It has been striking, then, to see early modern literary studies lead the way in theorizing this gap. Early modern studies has long been a vibrant subfield for feminist reading. Recently, like other subfields, early modern studies has entered an era of “weak theory” where critics practice attenuated or mixed commitments. Once again, early modern studies has begun to offer a unique insight, this time into the consequences of weak theory for feminist reading (Sanchez and Loomba 2017; Kadue 2021; Simon 2023)—particularly in relation to early modern love lyric. Over the decades, a rich tradition of feminist criticism has engaged these poems in light of core methodological questions. However, where these poems were once the objects of “strong” symptomatic readings, recent trends in the subfield have made them newly available to weak feminist, or “soft-reparative” appraisals (Simon 2023). So, rather than “taking a break” from feminism (Halley 2007), this panel looks to break new ground in suggesting what its methods might look like in 2025.
Sanchez’s paper argues that the history of criticism on early modern women writers compels us to revise some of the timelines and truisms of postcritique. The usual story is that critique has run out of steam, and accordingly, literary critics should take up more reparative approaches. Yet this story does not account for the different methods that critique has applied to different objects. In the case of feminist criticism, “paranoid” reading has been directed at male-authored texts; meanwhile, female-authored texts have been read with new affection, assumed part of an egalitarian liberal project that, this paper suggests, overlooks these authors' significantly anti-liberal orientations. This paper argues, then, that we must historicize early modern women writers’ love lyrics in the context of the racial, colonial, and imperial projects from whose hierarchies many benefitted. This history compels us to move from an outmoded “women’s studies” model, whose protection of an abstract “woman” has sanctioned the violences of carceral and trans-exclusive varieties of feminism—to continue the unfinished critique long advocated by BIPOC feminists.
Simon argues that an influential line of thinking in the theory of gender and sexuality associates erotic experience with the limits of perception and cognition—with, for instance, “self-shattering” (Bersani), “opacity” (Traub), and “shared disorganization” (Berlant). Affinity for sex as sublime or ungraspable has indeed enabled important critiques of sexual normativity. Yet, scholars and theorists have overlooked the disconcerting proximity between sexual sublimity and the discourse of misogyny. At the core of this paper is a question of sex and value: for example, how is it that misogyny can maintain both an outsized desire for women and an abiding sense of their degradation? The seizure of rapture with attitudes of indifference, superiority, and even hostility? In early modern love poetry, Simon finds the sex act is represented with precisely this aesthetic disjuncture, where female love objects are regarded with, say, disgusted elation, or rapturous degradation. In this way, then, he examines the poetry of Aphra Behn, who renders libertine sex both sublime and mechanically predictable. Drawing from an emergent discourse of disenchantment, Behn considers eros as an aesthetic and political mode of evaluation, raising questions about the possible social consequences of a new and un-sublime sexuality.
Scozzaro argues that Thomas Carew has been seen in two ways: an “elegant court-trifler” known for his underwhelming imitations of Donne and Jonson; and as the writer of “A Rapture,” one of the most passionate and outrageous seduction poems ever written in English. This paper explores the contradictions of this erotic invitation poem and its implications for feminist reading: though the genre foregrounds consent, the language of “A Rapture” is often demanding and forceful. And yet, through her reading of the poem, Scozzaro finds this very force is habitually undone by digressions into strange and difficult conceits. These diversions, she suggests, are so pleasurable that they result in the speaker’s ecstatic collapse, making him unfit for the poem’s nominal purpose. Thus, this paper considers the relationship between force and self-loss, reading Carew alongside works by Titian and Correggio. She considers the tension between rapture and invitation, examining—from what she calls a “weak-feminist” perspective—the nature of masculine force as it is tempered by mannerist exuberance, and even camp.
These panelists are diverse in gender, position, and institutional affiliation.