The Poetics of Vulnerability Early Modern Women's Poetry, 1560-1665

This thesis takes vulnerability as its starting point to examine early modern women’s lyric poetry written in English between 1560 and 1665. Adopting a capacious approach to vulnerability that attends to both the exposure to possible harm—both physical and emotional—as well as more dynamic relational affects, this research examines lyric poems by Anne Lock (c. 1534-before 1602), Isabella Whitney (fl. 1567-1573), Aemilia Lanyer (bap. 1569-1645), Hester Pulter (1605-1678), and Katherine Philips (1632-1664). At a time when the sheer breadth of women’s literary agency is being uncovered, why should we concern ourselves with a return to questions of vulnerability in early modern women’s poetry? The answer, this thesis argues, lies in recognising the multivalent function of vulnerability—including its overlapping philosophical, ethical, religious, political, and aesthetic dimensions—in early modernity. With particular attention given to the granular workings of poetic form as well as the affordances of lyric poetry in early modern English literary culture, the five case studies in this thesis collectively demonstrate that vulnerability offers a mode of storytelling, a language of faith, and a framework for thinking about virtuous self-governance and the ethical dimensions of care.