Elizabeth Melville and the Poetics of Desire in Early Modern Britain

Morag Allan Campbell
Tuesday 11 October 2016

Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross (c.1578-c.1640), was the first Scotswoman to see her poetry printed. This lecture situates her writing in the context of her Calvinist life and milieu, focusing particularly on the renunciation of earthly desire in her Puritanical vision, Ane Godlie Dreame (1603), and her sonnets. Ane Godlie Dreame is newly identified as the culmination of the dream-vision in Scotland, while the sonnets can be understood afresh as inflecting English love poetry towards a distinctively Scottish anti-amatory poetics. Ultimately, as her publication history also attests, Lady Culross was a poet of far greater significance than has previously been recognised.

Dr Kylie Murray, University of Cambridge
The 2016 British Academy Chatterton Lecture
Wednesday 12th October, 5.15pm, The Lawson Lecture Room, Kennedy Hall, School of English

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