Locating Aemilia Lanyer: Mapping Transformation in ‘The Description of Cooke-ham’

Abstract

The article interrogates the assumption that Aemilia Lanyer’s poem ‘The Description of Cooke-ham’ describes a classic country house. Utilizing early modern maps, it expands the definition of Cookham and questions the importance of the alleged ‘country house’ to Lanyer, thereby enriching discussions of Lanyer’s unique proto-feminist poetics. Understanding the place and space of Cookham allows readers to properly position Lanyer and her companions, Margaret and Anne Clifford, in an elided literal and spiritual landscape where autonomous female religious community thrives. The article contends that Lanyer’s poems must be read as tightly interwoven pieces which have the place of Cookham as the unifying, palimpsested theme. Restoring the context of Lanyer’s book and returning to the context of her writing are a means of moving beyond tokenism to study Lanyer as a talented, innovative writer keenly in tune with her social, religious, and physical environments.