Lanyer, Aemilia

Abstract

Aemilia Lanyer, also Emilia Lanier (née Bassano) (1569–1645), is known for one highly innovative published work: Salve Deus Rex Judæorum (1611). It consists of a verse Passion narrative prefaced by a substantial body of dedicatory verse and prose and followed by the pastoral “Cooke-ham.” This volume is Lanyer’s only extant work, though she twice suggests that her prior reputation as a poet led to the commissioning of the Passion and pastoral. The author and her book were exceptional for her time, place, and class. The title page advertises her sex and her identity by including her whole name, unlike those of her female predecessors, which include their initials, at most. Her dedicatory materials violate expectations of womanly behavior by appealing for patronage to people outside her family, even people she had never met. Those to the countesses of Pembroke and Bedford are remarkable as the first published praise of English women writers by another woman. The firmly reformed Passion poem, the core of the volume, is highly innovative in its handling of genre; it incorporates arguments that women are not culpable for the Fall and Crucifixion. Like her work, Lanyer’s life was often unconventional. The daughter and wife of court musicians, she bragged that she was the mistress of the Lord Chamberlain and was favored by Queen Elizabeth, and claimed to have been an intimate of the countesses dowager of Kent and Cumberland and the Countess of Dorset, the latter’s daughter. A lawsuit reveals that she was the sole proprietor of a school, a most unusual activity for a woman.