ABSTRACT
Infancy has a variety of narratives, few of them tender. Breast-feeding becomes an occasion, for instance, for destructive impulses, anxiety, sadistic biting: even the seemingly-contented baby may be impaired by an "excess of oral satisfaction". We are always in a state of being born. This may also suggest that we are always at war with our mothers, an insight the childless Elizabeth Tudor frequently used to her political advantage. Philip Sidney attempts to rewrite the rules of this game. He seeks to win the Queen's maternal love without remaining her child. While sheer generational conflict is the subject of many Renaissance narratives, a more awkward discrepancy between adult aspiration and childish want is almost as often taken up in early modern texts. The sometimes crude dynamics of Elizabeth's court is also examined at greater length.
