Abstract
In disciplines ranging from art history to science, scholarship has found accomplishments by women in earlier periods often hidden under the attribution to ‘anonymous’. That familiar concept that ‘anonymous was a woman’ has pointed to possibility, as it suggested places worth searching for previously unrecognised accomplishments by women. Although in recent decades recovered women’s writing has expanded the literary histories of England and Europe, few scholars of the medieval and early modern literature of Scotland have been engaged in the search that elsewhere has had such beneficial effects.1 Yet early Scottish literary manuscripts such as the Maitland Quarto, a collection of approximately 95 Scottish poems that is internally dated 1586 and named for the politically and socially important Maitland family of Lethington, contain many anonymous poems, some of which seem very plausibly to have been written by women.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Cf. Sarah Dunnigan, ‘Scottish Women Writers c.1560–c.1650’, in A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, ed. by Douglas Gifford and Dorothy Macmillan (Edinburgh: EUP, 1997), pp. 15–43; and ‘Reclaiming the Language of Love and Desire in the Scottish Renaissance: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Late Sixteenth Centuty Female-voiced Love Lyric c. 1567–86’, in Older Scots Literature, ed. by Sally Mapstone, 3 vols (East Linton: Tuckwell, forthcoming 2004). Also R. J. Lyall, ‘“A New Maid Channoun”? Redefining the Canonical in Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Literature’, SSL, 26 (1991), 1–19.
The Maitland Quarto Manuscript, PL 1408, Pepys Library; cf. W.A. Craigie, ed., The Maitland Quarto Manuscript, STS (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1920); John Pinkerton, ed., Ancient Scotish Poems (London: Charles Dilly, and Edinburgh: Wm. Creech, 1786). Quotations are from Craigie’s edition, designated ‘MQ’, and cite the poems’ numbers there; line numbers are parenthetical in the text. I have modernised thorn. See also W.A. Craigie, ed., The Maitland Folio Manuscript, STS, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1919), 1927. I wish to thank the librarians of the Pepys Library for their very kind and helpful assistance.
See Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England: 1550–1720 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), p. 65. Betty Travitsky observes that some women ‘wrote “feminist” tracts to protest the writings or behavior of particular men, but they did not suggest that women not continue to be submissive to men, their heads’; cf. The Paradise of Women: Writings by Englishwomen of the Renaissance (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood, 1981), p. 12.
See, for example, Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages, ed. by Bonnie Wheeler and Stephen Stallcup (Dallas: Academia, 1993). Also Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: UPP, 1999).
Alexandra Barratt, ed., Women’s Writing in Middle English (London and New York: Longman, 1992), pp. I, 5. Also Margaret King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: UCP, 1991), pp. 157–239.
Laurie Finke remarks that ‘the mere fact of oppression alone is not enough to silence women as a group’, in Women’s Writing in English: Medieval England (London and New York: Longman, 1999), p. 3.
Derek Pearsall, ‘The Value/s of Manuscript Study’, Journal of the Early Book Society, 3 (2000), 167–81 (p. 176).
Elizabeth Hanson-Smith, ‘A Woman’s View of Courtly Love: The Findern Anthology’, Journal of Women’s Studies in Literature, 1 (1979), 179–94 (p. 179). Also Sarah McNamer, ‘Female Authors, Provincial Setting: the Re-versing of Courtly Love in the Findem Manuscript’, Viator, 22 (1991), 279–310 (p. 282); and Rosemary Appleton, ‘Gender and Manuscripts: Cambridge University Library MS Ff.1.6’, Medieval Feminist Newsletter, 26 (Fall 1998), pp. 12–17. Opposing is Julia Boffey, ‘Women Authors and Women’s Literacy in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-century England’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, 2nd edn, ed. by Carol Meale (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), pp. 159–82. Additionally, Dunnigan’s ‘Reclaiming’; and Elizabeth Heale, ‘Women and the Courtly Love Lyric: The Devonshire Manuscript (BL Additional MS 17492)’, Modern Language Review, 90.2 (1995), 296–313.
Similarly, Elizabeth Ewan observes the considerable amount of research on women in Scottish history that has yet not made ‘an impact on mainstream Scottish historical writing’; ‘A Realm of One’s Own? The Place of Medieval and Early Modem Women in Scottish History’, in Gendering Scottish History: An International Approach, ed. by Terry Brotherstone, Deborah Simonton, and Oonagh Walsh (Glasgow: Cruithne, 1999), pp. 19–36 (p. 20). Also see Ewan and Maureen Meikle’s collection, Women in Scotland c.1100-c.1750 (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1999).
Peter Stallybrass, ‘Boundary and Transgression: Body, Text, Language,’ Stanford French Review, 14, (1989), 9–23 (pp. 10–11).
Louis A. Renza, ‘Exploding Canons,’ Contemporary Literature, 28.2 (1987), 257–70 (p. 258).
Alasdair A. MacDonald renewed attention to Richard Maitland’s literary importance in ‘The Poetry of Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington’, Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists’ Society 13 (1972). 7–19.
Pinkerton, p. 467; Craigie, MQ pp. v–vi. Priscilla Bawcutt describes the Quarto as‘a woman’s book’ possibly written by Mary Maitland; ‘“My Bright Buke’: Women and their Books in Medieval and Renaissance Scotland”, in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and others (Turnhout: Brenols. 20001. pp. 17–34 (p. 28).
Priscilla Bawcutt, ‘The Earliest Texts of Dunbar’, in Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. by. Felicity Riddy (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991), pp. 183–98 (p. 191).
Elaine Hobby, Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1649–98 (Ann Arbor: UMP, 1988), p. 207.
Thanks to Sarah Dunnigan for suggesting the connection of chastity and the intellect.
Ann Rosalind Jones, ‘Assimilation with a Difference: Renaissance Women Poets and Literary Influence’, Yale French Studies, 62 (1981), 135–53 (p. 153).
On lesbian invisibility in the culture see, among many, Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Freedom CA: Crossing, 1983), pp. 152–73. Also Valerie Traub, ‘The [In]Significance of ‘Lesbian’ Desire in Early Modern England,’ in Queering the Renaissance, ed. by Jonathan Goldberg (Durham and London: Duke UP, 1994), pp. 62–83.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2004 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Newlyn, E.S. (2004). A Methodology for Reading Against the Culture: Anonymous, Women Poets, and the Maitland Quarto Manuscript (c.1586). In: Dunnigan, S.M., Harker, C.M., Newlyn, E.S. (eds) Woman and the Feminine in Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230502208_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230502208_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-51083-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-50220-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)