"And Thus Leave off": Reevaluating Mary Wroth's Folger Manuscript, V.a.104

Abstract

This essay takes up questions regarding the manuscript description and evaluation of Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, leading to new findings about the textual background and, more generally, to new proddings of feminists to greater scrupulousness in analysis and greater willingness to entertain inconclusiveness about manuscript markings. The essay builds upon and revises the well-regarded prior textual work of Josephine A. Roberts by commenting on a feature not discussed by her—the slashed (or barred) S (or French fermesse). The essay analyzes Wroth’s use of the slashed S to show that the poet revised Pamphilia to Amphilanthus more drastically than has previously been believed. Wroth’s signature closural marker is not merely an ending but also an invitation to open or reopen many questions. This essay demonstrates how much we might learn from returning to an author’s manuscripts, no matter how authoritatively described by previous critics.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 76 citations exist upstream.