Epistolary Politics and the Poetic Miscellany
Project Summary
Ray Siemens

Research for my project, Epistolary Politics and the Poetic Miscellany: An Exploration of the Devonshire Manuscript, will lead to the first major study and first textual edition, in print and electronic form, of the Devonshire MS (British Library Additional MS 17,492). The Devonshire MS is a poetic miscellany of the 1530s and 1540s containing courtly poetry by the canonical early Renaissance figures Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey; the work of, or transcriptions of the work of others, by prominent court figures Mary Shelton, Margaret Douglas, Mary Howard, Thomas Howard and Anne Boleyn; and a mix of transcribed extracts of medieval verses by Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, and Richard Roos. Historically privileged in literary history as a main source of Thomas Wyatt's poetry, the manuscript has received new and significant attention of late, in large part because of the way in which its contents vividly reflect the interactions of poetry and power in early Renaissance society and, more significantly, because in that reflection we find one of the earliest examples of the explicit and direct participation of women in the type of literary and political-poetic discourses found in the document.

This work will serve critics of Renaissance literature, historians of the early Tudor court, and those engaged in the study of women's writing and its literary history; the project seeks also to serve a much broader group: readers of poetry. The contents of the manuscript make good, insightful, informative, and provocative reading, specifically because of what has led to its recent attention by students and scholars alike: its emphasis on the relationship between poetry and politics, its explicit exemplification of such a poetic discourse being carried on within a multi-gendered group, and its makeup of poems and poetic debates on topics as varied as romantic love, political allegiance, the importance of family, and the role of women in society.

While, as scholarship and study will attest, interest in the Devonshire MS is increasing rapidly, the manuscript has yet to be the focus of a major study and has yet to be edited in its entirety; as such, it is not available in any accessible form to the growing audience of scholars and students that are engaging its contents. Accompanying the textual edition will be a close study of its contents, a study that reflects their unique nature and their operation, chiefly in the hands of Mary Shelton and Margaret Douglas (its principal compilers), in an epistolary manner; many of the manuscript's poems, it is important to note, present complete exchanges in themselves between those associated with the manuscript and, at times, also represent parts of larger exchanges taking place beyond the borders of the manuscript. The edition and its study will emphasise the Devonshire MS' historical context, and the manner in which that context is engaged by the contents of the manuscript, through the presentation and use of a variety of materials extra to the text of the edition; these will include other literary works, historical letters, legal documents, artwork, and other court-centred materials.