Contemporaries
John Dryden's famous, extolling ode praises Killigrew for her beauty, virtue, and literary and artistic talent. Dryden was one of several contemporaries who wrote in praise of Killigrew after her death, and the posthumous collection of her work published in 1686 included additional poems commending her literary merit, irreproachable piety, and personal charm. Killigrew's virtue and poetic talent are also emphasized in poems by her contemporaries John Chatwin and Edmund Wodehouse.[2]: 36, 40–41 [15][10]: 180 [12]
Samuel Johnson considered Dryden's ode "the noblest our language has produced."[16] Horace Walpole was less enthusiastic, describing Dryden's ode as "an harmonious hyperbole".[17] Anthony Wood in his 1721 essay defends Dryden's praise of Killigrew, confirming that Killigrew "was equal to, if not superior" to any of the compliments lavished upon her. Furthermore, Wood asserts that Killigrew's poems must have been well received in her time, otherwise "her Father would never have suffered them to pass the Press" after her death.[16]
Modern critiques of Dryden's Ode
The best known assessment of Killigrew's work, Dryden's ode, has received far more extensive literary analysis than Killigrew's own work.[18] Critics have tended to assert that Dryden's praise is excessive. They have argued variously that Dryden's ode should be read as a formal exercise illustrative of Augustan sensibility,[19] as irony,[20] as a validation of poetry rather than of a person,[21] or as political allegory.[22]
Robert Daly suggests that Dryden's ode should be read in the context of Dryden's beliefs about poetry as a moral force, and with an awareness of Dryden's involvement within a contemporary community of poets. Dryden viewed poets as teachers of moral truths, and repeatedly sought to celebrate and encourage other writers. Killigrew was significant to Dryden as a moral exemplar as well as a writer of poems, and is praised by him on both grounds and presented as a model for others. For Dryden, these are not separate issues but deeply connected: religion, morals, poetry and politics are fundamentally interrelated. Anne Killigrew may be a younger poet of lesser skill than Dryden, but she shares Dryden's "operative ethic". Seen in this light, as an "ethically sensitive poet", who was "a member of the community whose goals he sought to serve, she merited and received his best effort". In praising Killigrew and encouraging others to read her work, Dryden "serve[s] the long cause of poetry."[21]
In terms of structure, Dryden's ode follows the forms of an elegy as well as being an ode. Daly argues that Dryden's ode also should be read structurally as an implicit dialogue with parallels to a canonization trial. In such a structure the author is able to raise and then respond to possible objections to his apotheosis of Anne Killigrew. Within this reading, the opposition of ideas that others have interpreted as ironic becomes an understandable progression within an argument.[21] Ann Messenger considers Daly's case to be "well argued".[18]
Critiques of Killigrew's poetry
Killigrew's work includes religious and pastoral poems, as well as tributes to those in family and court circles, and intensely personal poems.[1][18][2] It is not known who organized them for publication, but the order may be somewhat chronological. The poems are also grouped by poetic genre, which displays their variety and Killigrew's versatility as a poet. The first of Killigrew's poems is an unfinished epic, in which Alexander is challenged by Amazons! Epigrams are grouped together, as are pastorals, philosophical poems, poems that reference her own paintings, and other personal poems. Occasional poems appear throughout. "The arrangement of her verse, then, reinforces the impression that she viewed herself ... as a serious beginning poet, exploring all the facets of her craft."[9]
Those who criticize Killigrew for focusing on conventional topics, such as death, love, and the human condition, ignore the social conventions of her time. "Women could not speak in the voices of bard, theologian, scholar, or courtly lover" but were largely limited to "tones of private life". Like Katherine Philips and Anne Finch, Killigrew generally writes as if for a private audience, on private themes. This strategy was often adopted even when the underlying subject had implications for the public and for politics.[23]
The very poetic structures that women chose reflected this and helped them to avoid charges of inappropriate self-display.[23] As Margaret Anne Doody has observed, iambic tetrameter was often used by Augustan women poets. Such a meter was not associated with male classical learning or intellectual dominance; rather it supported casualness, individuality, and originality. John Dryden's statement, in his "Ode To the Pious Memory of the accomplished young lady, Mrs. Anne Killigrew," that "Art she had none, yet wanted none, / For Nature did that want supply", may reflect such a distinction between "artificial" and "natural" poetic forms.[24][12] Such qualities continue to connect Killigrew and other women poets of her time with modern readers.[25][23] In many of her poems, she achieves a timeless quality.[1]
Similarly, the pastoral form was seen as less intellectual and thus "safe" for the use of women poets. It is important to recognize, then, that Killigrew overturns a number of the form's well-established conventions in her pastoral poems. Unlike male pastoral poets who tended to voice male characters, Killigrew divides her dialogue between males and females, giving women the chance to initiate and control the discourse. "Her female voices, often rhetorically powerful, become the dominant orators in her pastoral dialogues."[26] Both the gender and the authority of the speaker are breaks with convention. Traditionally submissive, the female speakers in Killigrew's pastorals achieve a position of power and self-control vis-a-vis traditionally dominant male speakers.[26]
Finally Killigrew introduces darker themes into the pastoral form, using it to warn women of the dangerous potential of transient love affairs. All too often pastoral love is a matter of beauty or availability. The speaker lists the suffering nymphs who have given away their hearts only to be tossed aside. Killigrew's changes to the pastoral tradition suggest a commentary on both the moral tradition of the pastoral and the mores of the Stuart court, which has been described as both hedonistic and "notoriously libertine".[26][2] In her pastoral poems, Killigrew suggests what it meant to her to be virtuous in a world of license. She creates poems in which chastity, emotional self-control, and constancy are all valued. "Anne Killigrew's poetry finds its value as an act of reflection and exploration of courtly life and morality."[26]
Dryden emphasized Killigrew's importance as a voice for virtue and order in a world where license and sin were prevalent.[1] Velez-Nunez sees Killigrew's choice of virtue as a rebellion against the licentiousness of the court in which she lived.[27] In "To the Queen", Killigrew turns the heroic mode of her opening poem, "Alexandreis", on its head and uses it to critique the Stuart court. Alexander's "Frantic Might" is contrasted with the queen's "Grace and Goodness." [9][12] Through her poems, Killigrew foregrounds and praises women for strength and heroic power ("Alexandreis", "To the Queen", "Herodias") as well as for virtue.[2]: 34–36 [12] She encourages her readers to lead a virtuous life while she acknowledges the ongoing experience of temptation and "gilded nothings" which mislead the soul (“A Farewell to Worldly Joys”).[1][12] Regarding virtue, Anne Killigrew may be more accurately characterized as a self-deprecating and witty observer rather than as a didactic moralist.[9]
“Upon the Saying That My Verses Were Made by Another”[12] has been described as "a cornerstone for women’s literary history" due to its frequent reprinting in anthologies and its discussion in women's studies.[1] In it, Killigrew describes her experiences as a woman and a writer. Her tone is "forthright and direct".[1] "The poem narrates her personal history as a poet, her desire to write, her ambition to be recognized, and, finally, her feelings of being badly treated by an audience who refused to believe her the author of her own work."[28] Through a shifting series of metaphors reminiscent of a love affair, Killigrew describes her changing relationship with the god of poetry and with her audience. After deciding to vow herself to the muse of poetry, "pleasing Raptures fill'd my Ravisht Sense"; but when she reveals herself, "What ought t'have brought me Honour, brought me shame!" In a twisting of Aesop's Painted Jay, her readers tear off her feathers to give them away to others. Kristina Straub suggests that the metaphors of violation, domination, and submission within the poem are similar to those of rape. Nonetheless, Killigrew converts "the experience of victimization into the energy of anger".[28] She finds a new locus of power by choosng to rebel against what is said against her and to continue writing despite the difficulties this involves.[11][28]
Th'Envious Age, only to Me alone, Will not allow, what I do write, my Own, But let 'em Rage, and 'gainst a Maide Conspire, So Deathless Numbers from my Tuneful Lyre Do ever flow; so Phebus I by thee Divinely Inspired and possest may be; I willingly accept Cassandras Fate,
To speak the Truth, although believ'd too late.[12]
