I am adding Aemelia Lanyer to the readings we are doing in Brit lit. I was introduced to this author last semester during a presentation on women and spirituality, so I am a newcomer to her work.
If you haven’t heard of her, she published an entire book of poetry in 1611. One critic says the book “is a vigorous apologia for women’s equality or superiority to men in spiritual and moral matters” (Lewalski 203). The poems I have read are certainly along that vein.
This Rough Magic has an article by Kristiane Stapleton “Teaching Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum:
Aemilia Lanyer and Early Modern Authorship” that seems to provide a good introduction to Lanyer’s ideas.