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Tears, Bezoars and Blazing Comets: Gender and Politics in Hester Pulter's Civil War Lyrics
Author(s) -
Ross Sarah
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2005.00161.x
Subject(s) - royalist , poetry , lyrics , politics , literature , tears , diction , spanish civil war , art , history , law , medicine , political science , surgery , archaeology
Hester Pulter composed her verse during the 1640s and 1650s in a kind of royalist retirement at her country home of Broadfield, Hertfordshire, and her biographical isolation is mirrored in a poetic preoccupation with loss. Contributing to the sense that her verse might encapsulate a ‘female aesthetic’ of retreat (a phrase that has been used of male, royalist devotional writers) is the predominance in her verse of a discourse of sighs and tears. In this paper, however, I will argue that the sighs and tears of Pulter's lyrics in fact constitute a significant, gendered, female reaction to political events. In a self‐construction drawing on Francis Quarles’ emblematic representation of Esther, Hester Pulter constructs a notion of godly fame, in which her poetic sighs and tears provide a consolatory example for other royalist readers.