"My Hart Is Full, My Soul Dos Ouer Flow": Women's Devotional Poetry in Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract

oremothers or slip-shod sybils, pioneers or scribbling poetesseshowever one regards early modern women writers, they have undoubtedly become a dramatic feature in the literary landscape in recent years.' Our reading and teaching, and our debating of such issues as authorship, texts, cultural and historical contexts, literary canons and critical judgments, have all been affected by the (re)discovery and (re)evaluation of the work of women writers. We are beginning to have adequate answers to a number of fundamental questions: In what contexts could and did women write poetry, and what kinds of verse did they produce? What did it mean to be a poet in this particular historical period, particularly as a woman, and what specific circumstances could lead women to put pen to paper? There are several related issues that also require further attention. For example, what were the significant influences upon the work of early modern women poets; in what communities did they function as writers, and by whom were they read-if at all? Such questions hover behind all the essays in this volume, but my particular concern is to attempt some brief answers in relation to the earliest part of the period-the seventeenth century-and with one particular genre, devotional poetry, as my focus.