Rejuvenating the Renaissance Sonnet: Writing in a Woman's Voice

Abstract

By looking at the female authored sonnet-letter in Shakespeare’s All’s Well, That Ends Well (1603) and Lady Mary Wroth’s 1621 sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, this thesis contests Arthur F. Marotti’s claim that “by about 1600 collections of love sonnets ceased to be written in England” and therefore “died” as a form (Marotti 396). By closely examining the poetry— on the level of form, language, and imagery— as well as the cultural climate it was written in, this thesis considers how the sonnet form was changed by the introduction of the female sonnet speaker, and how contemporary readers of this new voice, namely Edward Denny and Ben Jonson, received and reacted to these changes. In doing so, my purpose is to show that the love sonnet did not die, but gained new life with the introduction of the female voice.