Contexts for Reading Anne Lock's Meditations

When I first began to study early modern devotional verse, Louis Martz's The Poetry of Meditation seemed so fresh in part because it took seriously, like few other works of its time, the context within which poetry was created.  Martz looked to popular meditative practices and found there a rich generating context and set of influences.  This was an enormously powerful explanatory device--but a device aimed most of all at explaining Metaphysical poetry. Martz's strong thesis (and most other accounts of the Metaphysicals for that matter) generally encouraged readers to ignore the full range of sixteenth-century contexts as he asserted that Robert Southwell found English religious poetry in "poor estate," hobbling "along in worn-out garb, mumbling the same old tunes, while on every side one might see the results of experiment in the poetry of profane love" (280).

Much of my work in this field has argued with Martz's conclusions, finding, as did Barbara Lewalski, Richard Strier, and others, significant Protestant models for early modern devotional verse. And in looking at sixteenth-century psalm translations, sacred parodies, and centuries of devotional sonnets, I also found considerable material to put into question Martz's claim about only "worn-out garb" before Southwell. But like Martz, I was looking for sixteenth-century traditions, modes, and forerunners that might have been "useful" for Donne, Herbert, and their accomplished contemporaries. In doing that work, I came upon Anne Lock's sonnets meditating upon Psalm 51.  Lily Bess Campbell briefly mentioned the sonnets in her broad survey Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth-Century England, but, otherwise, Lock's work was invisible. 

I followed Campbell's lead in not making much of Anne Lock's sonnets but was suspicious of Campbell's emphasis upon Psalm translation as a "mere" vehicle for conversion and competition with love poetry. I did my best to make sense of Lock's sonnets in a tradition of biblical adaptation and translation, but in hunting as I was for "forerunners" to the greatness of Donne and Herbert, I had little context for placing Lock's sonnets within a literary framework.  Scholarship had assigned such works--biblical paraphrases and translations--a place as minor, anticipatory, second-rate and generally advanced the premise that Donne and Herbert finally wrote something good after all that sixteenth-century drabness.¹ Neither did I have then a framework at that point for celebrating Anne Lock as an exemplar of women's writing in the early modern period--an interesting figure, as Susan Felch, Margaret Hannay and others have established, in a tradition with its own richness and depth.  I gave Anne Lock a few pages in a long dissertation and forgot about her for fifteen years.

I use this personal narration to get to several issues concerning contextualizing.  I'm interested in psalm translations like Lock's as a cultural context, a setting in which devotional lyric poetry gets defined and refined in the sixteenth century.  It isn't just "worn-out garb" before Southwell, Donne, and Herbert, if we know where to look; the sixteenth-century devotional forms are more than just prelude to what follows.  Thus we also need to work on how to make sense of that context, exploring ways to read poetry such as Anne Lock's sonnets.  The "context," clearly, isn't just "there" but a product, as my narrative suggests, of our constructing interpretations.  

[top]

In many ways, modern critical practices have made the genre of psalm translation invisible; at the very least, our habits of reading have made the values of this genre and works like Lock's sonnets difficult to appreciate.  New Critical assumptions and snobbery led to much emphasis upon the "badness" of this poetry, exemplified in the scorn and abuse heaped upon the Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter.  Recently, critics have found more productive ways to understand sixteenth-century psalm translations.  Roland Greene, for instance, points to the ways in which the psalters of the sixteenth-century "stand for a range of positions as to the nature and potentialities of lyric discourse" (19).  Tessa Watt has connected devotional literature to the marketplace and noted in interesting ways how psalms came to replace popular devotional ballads.   Watt goes on to question simple "confrontational models" of sacred versus profane, stating that

The evidence of cheap religious print does not contradict the cultural importance of either Protestantism or the printed word, but it does suggest that the confrontational models. . .are unsatisfactory.  In studying the relationship between these new forces and the existing culture, we need to see not only points of conflict and displacement, but also areas of consensus and gradual integration. Even to write of Protestant or print as "forces" is misleading: we need to see them not as coherent and unchanging entities . . . but as inseparable from and constantly modified by the cultural contexts in which they are found.  (325)

Coburn Freer talks about the metrical psalm being "as much a movement as a genre" (15).  And Margaret Hannay says the Psalms were "so significant in the Reformation that they can be studied as popular culture, as political statement, and as a literary genre" ("House-confined" 45).  These concepts of the psalms as "popular culture"--as a form widely circulated, embedded deeply in both traditional and emerging religious culture, as contributing to and modified by cultural contexts--helps greatly, I think, in making sense of both the context and the individual works.

Each different literary version is related to all the others in that they all share the same model--the  Book of Psalms.  They are also related to each other in that they are products of a particular historical period and hence of the culture of that period.  . . . An examination of metrical psalms as instances of a literary kind, rather than as the works of individual authors, can show how different authors exploited the shared, contemporary resources of that kind.  (2)

In moving away from our New Critical readings that emphasize the formal achievements of an original author within a context of influence, Zim suggests, we might find a better context for appreciating works like the metrical psalms.  In connecting to recent critical emphasis on intertextuality, with general tendencies that de-emphasize authorship and influence, we may find a more positive way to read this verse, one more in concert with early modern ideas about originality and literary value.

[top]

The task here has been adumbrated in Stephen Greenblatt's reading of Thomas Wyatt's Penitential Psalms.  Greenblatt asserts that readings of Wyatt's penitential psalms have tended toward two polarities--emphasizing either the "constraining, repressive force of literary and social conventions" or the vivifying force of personality, emotional need, honesty" (120).  That opposition, as Greenblatt argues, invests a "romantic misreading" into these texts at best and, more likely, a general neglect of this form.  We must seek ways to navigate between seeing the metrical psalms as "an inert mass of cliches" or emphasizing the "intense individuality" of artists like Wyatt (Greenblatt 120) --and, of course, Lock.  Translation, as Greenblatt has observed, is never a simple exchange;  "There is no translation that is not at the same time an interpretation" (115).  Understanding the interpretive moves of this sixteenth-century poetry is indeed difficult, especially given our desire for novelty and originality.

At issue here is also Julia Kristeva's argument that a text  "cannot exist as a hermetic or self-sufficient whole, and so does not function as a closed system" (Worton and Still 1).  Writers--especially of forms such as Psalm translations--are influenced by a huge variety of texts, just as readers bring their own influences and texts to their readings.  Further, Kristeva has argued that a sexual hierarchical opposition has reigned.  On the one hand, there has been a "phallic monologism or the illusion of unity and self-sufficiency" (Worton and Still 30)--a position that clearly sponsors the denigration of a form such as the metrical psalms and the isolated recognition of some recognized literary artists such as Wyatt. On the other hand, in Kristeva's terms, there is "liquefaction . . . polyphony, the receptive object penetrated by other voices and so on.  The latter pole has been admired, but, more particularly, feared for many centuries." Michael Worton and Judith Still argue that this type of work--and it would seem that the metrical psalms fit the category--"can be read as a figure of 'femininity', of that particular 'other' to the same" (30).  In these cultural terms, it seems less than surprising that Lock's work would be ignored.  And it would seem that we must seek new methods of reading in order to fully appreciate its values so as not to simply repeat the same binaries.

[top]

I think these theoretical insights are important for establishing contexts for reading the psalm translations as important contexts for lyric poetry.  But I'm still troubled by the difficulty that accompanies my attempts to think about Lock's work in the context of biblical translation and adaptation--more specifically, as one of scores of sixteenth-century appropriations (translations, adaptations) of Psalm 51 and other biblical literature.  How can we talk about her sonnets as one instance of this larger phenomenon?  What happens when we emphasize the intertextual aspects of this original work, stripping away our habitual moves toward formalist pattern making, feminist celebration, and biographical interpretation?  For me, the answer is "I don't know--but I know it's difficult." Hypertext, it seems, is one possible answer.

As George Landow, Richard Lanham, and others have pointed out, the new technology, with its massive searchable archival linking of texts, ushers in a new era of textual understanding, blurring traditional concepts of authorship, authority, and reading; the very notion of canonicity becomes tenuous in an environment of the electronic text.  As one theorist put is, "where text is linear, hypertext can be lateral as well.  Where traditional conventions of writing and reading depend on (or create artificially) hierarchies of importance, hypertext can also represent more complex, 'rhizomatic' relationships between ideas" (Burbules and Callister; 25).   Landow quotes Thais Morgan, who asserts that intertextuality, "as a structural analysis of texts in relation to the larger system of signifying practices or uses of signs in culture," shifts attention from the triad constituted by author/work/tradition to another constituted by text/discourse/culture. In so doing, "intertextuality replaces the evolutionary model of literary history with a structural or synchronic model of literature as a sign system" (Landow 10).   As Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan understood, the new technology also restores us to theories of reading and orality more in line with Renaissance, pre-book culture.

Hypertext is potentially unlimited, connecting all texts to all other texts in a never-ending network. But the "bounded hypertext"² I've constructed sets limits and makes choices, highlighting the many translations of the Psalms circulating at the time--including Coverdale's and Tyndale's and converging on the Geneva Bible of 1560--and bringing together the amazing confluence of translation, interpretation, and even polemic circulating during this period.  Lock uses a particular biblical text that reveals interesting differences of emphasis and style from the various biblical translations in circulation.  Similarly, this hypertext collects some of the wide-ranging appropriations of Psalm 51 by other poets, extending through the sixteenth century.  In exploring hypertext links, one might easily contrast Lock's psalms with those of Wyatt, William Hunnis, the Sidneys, and countless other poets.  Hypertext can easily, and in a material, physical manner, link these texts that book technology, the economics of print culture, and our critical methods have largely kept isolated and hierarchically separated.

To try to even begin comparing Lock's version of Psalm  51 with the many other versions circulating during the sixteenth century is still difficult even within hypertext.  As the index illustrates, a partial list of metrical versions of Psalm 51 includes

• George Joye's The Psalter of David in Englishe purely and faithfully translated aftir the texte of Feline... (1530)
• Miles Coverdale's Goostly psalmes and spiritual songes (1535) and The Psalter or Boke of the Psalmes (1548)
• Richard Taverner's An Epitome of the Psalmes, or brief meditacions upon the same (1539)

• Sir Thomas Wyatt's Certayne psalmes chosesn out of the psalter of David (1549)

• Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey's Certayne Chapters of the proverbes of Salomon (1549-1550)

• Robert Crowley'sThe Psalter of David newely translated into Englysh metre (1549)

• William Whittingham's One and Fiftie Psalmes of David in English metre (1556)

• Matthew Parker's The whole psalter translated in to English metre (1567)

• William Hunnis's Certayne Psalmes chosen out of the Psalter of David, and drawen forth into Englysh meter (1550)

• Philip Sidney Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke's The Psalmes of David translated into diverse & sundry kinds of verse (1599)
• Richard Verstegan's Odes. In imitation of the seaven penitential psalms (1601)

This list of metrical versions is by no means complete.³  Moreover, commentaries by Calvin, Luther, and other theologians circulated in England and were almost certainly available to Lock.  Other prose versions, such as Charles Glemhan's Most godly prayers compiled out of Dauids Psalmes by D. Peter Martyr (1569) provided other meditative commentaries on Psalm 51.  Tracking down all the prose, poetry, and commentary surrounding just this one Penitential psalm in the mid-sixteenth century is indeed a daunting task, but my hypertext offers one way of reading laterally, moving easily from one text to another.

While it is difficult to capture in print form here an intertextual sense of how Lock's collection interacts with the amazing number of English versions of Psalm 51 in circulation, one modest way to get some sense of the differences and similarities is to concentrate on just one verse of the psalm, the pivotal fifth verse: "For loe, I was shapen in wickednes, and in sinne my mother conceived me." Thus does Lock render the verse in the margin of her manuscript, paralleling most closely in this case (not true for all of her translation) the "Great Bible" of Cranmer version of 1539.  The Geneva Bible, completed in 1560 in the community that Lock joined in 1557, revised the Great Bible and here substitutes "borne" for "shapen."   The Geneva Psalter, completed in 1557,  renders it this way:  "It is to manifest alas,/that first I was conceyvd in synne:/yea of my mother so borne was,/and yet vile wretche remaine therin."

Lock's seventh sonnet elaborates considerably on this simple verse, standing out for the relative prolixity of the sonnet form.  Lock's version seems shockingly preoccupied with "sinne"--the word is repeated 10 times in 14 lines.  And while at first glance the sonnet merely seems derivative, repetitive, and gloomy, Lock's individual conceptions of the biblical verse stand out.  She emphasizes the "wages of sin," with the phrase "dye in his wrath."  She adds the image of "bloome and frute," extending  it to encompass the sense of her "roote" and "juyse" or core of her life--an emphasis not even hinted at in the other versions before us.  She, like Wyatt, picks up the theme of many biblical commentators, especially Calvin, in arguing that original sin is not simply an excuse--or a means of blaming one's parents--but an opportunity to acknowledge the need for God's grace and mercy.   While she does not go as far as Calvin, who uses this verse as an opportunity to defend the doctrine of original sin against the "Pelagians" and "papists" (62), Lock's sonnet seems very much in line with Calvinist emphases--and, one might say, in dialogue with those texts.⁴

In reading Lock's rendering of this key verse "laterally," in dialogue with the other versions, one finds traditional classifications of  "poetic" and "hymnodic" traditions of psalm translation breaking down.  For instance, Thomas Wyatt's verses translating the Psalm are "literary" in their difficult verse form and in the prevailing mode of artful paraphrase rather than literal translation. They are personal in that the poet may have shared some of the persona's emotions.  Yet these prevailing portraits of Wyatt as a "courtly maker" of metrical psalms often lead away from considering his work as effective devotional verse or as something in dialogue with the larger movement.  Further, beyond often-speculative questions--is Wyatt being literary rather than religious or self-pitying or devout?--we must careful, as Zim warns, not to attribute to the poet what properly belongs to the original psalm. David's voice of penitence, regret, and defensiveness is present in virtually all the versions, not just Wyatt's. While Wyatt's "double voice"--that of his prefatory pieces and the psalms themselves--gives his work a greater sense of complication and drama and Wyatt provides his own emphasis on the "unstable" self and "inward hert," his emphasis seems very close to Lock's and Calvin's.

Beyond Wyatt and Lock, several other versions seem difficult to distinguish, yet each poet provides his own emphasis while participating in similar patterns of emphasis and interpretation. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, for instance, emphasizes "hiddenness." Matthew Parker renders the verse in two neat couplets, giving "filthiness" a unique emphasis.  William Hunnis also turns the verse into a simple four-line couplet, but whereas Parker gives filth and infection prominence, both metrically and interpretively, Hunnis emphasizes "helthe" and "mercy." Finally, Mary Sidney Herbert's contribution to the English Psalter that she co-authored with her brother Phillip sounds both familiar and original.  Sidney not only gives particular emphasis to the mother-child relationship, her images of "living heate" and "cherishing" contrasting strongly with Lock's grimmer and more impersonal sonnet, but also stresses aspects of God's love and mercy.  One could, it seems, establish a claim that Sidney's Psalms (extrapolating now to the entire collection from this very brief excerpt) represent literary "quality" well beyond any of the other excerpts from Psalm 51 sampled here.  Her images are lively, her rhymes and rhythms strong and fluid.  Yet, as I have argued, we might be more reserved in our attempts to either elevate the work of individuals like the Countess of Pembroke or Anne Lock or to merely dismiss the metrical psalms in one lump sum.  Mary Sidney's poetry--like all the other versions we've noted--gains complexity and nuance when examined in the context of all the other poetry of its kind.  

The case of Anne Lock also points out the problematic nature of traditional classifications of the metrical psalms and highlights some of the cultural and literary biases that often lurk beneath their surface.  Greene, for instance, describes a split between the "ritual" and "fictual" dimensions of the genre, contrasting the ways in which psalms were used, especially in Protestant churches, for public devotion to the personal uses to which writers put them.  Greene's description corresponds in part to Richard Todd's contrast of the "church" and "chamber" modes of metrical psalms, exemplified in the Old Version of Sternhold and Hopkins and the "literary" version of Wyatt and the Sidneys.  Others have distinguished between the "courtly" makers concerned with literary values and the biblical poets concerned with truth.  And while all these schemes have some ring of truth to them, we should retain a degree of skepticism toward them.  All biblical poets--or poets who called upon the Bible for poetic, typological, and literary sources--faced complex decisions about truth and expression, form and belief.   Each poet made decisions about what to do with the biblical text, and these decisions can perhaps be categorized with some accuracy; but an intertextual perspective also directs us toward seeing the various psalm translations as less neatly distinguished from one another and sharing a common language and source.

In concluding, I return to Greenblatt's warning about reading the psalms:  We must seek ways to navigate between seeing the metrical psalms, including Lock's, as "an inert mass of cliches," one more lump in the "drab" space before literature.  But so too we should be wary of the impulse to emphasize the "intense individuality" of artists like Lock, even as new discussions about the canon and women's traditions finally provide a context for such discussions.⁵ The middle way I seek here is, I would claim, a more authentic means of understanding the context of this literature--a context that is both constructed by interpretations and a field for constructing literature, an old way of reading made new through new technologies and newly celebrated poets.