ABSTRACT
Anne Lok’s A Meditation o f a Penitent Sinner (1560), the first sonnet sequence in English, articulates changing conceptions o f social authority in early Elizabethan England through the formal tension o f the sonnet sequence-the strain betw een sonnet and sequence, lyric and narrative. This strain is apparent in the com plex relation betw een the individual sonnets o f the sequence and the text o f Psalm 51 w hich appears in the margin. T he psalm provides a m odel for the speaker’s lyric authority, but it also provides a narrative o f the founding o f the N ew Jerusalem w hich tacitly celebrates England’s return to Protestantism under Q ueen Elizabeth. By creating a lyric authority out o f the logic o f com m odity circulation and Calvinism, however, the speaker tacidy challenges Elizabeth’s assertion o f absolute monarchical power. T he authority o f Lok’s speaker consequently points to the need to reimagine the class dynamics em bodied in the E n glish sonnet.
