Alice Eardley - ePortfolio
I am currently a Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance and and Part Time Tutor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
About My Research
Department: English and Comparative Literature Studies.
Supervisor: Dr. Elizabeth Clarke.
An edition of Lady Hester Pulter's book of 'Emblemes'.
Hester Pulter's manuscript comprising over one hundred poems (including fifty-three emblems) and a prose romance was discovered, uncatalogued, in Leeds University library in 1995. Pulter was writing throughout the 1640s, 50s and 60s during which time she also gave birth to fifteen children, only two of whom survived her. A vehement Royalist and dedicated Anglican, her poetry is an intensely political response to the English Civil Wars, the ensuing Puritan republic and Cromwell's Protectorate. Pulter's emblems are the first original collection of emblem poems to have been produced by an Englishwoman. The critical introduction to my edition will trace the political and religious connotations of the emblem as it was used in England during the first half of the seventeenth century. This will provide a context for understanding Pulter's distinctly gendered and politically motivated manipulation of the form.
Year Started: 2004
Funding: AHRC
