Revival, Romance, and Empire in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania

Abstract

This article focuses on the second volume of Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania and sheds light on Wroth’s appropriation of the medieval mode of the Crusader romance to acknowledge increasing contacts with the East at the time of her writing, while reviving the nostalgic ideal of a united Christian empire. This article demonstrates how Wroth drew inspiration from real-life Anglo-Eastern unions, such as the one between Robert Sherley and his wife Teresa Sampsonia, to sustain her imperialist fantasy of the Persian Empire being incorporated into a white, unified Christendom, mainly through courtly marriages between Eastern princesses and Western knights.

Keywords

• Mary Wroth
• Persia
• imperialism
• Orient
• romance