The “Easterne Starr” and the “Orient Pearle”: the representation of Eastern characters in the second part of Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

The “Easterne Starr” and the “Orient Pearle”: the representation of Eastern characters in the second part of Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania

Résumé

Lady Mary Wroth’s Countess of Montgomery's Urania (1621) is generally considered the first prose romance written by a woman in the English language. Its main plot follows the paths of star-crossed lovers Pamphilia, queen of an Eastern kingdom in modern-day Turkey, and Amphilanthus, the Holy Roman emperor. As chief protagonist, Pamphilia is given unprecedented voice and agency for a fictional Eastern woman at the time, and although the second part of the romance was never published, it pushes the geographical boundaries of the first manuscript, which mainly centered on Europe. Through the strategic love stories between Eastern and Western characters, Wroth manages to unify Europe and Central Asian lands such as Persia and Tartaria under the banner of a sole white and Christian empire. However, a closer look at the Eastern plot of the second part shows that the groundbreaking agency given to a very Western “easterne starr”, Pamphilia, is built mainly on the gradual erasure of more foreign Eastern characters such as Lindafillia, Queen of Persia, or Rodomandro, King of Tartaria. In fact, Wroth’s innovative romance turns out to actively undermine the powers of those characters by asserting their irreversible difference. Ultimately, I will argue, a close study of the portrayals of these Eastern characters in Urania helps shed light on Wroth’s pioneering role as a female proponent of proto-imperialist fantasies at a time when England was still struggling to assert itself on the international stage.

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Dates et versions

hal-03927442 , version 1 (06-01-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03927442 , version 1

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Mathilde Alazraki. The “Easterne Starr” and the “Orient Pearle”: the representation of Eastern characters in the second part of Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania. Commemorating the Sidney Ladies, 1621-2021, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Sep 2021, Paris, France. ⟨hal-03927442⟩
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