The Risks of Simile in Renaissance Rhetoric by

Most of the lyrics of Queens take the form of an apostrophe of one woman to
another and extensively explore the
The book traces the erotics of simile and of the related rhetorical categories of figure,
trope, metaphor, and the primal substance of signification in Renaissance rhetoric books.
Sharon-Zisser shows Renaissance rhetoricians associate simile with archaic maternality,
with pastoral, with the omphalic, with multiple forms of sexuality, and with the
jouissance of asymmetrical approximation. The psychoanalysis of Renaissance aesthetics
of simile shows the structure of desire is not, as Lacan would have it, metonymic
Sophie Maia Regalado-Devotion and Piety of English Women 1480-1620-MA HISTORY
1997
in an attempt to create a new community of women, she reinforces the traditional gender
roles
Lanyer who spoke unquestionably to the needs of a female audience (Regalado 37).
true audience of her devotional work (Regalado 38).
-uses imagery that her female audience would recognize and identify with.
-celebrate the senses
-gender-specific
gender-specific conditions
since she is restricted to devotional topics, she customizes her text
female religious devotion is an integral part of every day life, culturally embedded.
Use of poetic language and imagery
Tool-romantization of an earlier time?
Where there gender-neutral devoitional works?
If so, she transcends them and directly addresses female spirituality
Female devotion where chastity, submission and silence are prized
Sensory images metaphors sensually (?) powerful anchors/validates these images
through the connection to devotion
Erotic language sensuality/erotocism/
Devotional, spiritual expression, relationship with Christ,piety
Celerate
Spiritual liason
Words create a sense of intimacy, intimate terms
Food imagery-feast, banquet, celebrations, Passover holiday,
Biblical women were used as a poetic devise to highlight praiseworthy qualities/virtues
For women=worship became less institutionalized and moved from public practice to the
home
First dedication to the queen
Subsequent subsections contain dedicatory poems to women of quality, in the upperlevels of society
Susanne Woods The Poems of Aemilia Lanyerxxxi

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Choice of authority in doctrine/style
Classics-come from antiquity, used as a model
How is the imagery relevant and available? contemporaneous with the modern?
Strategies of accommodation
classic as model
mediate modern with ancient/antiquity/classic
structure of the past relation to the present and retain an identity that can be used to
bolster the imagery of strong women
19
think of its age and our own together
accessible
Hellenist/Hellenism/
Latin (?Roman)
Aesthic
An orthodoxed image that connotes a sense of permanency Lanyer finds herself in in a
period of time where there is fluidity in the perception and treatment of women and she
seeks to find a sense of stability, to create a strong image that woman can look to amidst
these social changes.