Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Incarnation as Social Protest 101
here I have prepar’d my Paschal Lambe’. (85) 14
What the reader finds when investigating
the theology the poem presents is that Lanyer is incredibly adept at working within a
system of theology in which the Bible is taken as truth, both historically and theologically.
She acknowledges the Genesis tale and the Gospels as historical narrative, and yet this
does not lead to a lifeless exegesis, rather Lanyer takes the historicity of these two tales,
the fall of humanity and the Passion of Jesus, and creates a liberation theology brimming
with the potency to potentially change the society in which it was created. As Lewalski
says, ‘Lanyer manages her surprising fusion of religious meditation and feminism by
appropriating the dominant discourse of the age, biblical exegesis’. 15
And while there
have been discussions of Lanyer’s work, and just how seriously the devotional aspect of
the book should be taken, especially regarding the extent to which she continuously
references and pays tribute to the wealthiest and most powerful women in England, the
theology and politics contained in the Passion tale are hardly in line with what one expects
when reading religious poetry written to gain patronage. 16
When Aemilia Lanyer writes the biblical account of Jesus’s death and resurrection,
what she realises, and shares with the reader, is that this central story of Christianity should
lead to a society in which men and women are equal and there is no need for social
hierarchy, and while Mary Ellen Lamb has argued well for the socio-economic radicalism
in the book, 17 this chapter will primarily focus on the ramifications of the sexual politics
that Lanyer’s book promotes. In writing the book and showing her ability to perform
theology in such a nuanced manner, Lanyer illustrates that women are in fact capable of
14 ‘To the Queenes most Excellent Majestie’.
15 Barbara K. Lewalski, ‘Seizing Discourses and Reinventing Genres’, in Marshall Grossman (ed.), Aemilia
Lanyer (Lexington, KY, 1998), p. 53.
16 As has been discussed by Catherine Keohane, ‘“That Blindest Weakenesse be not Over-Bold”: Aemilia
Lanyer’s Radical Unfolding of the Passion’, ELH 64.2 (1997), 361-362.
17 Mary Ellen Lamb, ‘Patronage and Class in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum’, in Mary E.
Burke, et al (ed.), Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain. (Syracuse,
2000), pp. 38-57.