Talk:Diana Primrose

The subject of this article

This article appears to have gone through considerable revisions. It has had a "multiple issues" template for twelve years. In its current form, it seems to me that there is one central issue: the article is more about the poem than the poet. So, I would like to prune it back and intend to do so within the next week or so. Please share any thoughts here. If someone wants to take the pruned material and make an article about the poem, super! That's not on my to-do list, though. — scribblingwoman 14:00, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Why I removed content from this article.

• The content relating primroses to Elizabeth II, a Tudor, because it made pseudo-scholarly claims while citing a website that is more a work of art and speculation, not scholarship.
• The reference to John Nichols' belief that Anne Clifford was Diana Primrose because he offered no evidence in support of this and none is found in Clifford's surviving writings. The statement also cited no source.
• The analysis of the poem because the article is about the author and because it is original work. Wikipedia just isn't designed to do justice to original work.

The article is no place for debate, so I'll post here what I can't post there:

"In a field where the sex of the author is a precondition of interpretation, it is not surprising that questions of attribution are often insufficiently examined, and pseudonyms, spoofs, and parodies are sometimes accepted at face value. In the absence of independent corroboration, there is a danger that questions of authorship are locked into a hermeneutic closed circle--a given text is presented as being by a woman, its style and content are examined accordingly, which then confirms the authorial diagnosis made by the presentational codes and paratexts of the text. There is no clear division between the textual and the critical, and editors need to be alert to the presentational strategies and their deceptions found both in early modern texts and in modern editions. For example, the poem attributed to a Diana Primrose, A Chaine of Pearle (1630), is accepted at face value by its editors in Kissing the Rod, and in Early Modern Women Poets. In the former instance, it is on the basis that her name is on the title-page and that the surname "Primrose" is not flagrantly pseudonymous, like those of Constantia Munda or Esther Sowernam. In the latter, while the editors hint at some potential interpretative play ("The motto ... seems to imply a reading strategy: the poem, or the author [Prim- rose]," 227), no real question of attribution is raised. Biographical authority is invoked, even though the case is clearly not proven:

The most notable member of the Primrose family was Gilbert, a Scot (b. 1573) head of the reformed church in France, and later chaplain in ordinary to James I. The relationship of Diana Primrose to this man (if any, but the name is uncommon) is unknown." (Early modern women poets (1520-1700): an anthology. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. pg. 277)

(Clarke, Danielle (2003). "Nostalgia, Anachronism, and the Editing of Early Modern Women's Texts". Text. 15: 187–209. Retrieved 15 January 2024 via JSTOR.)

Drastic, I know, but it long needed doing. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 07:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)