ABSTRACT

Near the end of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Lady Mary Wroth’s poet-speaker contrasts the “true forme of love” in her thoughts with those “ancient fictions” that conjure shapes from the stars. Appended to Urania in 1621, Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus is the first sonnet sequence published by a woman in the English Renaissance. Furthermore, beyond the historical significance of the publication as such, Wroth establishes herself as the first English writer to reverse the traditional gender roles of lover and beloved in a complete sonnet collection. When Wroth’s sonnets upon the relative merits of day and night are viewed as a larger group, it becomes apparent that instead of maintaining the dichotomy insisted upon by her father and uncle, she more often moves beyond that dichotomy to a choice. Wroth revises central metaphors from the verse of her Sidney predecessors while heightening their individual significance in her own sequence.