Pamphilia’s Past: Wroth and Literary History

• In Event: Sidney Circle I: Transforming Poetics, Lyric, and Romance History

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the writings of Mary Wroth have moved from near-obscurity to occupying a central place in the canon. But valuable though this recovery has been, it is surprisingly at odds with Wroth’s own portrayals of the relationship between women and literary history. I argue that Wroth’s Urania persistently depicts women’s writing as vulnerable to destruction and erasure—a trope that builds on her uncle Philip Sidney’s depictions of vanishing women’s writing in the New Arcadia. Wroth reaffirms this impression of vulnerability through her avatar Pamphilia, whose name evokes that of “Pamphila,” a first-century Roman woman historian whose texts survived into the early modern period in only a few short fragments. Ultimately, Wroth suggests that female authors occupy a more tenuous and uncertain place in literary history than do their male counterparts—anticipating, in many ways, the Urania’s own long neglect by readers and critics alike.

Author

• Brian Pietras, Rutgers University