Feroli 2006

Feroli, Teresa. Political Speaking Justified: Women Prophets and the English Revolution. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006.

Introduction

the women prophets are not, as they are sometimes portrayed, a group of unhinged and freewheeling ecstatics. They did not write into a void, but, like so many writers before and since, they sought to remake their world and themselves using the materials of received literary traditions. Theirs is a radicalism born not of 'an irruption of female speech' but of a reconfiguring existing literatures to serve their political agenda." (17-18)

"Perhaps the most significant indicator of the strength of this movement is the number of texts the women prophets produced. According to Elaine Hobby, well 'over half the texts published by women between 1649 and 1688 were prophecies.'" (18)

300 active female visionaries in 1640s and 1650s according to Phyllis Mack

between 1641 to 1660, 50 women prophets produced roughly 156 published treatises (19)

"Given that only 39 female-authored first editions of any genre appeared in the first forty years of the seventeenth century, the women prophets' publishing record represents a major milestone in women's literary history. ... Simply put, the position of women prophets within the history of women's writing in England is pivotal." (19)

female prophets consulted by rulers

"The female visionaries were both the first major group of women to insist on their right to participate in political discourse and the first socially diverse group to do so." (20)

"Given women's general exclusion from the public sphere tout court, what enabled a significant number of women to prophesy and publish their visions? The first answer is that they could. In 1641, the Long Parliament eased censorship restrictions and thereby made it possible for both male and female visionaries to publish their words." (21)

"Beyond the legal changes that gave women the opportunity to publish tracts on issues of political import, the revolutionary era created a sense of urgency that spurred many women to assume non-traditional roles." (21)

In the Name of the Father: Divine Right and Women's Rights

"The idea of divine right together with Lady Eleanor's admiration for James plays a central role in the way she constitutes her prophetic identity. This is most apparent in her early tracts of 1625 to 1641. Representing a small but crucial part of her oeuvre, Lady Eleanor's early trats illustrate how she invokes James to create her political signature as a prophet. She begins by amenting James's death and memorializing him as a prophet-king who shares with her an intimate tie to the Word. Over time, however, she makes his the voice that calls her to prophesy. James i no longer merely an inspired king but the embodiment of divinity itself. So powerful is the memory of James that it plays a second role in shaping her prophetic authority. By identifying his daughter Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and not Charles as James' heir, Lady Eleannor begins to imagine herself, the dauggher of a noble father, as the heir to the power and privilege associated with her patronymic. In so doing, she counters her contemporaries' dim view of female inheritance rights and confers the capacity to share in the power of the father's name on the broad category of daughters as well as the daughters of kings." (37)

"Aligned with patriarchy yet advancing a model of female authority, her work marks the earliest stages in the emergence of female political self-consciousness." (37)

"catalogues the multiple sins of her enemy Archbishop Laud" (39)

"repeatedly returning to and developing furhter images she has used previously" -- like Harmonies (39)

"Lady Eleanor's mourning for James resembles that of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah who replaces the secular presence of a beloved king with a vision of the face of God." (40)

James as "ideal muse of his son's reign. She holds James up to his newly crowned heir, Charles, as an example of the best kind of monarch and dedicates her exegesis of the last six books of Daniel to the new king in the hopes that he, like his father, will serve as the 'Defender of the Faith'." (40)

A paraphrase upon the revelation of the Apostle S. John -- conflating the voice of the king and the apostle

"By appropriating the 'I' of John as a means of interpreting Revelation, James links prophetic and monarchical authority to assert, effectively, that his 'Paraphrase is the oney trew and certaine exposition of' John." (42)

"While Lady Eleanor imagines the roles of prophets and kings as overlapping, she still maintains that each accedes to power through distinct means. Kings, in her view and that of James, receive authority through lineal descent." (42)

anagram JAMES, CHARLES, -- ARE MICHAELSS; without James, Charles does not become Michael

Eleanor hopes Charles will be the "Pure Image" of his "Maker"; "Ultimately, Charles will fail her, but she will transfer her portrait of his noble paternity to herself to claim that her father's aristocratic status underwrites her prophetic authority." (43)

Charles as Christ

"Although she marvels at the potential capacity of the 'Arts' of printing and navigation to convert the heathen, she implies that the achievements of 'expert men' pale before hers which marks 'the time of the end.'" (45)

Eleanor self-presents as an inspired reader of Scripture (45)

scriptural exegesis, numerology, anagrams; "total immanence of God in language"

"Because Lady Eleanor was clearly devoted to close study of the Word, her use of anagrams can also be seen as linking her to radical Protestant modes of legitimation." (47)