Assigned Reading:
Please read the Norton's selections from Lanyer's "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" (the title poem of the volume in which "Upon Cooke-ham" also appears).  Lanyer's book opens with a collection of several dedications in prose and verse, addressed to various royal and noble women and to a broad selection of readers in general. Please use the following links to read these selections from those dedications: a poem addressed to Queen Anne (the wife of King James); a prose dedication of the book To the Lady Margararet, Countesse Dowager of Cumberland (you may recall that Margaret is the noblewoman also addressed in "Upon Cooke-ham") and another address (also in prose) To the Virtuous Reader.  Also, in order to prepare to evaluate Lanyer's version of Eve, Eden, and the Fall, review Rivers' Chapter 1:  The Golden Age and the Garden of Eden; also, read the following books of the bibleas translated in the King James Version of the Bible (which was published the same year as Lanyer's poem): Genesis, Chapters 2-3; the Gospel according to Matthew, Chapters 26-27; the Gospel according to Mark, Chapters 14-15; the Gospel according to Luke, Chapters 22-23; and the Gospel according to John, Chapters 18-19.

Study Questions:
I.  Lanyer's Edenic Poetics

A.  St. Paul, John Milton, and Aemilia Lanyer Reading and Interpreting Scripture:   All three of these writers claim some version of divinely conferred authority.  Paul's epistles are, of course, included in the Scriptures themselves as part of the Revealed Word of God.  Milton (whose Paradise Lost was first published in 1667, some 56 years after Lanyer's Salve Deus) calls upon the Holy Spirit to guide him in justifying the ways of God to Man, and Lanyer undertakes a revision and critique of St. Paul's remarks in 1 Timothy 2: 9-15:  "I will . . . that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.  Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.  But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.  For Adam was first formed, then Eve.  And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.  Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety."  How does Lanyer's response to the account of the fall in Genesis 3 revise Paul's doctrine in 1 Timothy 2 (which is itself an interpretation of Genesis 3)?  How does Lanyer's account of the Fall depend upon her reading of the Gospels?

B. Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum as a Treasure of the New Eden:  In her dedicatory address to the Countess of Cumberland, Lanyer claims to be presenting her reader with Christ himself and with "the health of the soule" which is a pearl, a diamond or a "perfect gold growing in the veines of that excellent earth of the most blessed Paradice, wherein our second Adam had his restlesse habitation."  Christ is the "second Adam," and since the earth itself was no longer a paradise when Jesus became incarnate, the Paradise Lanyer is referring to here must be the body of Christ itself, the "excellent earth" in which he lives out his difficult life (human flesh being but dust, yet ennobled through the incarnation of the Deity).  The gift Lanyer offers is, then, one of the "sweet incense, balsums, odours, and gummes that flowes from that beautifull tree of Life, spring from the roote of Jessie."  In this passage, Christ is identified not with the Garden of Eden as a whole, but with its most precious part, the Tree of Life.  Lanyer's use of these Eden images, like her use of paschal feast imagery in the poem to Queen Anne, helps to define her poetry in sacramental terms and to place her in the role of a priest who celebrates the Eucharist, bringing the reader into contact with Christ as source of life, nourishment, and delight.  Considering the points I've noted above, and reading the prose dedication very carefully with an eye to Lanyer's sense of her poetry's status in relation to the divine, be prepared to discuss Lanyer's theory of poetry.  What functions does she believe poetry can serve?  How does her idea of the poet's role compare to the role of the poem in Jonson's poetry and masques?

III.  The Politics of Paradise:
As the selections in Rivers' Chapter 1 make clear, images of Paradise can be used to glorify and elevate the virtues of one's own society (see item #17), to criticize that society (items 18 and 20), or to celebrate the opportunities provided for renewing human life in a new era or a New World (items 3, 8, and 20).  Through her revisionary account of the Fall, Lanyer, too criticizes her own society and envisions one very different from that which she and her readers know.  Compare "Eves Apologie" in Lanyer's poem with Virgil's Eclogue IV (item 3 in Rivers), and Marvell's "Bermudas" (item 20 in Rivers).