ABSTRACT
What the Urania reveals is one woman’s repetitive construction of a liminal space, a no-woman’s-land between fact, or “what really happened,” and fiction, or in Sidney’s words, “nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be.” If the purpose of romance as a magic mirror is to fictionalize facts in order to reflect the alterations back out into “reality,” then to unfictionalize the facts is perhaps to unravel the spell, to suggest that the facts can remain unchanged by the fictions. In order to demonstrate Wroth’s experimental construction of a magic mirror out of romance narrative, it will be necessary to review the pertinent details of her biography. Although Lady Mary Wroth does make significant adjustments in her predecessors’ blueprints for romance from the beginning, the first half of her romance offers the characteristic combination of chivalric and pastoral modes that marks a Sidneian romance.
