In Donne’s “Sappho to Philaenis,” I was, similarly to Jae-Yeon, interested in the idea of the naturalism of people who look alike being sexually attracted to each other: “And, O, no more; the likeness being such, Why should they not alike in all parts touch?” (48-49). It has made me think of the common cliche that “opposites attract,” and how this phrase seems to naturalize heterosexuality It is interesting to me how science becomes invoked in both formulations. For example, lesbianism here seems natural because of an idea that ‘like attracts like’ in nature. At the same time, heterosexuality often is made normative because the idea of opposing forces in nature being drawn together, like magnets. I think this shows how the idea of ‘naturalism’ is just as constructed as conceptions of sexuality.

“Philips’s love poetry attempts to articulate a homoerotic subject through the fictions and temporalities of lyric expression, deploying the lyric voice to disrupt those relationships between ideology, causality, and sequence that, in the drama and prose narrative, propel the plot teleologically toward a marital conclusion.” (Traub, 251)

This passage from Traub’s essay really stuck out to me. It makes a very subtle, but strong claim about the power lyric poetry in the Renaissance. Although this course is disabusing me of the notion, I definitely do still fall into the trap of seeing Renaissance poetry/all pre-Modern poetry as  “staid”, more “formulaic”, more literally formal, etc. etc. But here Traub is ascribing lyric poetry the power to break down patterns of ideology and causality that other genres do not quite have — which makes it a rather revolutionary form.

In Donne’s Sappho to Philaenis, I was struck by how he seems to imply a certain sort of narcissism by being attracted to the same sex. For example, a main argument used by the narrator is that the two are so alike (although separate beings), that “Why should they not alike in all parts touch?” This theme continues shortly after, with “Likeness begets such strange self-flattery, / That touching myself all seems done to thee.” Does Donne then see lesbianism as an extended form of self-worship? Or is it vice versa, that self-adoration is an inevitable byproduct of lusting after another woman? Either way, it seems to me that there is a connection… any ideas?

I’m interested in Nathalie’s question about Phillips and innocence. I was struck by Traub’s note about changing ideals of heterosexual coupling as it relates to friendship: “Once friendship becomes a goal of marriage for men and women, female friendship begins to look a lot like companionate marriage. At the same time, when female-female love becomes, as I’ve argued, increasingly available as an imaginative social reality, the burden of women to choose to bond with men increases” (261). How do innocence and friendship interact, and what do chaste female friendships look like? Can there be chaste male-female friendships?

At the end of her piece on the lesbian subtext (if it’s even subtext) of Katherine Philips’ poetry, Traub defines her “innocence” as a sort of chaste feminine love, rather than a denial of her sexual leanings or any other previous interpretation by other scholars. Is this “innocence” a sort of female-female version of the “married chastity” that Britomart and Queen Elizabeth were said to represent, or is it too different in other ways to make that comparison?