Southwell’s Moeoniae, Precedent, and the Myth of the Protestant Poem

• In Event: Robert Southwell: Out of the Shadows

Abstract

Tortured and executed, the Jesuit priest Robert Southwell still enjoyed a broad audience in late-Elizabethan England. Despite the controversy, Protestant readers admired his devotional verse. Modern critics explain the appeal by suggesting the printed editions removed polemical material and instead edited the poems to serve as general expressions of religious sentiment. To refine this appraisal, my paper will explore Moeoniae (1595) and its complex negotiations with biblical and secular paradigmatic history. In particular, it will consider the poet’s evocation of the Tree of Jesse. The paper will suggest that reading the edition in the context of the 1590s and the cloistered question of the royal succession qualifies our limited understanding of binary divisions between Protestant and Catholic. Instead it will offer an example of how an engaged poet grappled with the end of a paradigm and used poetic resources to find alternatives to a barren future, one beyond religious dichotomies.

Author

• Kevin Petersen, University of Massachusetts Lowell