Mary Sidney's Antonius and the Ambiguities of French History

Author: Prescott, Anne Lake

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 38, Numbers 1-2, 1 July 2008 , pp. 216-233(18)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

Mary Sidney Herbert's translation of Garnier's Marc-Antoine has a trans-Channel context that sharpens and complicates its implications. To remember that Garnier was an official who nevertheless flirted with the radically subversive Holy League and wrote during a three-sided civil war in which definitions of loyalty were in flux adds further poignancy to a play set during Roman civil tumults. Sidney wrote shortly after the assassination of Henri III, a mother-dominated and (it was said) sexually ambiguous murderer whom many in England despised even as they preferred him to the League. Such a background gives Sidney's work additional irony and moral ambiguity.

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Barnard College, Columbia University

Publication date: 2008-07-01

More about this publication?

A supplement to the Modern Language Review, this journal includes articles and reviews on the language and literature of the English-speaking world. Most of the volumes published so far are 'Special Numbers', collections of between fifteen and eighteen commissioned articles on particular topics, such as the impact of the French Revolution on English writers; literature in the modern media; and colonial and imperial themes in literature.