Table of Contents

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Entering the Urania through the Frontispiece

Abundance versus Lack

Reading the Lack of Prefatory Material

Reading the Abundance of the Frontispiece

Conclusions

Chapter 2: Narrator and Narratee: Guidance, Critical Sympathy and Discretion

The Gender-Neutral Narrator

Textual Guidance: Orientation and Cohesion

Sympathy and Criticism

The Art of Narration and Discretion

The Narratee

The Published First Part vs. the Manuscript Continuation

Chapter 3: Narrative Levels and Strands: Emotional Immediacy, Proliferation and the Promise of Closure

Narrative Levels

Narrative Strands

The Published First Part vs. the Manuscript Continuation

Chapter 4: Space and Displacements: Multiple Reading Modes and Tensions of Meaning

Reading Space and Settings

Spatial Movements and Travel Patterns

Chapter 5: Recurring Themes and Plots: Textually Inscribed Reflection and Debate

Recurring Themes and Plots

The Quest for Identity

Conquering and Defending a Throne

Love Matters

Courtship

Male Infidelity

Marriage

Supporting and Contrasting Inset Tales

Conclusion: Interpretive Freedom vs. Closure – The Story of Drusio and Isabella

Appendix

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Index

About the Author

Rahel Orgis is a postdoctoral researcher on behalf of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland and coordinator for the English doctoral programme of CUSO (Conférence universitaire de Suisse occidentale).

Reviews

"Rahel Orgis's Narrative Structure and Reader Formation in Lady Mary Wroth's "Urania" marks a milestone on two fronts. It sets up an inductive narratological procedure for appreciating Wroth's experimental design in the complex discursive terrain of Urania and thereby makes significant advances over classical narratological theory (Gérard Genette, et al.) as equipment for reading early modern prose romances. Orgis's careful attention to the interplay between narrative levels and strands and geographic mappings of "travel patterns" (p. 10) in Urania provides readers with an enormously helpful way to understand the narrative tactics underpinning Wroth's brand of romance-inflected cosmopolitanism. (261)." -- Gallagher, Lowell. "Recent Studies in the English Renaissance." SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 58 no. 1, 2018"The book is very well researched, extremely rigorous in its analysis, and methodologically consistent. The book also opens up genuinely new paths for the study of Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania, as well as other prose texts of the early modern period. Rahel Orgis’s work will be particularly useful for developing new critical narratives around women writers of the early modern period. Indeed, Orgis’s appendices alone – a series of detailed charts which lay out the narrative structure of Urania from different perspectives – will be of great value to early modernists specializing in Wroth or early modern romance." -- SAMEMES Early Career Book Prize, Sep. 2018