ABSTRACT
Those who know Anna Trapnel’s texts best probably think of her first as one of the many prophets to emerge on the scene of theological-political debate during England’s revolutionary period. Although Anna Trapnel is not known primarily as a poet to scholars today, she occasionally represents herself as one--specifically as a psalmist. For a seventeenth-century woman in England, claiming to be a prophet could be a less controversial means to gain a public audience than claiming to be a preacher would be. Although the scholarly interest in Trapnel as a prophet seems to have influenced the inclusion of her texts in mainstream undergraduate teaching anthologies, Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea is not primarily a prophetic text. Rather, it is Trapnel’s brief account of some trances (that she does not remember fully, being under the control of the Holy Spirit at the time) and of her trial, where she speaks as a regular citizen.
