Annotated Bibliography

For an upcoming reading response paper, my professor asked that we write an annotated bibliographic on two sources we found. Below, I have done so, using Meg Lota Brown's article on Rachel Speght and A. Lynn Magnusson's on Jane Anger. For my paper, I will be analyzing the works of Speght and Anger, as well as comparing them and examining cultural context surrounding their work.

Brown, Meg Lota. “Rachel Speght.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 126. Ed. M.       Thomas Hester. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 February 2011.

      Brown discusses everything from Speght’s life to her few pieces of writing. She reveals that while no evidence supporting Speght’s formal education, Speght’s writing clearly demonstrates a grasp of rhetoric and classical literature as well as contemporary, and an understanding of Latin and the Bible. She also points to contemporary reaction to “Mouzell for Melastomus” including Speght’s complaint in a later work that few people credited the work to herself but rather to her father, James Speght.

      For my paper, Brown’s analysis of Speght’s “Mouzell for Melastomus” will certainly help in that Brown focuses on Speght’s analogy of Adam and Eve to the modern standing of men and women. She also points at Speght’s approach differing from Swetnam’s as far as restraint in “argument and tone.” I particularly found Brown’s mention of Speght as a “protofeminist” interesting. Having never heard that word before, I looked it up and now understand the term to refer to “feminists” prior to the 20^th Century when the word actually surfaced. This will provide another lens through which I can analyze both Speght and Anger, looking at them both as precursors to feminism despite neither of them yet arguing women’s status below men.

Magnusson, A. Lynn. “Jane Anger.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 136. Ed. David A. Richardson. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 February 2011.

       Magnusson begins by noting that no knowledge of Jane Anger’s life exists and quickly moves on to dispel an argument made by some that a male authored Anger’s writing. She goes on to interpret Anger’s “Her Protection for Women” by highlighting key phrases and attacks on “Boke, His Surfeit on Love.” In doing so, she highlights how Anger made the first real defense of women by women as well as making an attack on men in the process. She extends her protection not just to virtuous women, but the feminine sex in general. Magnusson also emphasizes the way Anger reworks the Surfeiter’s arguments against him as well as uses popular tools of male rhetoric to form female rhetoric of the time.

       Magnusson’s interpretations of Anger’s work have implications for my paper in regards to identifying the importance of how Anger twisted instruments of male rhetoric around and used them in her own way. This will help in my own discussion of Anger’s work in comparison to Rachel Speght’s. Additionally, Magnusson identifies important cultural context surrounding Anger’s work pertinent to my own analysis.