Reading Isabella Whitney Reading

Abstract:This article considers the reading strategies embedded in Isabella Whitney’s two published volumes, The Copy of a Letter (1567) and A Sweet Nosegay (1573). As it suggests, Whitney was a writer who actively represented herself as a reader and who in turn anticipated the future reading of her own work. In particular, it will focus on Whitney as a female reader who responded to Renaissance constructions of passive female reading: a discussion that, though productively applied to her contemporaries, has largely excluded Whitney. First, the article will examine how A Sweet Nosegay rereads Hugh Plat’s own instructions for reading the Floures of Philosophie, claiming a more active role for Whitney’s own readership. It will then consider this approach in Whitney’s first publication, The Copy of a Letter, in which the poet trains her readers to attend to textual ambiguities and alternatives. As I will argue throughout, Whitney models an active reading process, which encourages her readers to intervene in her texts.