Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T16:21:29.598Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 1 - Erotic Origins: Genesis, the Passion, and Aemilia Lanyer’s Queer Temporality

from Part I - Early Modern Women Framing the Modern World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2021

Pamela S. Hammons
Affiliation:
University of Miami
Brandie R. Siegfried
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University, Utah
Get access

Summary

Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum famously reframes Eve’s original sin through the lens of the Crucifixion, paralleling Adam and Eve’s relations with those of Pontius Pilate and his wife. By representing these two moments simultaneously, the poem recasts one origin through another to rewrite the foundational status of Genesis for gender relations. Though the relation between Old and New Testament might prompt us to read these two marriages as type and anti-type, they are superseded by a third marriage (or marriages) – that of the many women in the poem and Christ. Analyzing the poem’s dense gendering of Christ, critics have often focused on the heterosexual erotics of Lanyer’s Passion, particularly its depiction of Christ as “Bridegroom” and its debt to the Song of Songs. This chapter joins those scholars who have expanded our sense of the poem to recognize its homoerotic and queer passions by reconsidering its deployment of typology.

Type
Chapter
Information
World-Making Renaissance Women
Rethinking Early Modern Women's Place in Literature and Culture
, pp. 19 - 36
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×