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This essay considers Aemilia Lanyer as both subject and object of practices of memory. Writing as a subject of the verb 'to remember', Lanyer drew on techniques of memory and a storehouse of memorized cultural materials as resources for the composition of her sole publication, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (London, 1611). Thematically and conceptually, too, memory is crucial to this volume of verse. At its heart is a long narrative poem which articulates a revisionary, woman-centred account of Christian tradition. This is framed by a suite of dedicatory poems and the country-house poem 'The Description of Cooke-ham', which together deploy personal and cultural memory in support of Lanyer's attempts to fashion patronage relations with some of the women celebrated in the volume. By writing and publishing Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Lanyer sought to construct her own textual legacy, claiming a woman's right to assert a poetic vocation and address posterity in terms previously restricted to men (McBride 1998; Rogers 2000). Her success in securing a place in cultural memory was belated, however. Consigned to oblivion for nearly four centuries, Lanyer has only in recent decades become the focus of a significant body of critical scholarship and achieved a presence in the mainstream of Renaissance poetry.
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