Poetic Resistance by Pamela Hammons

Author:Pamela Hammons [Hammons, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Public Policy, Social Policy, Social Science, General, Ethnic Studies, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000160826
Google: F2HwDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-08-26T03:51:44+00:00

Herbert, of course, also wrestles with the problem the use of figurative language poses for religious verse. Cf. esp. Herbert’s “Jordan (1),” “Jordan (II),” “A True Hymn,” “The Posy,” and Sonnet I.

44 Mack argues that “The characterization of the female visionary as an empty vessel reflected an attitude that was far more complicated than simple misogyny, for the defects of rationality and the attuned intuition of visionary women were actually viewed with respect, even envy, by those philosophers who felt alienated from God by their compulsive, prideful reliance on the power of their own reason. Indeed, in this respect all women had a clear spiritual advantage over men, for the static resulting from their weak and intermittent surges of intellectual energy was less likely to interfere with their capacity to act as receptors for the divine, spiritual energy emanating from heaven” (33). Trapnel takes advantage of this cultural notion of gendered interactions with the divine and aggressively turns it back on the clergy who oppose her.

45 John Proud and Caleb Ingolds prefatory letter to Trapnels A Legacy for Saints suggests that civil and religious leaders certainly noticed Trapnel’s accusations against the clergy. Among the three main points that they make in her defense is the claim that she only opposes clergy who act like bishops. She blames the clergy for setting the civil authorities against her in her prefatory letter to Anna Trapnels Report and Plea. In fact, she relates in this defense how the clergy use the advantage of their official positions to speak against her from their pulpits, and she implies that they feel threatened because she does their job better than they do (Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea 25).

46 See the discussion of Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea in the introduction to this chapter. Also cf. Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea 25.

47 Richey makes a similar alsim arout the degret to which Eleanor Davies’ prophecies were legible to her seventeenth-century audience (175). In 1914, the bookseller Dobell, who speculates that Trapnel was the “first woman preacher of whom we have any record,” comments in reference to her verse, that “It need hardly be said that the lady’s verse is very wretched stuff, the rime and reason of which are about equally defective.” Furthermore, he asserts that The Cry of a Stone and the untitled Bodleian folio both consist of “illiterate and incoherent religious rhapsodies” (Dobell, “A Unique Book: Anna Trapnel” 222, 221).

After commenting on the biblical saturation of Milton’s writings, Hill asserts that “Scarcely less Biblical are the writings of Levellers, notably Lilbume, of Gerard Winstanley, of Ranters and especially of Fifth Monarchists” (The English Bible 21). Trapnel’s verse would seem more approachable and more impressive if it were printed in a modern edition with the kinds of exegetical aids used in editions of Milton’s works. Interestingly, Dobell also sees reason to compare Trapnel’s verse with Milton’s: “In one of her discourses she reports a dialogue between the Father and the Son, in which they discuss the question of the Fall of Man and the means of his redemption.

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