metaphysics of Conversion and Alchemy in Renaissance Spain
- The Twelve Inka and the Twelve Caesars: Reflections on an Early Modern Visual Theme in the Art of Colonial Peru
- Linguistics and Epistemology in Thomas Harriot’s North Atlantic World
- Assembling the King’s Body: Examining Holbein’s Portrait Techniques and the Fashioning of Henry VIII’s Image in the English Renaissance
- Molière’s L’École des Femmes between Shame and Guilt
Embodied Love(rs): Injury and Comedy in Mary Wroth’s Urania
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- “Strange Serious Wantoning”: Early Modern Chess Manuals and the Ethics of Virtuous Subterfuge
- “Both Use and Art”: Motifs and Method in Astrophil and Stella
- Embodied Love(rs): Injury and Comedy in Mary Wroth’s Urania
- Edmund Spenser’s Automaton Alchemy: The Case of False Florimell
- Who Edited the 1571 Mirror for Magistrates?
- Statues Living and Conscious: Hermetic Statue-Magic in The Winter’s Tale
- Transmutation and Refinement: The Metaphysics of Conversion and Alchemy in Renaissance Spain
- The Twelve Inka and the Twelve Caesars: Reflections on an Early Modern Visual Theme in the Art of Colonial Peru
- Linguistics and Epistemology in Thomas Harriot’s North Atlantic World
- Assembling the King’s Body: Examining Holbein’s Portrait Techniques and the Fashioning of Henry VIII’s Image in the English Renaissance
- Molière’s L’École des Femmes between Shame and Guilt
Summary
Introduction
In contrast to the Petrarchan sonnets written by her contemporaries, Mary Wroth’s sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus pays little attention to the physical aspects of love. Some readers, notably Paul J. Hecht, do see the language of sexual desire in these poems. In general, though, the object of love (Amphilanthus) remains “distant” and “dispersed.” The action of the sonnets takes place largely within the mind of the speaker, Pamphilia. One particularly vivid example of this phenomenon is Sonnet 23, where the speaker contrasts the activities of those around her with her own thoughts of love:
While others hunt, my thoughts I have in chase;
If hauke, my minde att wished end doth fly,
Discourse, I with my spiritt tauke, and cry
While others, musique choose as greatest grace.
(lines 9–12)
In these lines, it is Pamphilia’s “thoughts,” “minde,” and “spirit” where love is concentrated. The love of the sonnets, then, is largely a love of the intellect, the emotions, and the imagination.
Pamphilia and Amphilanthus are also the main characters of Wroth’s sprawling romance, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. Wroth’s prose narrator is, in general, hardly more interested in the physical side of love than her poetic speaker. While illicit love affairs play a role in the romance, the major love story in Urania is a meeting of two minds. Pamphilia and Amphilanthus largely court one another intellectually; for example, Amphilanthus reads Pamphilia’s poems about her love for him (Wroth 1.320.18–32). In addition, many of their conversations are ripe with hidden meanings, as when Pamphilia wonders that Amphilanthus has changed the color of his armor so often, using the loaded term “inconstancy” to suggest that she is really asking whether his feelings for her have changed (Wroth 1.165.28). Overall, Amphilanthus is described in terms of his virtues—a typical narrative description is “all others vertues being single in them, but knit in one in him” (Wroth 1.61.1–2). Exceptions are limited to the aforementioned color of his armor when he rides in disguise (Wroth 1.165.27–28, 1.233.28, 2.193.26–27). This avoidance of the physical in Pamphilia and Amphilanthus’ descriptions may be an expression of Wroth’s overall vision for Urania, which is a highly intellectual work, leaning heavily on Wroth’s self-appointed position as the Sidney literary heir.
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- Renaissance Papers 2021 , pp. 25 - 36Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022