Emblems and Mary Wroth’s Urania, Reform and Counter-Reform

• In Event: Emblem and England: Context and Subtext

Abstract

In The Countess of Montgomeries Urania (1621), Mary Wroth constructs vignettes that allow her to manipulate commonplaces of Ovidian and Petrarchan convention, motifs also in play in emblem books of the early seventeenth century, particularly those produced in the Spanish Netherlands by the workshop of Octavius Vaenius or Otto van Veen. Wroth’s appropriation of visual and poetic traditions allows her to engage in a doubled exploration of sacred and secular love, one inflected through the lens of interpretive practices associated with emblems. In both emblems and in Wroth’s text, part of the project is to engage readers and viewers in ways that further Reform and Counter-Reform agendas.

Author

• Karen Nelson, University of Maryland, College Park