SOURCE: Mueller, Janel. “A Tudor Queen Finds Voice: Katherine Parr's Lamentations of a Sinner.” In The Historical Renaissance: New Essays on Tudor and Stuart Literature and Culture, edited by Heather Dubrow and Richard Strier, pp. 15-47. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988.

In the following essay, Mueller discusses the achievement of Parr's Lamentations and examines its origins and composition, and in so doing raises questions about gender and authorship.

Did women have a Renaissance? Arguing for gender as one crucial factor in the differential cultural advances shown by historical eras, Joan Kelly followed up her question a decade ago with negative evidence drawn mainly from literary texts.¹ In their depictions of Renaissance court life, women fall gracefully silent as they accede to the place and roles allotted them in men's discourse. But perhaps Kelly's secular outlook was inadequate to address the complex of social facts. For Renaissance England...