“Thair is mair constancie in o[u]r sex / Then euer ama[n]g men hes bein”: The Metaphysics of Authorship in the Maitland Quarto Manuscript (ca. 1586)

Abstract

This article considers how relative anonymity could be used in sixteenth-century literary culture as an aesthetic strategy for women authors in a male (or) coterie context. I elucidate this supposition by examining the sixteenth-century Scottish verse miscellany, the Maitland Quarto Manuscript (ca. 1586), which is affiliated with the Scottish courtier and writer, Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington (1496-1586), and his daughter, Marie Maitland (died 1596). I explore how a Renaissance female "maker" such as Marie Maitland could appropriate male discourse and auctoritas to provide herself with a "metaphysics of presence" (DERRIDA 1997, 22). The article builds on the provocative new work on the Maitland Quarto by Sarah Dunnigan (1997; 2003b; 2005) and Evelyn Newlyn (2004) and re-contextualizes Marie Maitland's "voice" by examining the writings of Michel de Montaigne, Olympia Morata, Sappho, and Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots.

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