Reading Assignment:
Read the Introductions to Lady Mary Wroth and Katherine Philips in the Norton (pp. 1686-7 and 1720 resepectively) and all selections included in the Norton for each poet.  In addition, read online Philips'  Friendship's Mystery: To My Dearest Lucasia and, in Kissing the Rod (on reserve at Penrose), the introduction to Philips (pp. 186-188), "No blooming youth..." and "A marryd state affords..." (pp. 188-189), "6t Aprill 1651..." (pp. 189-90), and "On Rosania's Apostacy..." (pp. 194-5).

Study Questions on Wroth:
A.  Wroth's The Countess of Montgomery's Urania
As the introduction explains, Wroth was the neice of the most prominent Elizabethan courtier-poet, Sir Philip Sidney. Compare the beginning of her pastoral romance, the Urania, with the beginning of her uncle's famous pastoral romance The Arcadia (see the first excerpt on pp. 474-475 of the Norton).  How do the two compare?  Does Wroth write specifically as a woman?

B.  Wroth's "Am I Thus Conquered?" -- one of the sonnets from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

1.  Note that the apostrophe is sometimes omitted from possessives in Renaissance spelling; thus "mens" in line 5 means "men's"; does the word refer to "males" or "human beings" in general or both?
2. To whom do the pronouns "we" and "he" refer in line 10?
3.  How does this poem compare to the love poems by Donne that we read?

1.  "False hope" is personified in the first quatrain; what sort of person is the personified figure?  How does the speaker view herself in relation to this figure?
2.  In quatrains two and three, "False hope" is redefined through an elaborate political conceit; how does this conceit relate to the personification in the first quatrain?

Study Questions on Philips:

A.  What seem to you to be Philips' greatest strengths as a poet?
B.  Do the poems to women strike you as homoerotic?  That is, are they friendships about purely platonic female friendship, or is there an element of lesbian eroticism in them?