Aemilia Lanyer Books

If you don't know who Aemilia Lanyer was, please read about her or better yet read her works. She lived in London during the 1600s and was of Jewish-Italian descent. She became the mistress to Lord Chamberlain and may well have been Shakespeare's "dark lady". The most amazing and fabulous thing she did was publishe poems. Her poem "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" is a bold, well written poem and defends women of negative stereotypes which have been forced upon them since Eve. In "Eve's Apology," this portion of the poem is spoken from the point of view of Pontius Pilate's wife, who is begging for the life of Christ. She explores who is really guilty in original sin.

The essays in this book written about Lanyer and her works tell of her life and poetry and sheds new light on gender and class identity. Her male contemporaries at the time were John Donne, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.

The experts who write the essays for this book have done their research and make good, convincing arguments. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to understand Lanyer more thoroughly.

In Aemilia Lanyer's only volume of published poems, SALVE DEUS REX JUDAORUM, this Renaissance author uses beautifully crafted poetry to defend women against prevailing negative female stereotypes of the time. In "Eve's Apology," this portion of the poem is spoken from the point of view of Pontius Pilate's wife, who is begging for the life of Christ. She explores who really bares the guilt in original sin. She is passionate, yet uses reason in her argument (something women were not thought cabable of doing) and makes her point that any guilt all women may bear in original sin will be far overshadowed by the guilt men, in turn, may bear for Pilate's order to execute Christ.

In addition, in "To the Virtuous Reader", Lanyer states that her purpose in writing is to praise women, and to make it known that they are not all lazy, gossiping, lecherous, deceitful, or stupid as most men of the time supposed. She includes a list of virtuous women to encourage and praise other women to use them as exemplum. If you are interested at all in a female writer's perspective on Renaissance ideas, I highly recommend Aeilia Lanyer's beautiful poetry.