Exile gives a sense of freedom to its writers that imprisonment at first glance cannot. Yet we see throughout literature historically that in fact, both spaces can be positively utilised, eliciting a cathartic release. From Elizabethan reworkings of Boethius’ imprisoned writing in the Consolation of Philosophy through to Cavendish’s Utopian Blazing World (1666), we see a constant fascination with, and ingenuity in, liminal writings.
Churchyard’s De Tristibus (1572) is a prisoner with form, most crudely as its author experienced incarceration after the St Monans raid of 1548. But it is also restrictive in literary form, the translation imprisoned as slave to the vernacular rather than liberated like Ovid’s original elegiacs. Why is Churchyard’s translation so stifled and inflexible? I will argue that De Tristibus re-applies Ovidian concepts to the Elizabethan world, specifically focussing on an English ‘poetics of exile’. A fear of obscurity encourages Churchyard to be self-referential in his other writings, the Description of the Wofull Warres in Flanders (1578) and Churchyard’s Choise (1579). Did Churchyard also use De Tristibus to re-centre his position in the structures of power?
Imprisonment is synonymous with diplomacy; almost prerequisite to a position under Elizabeth I. In choosing to look at Ovid’s displaced and disorientating Tristia, Churchyard combines experience of imprisonment with literary knowledge of exile. The two underpin his life as a soldier, diplomat, and poet. This paper seeks to address the stifling spatial distinctiveness of Churchyard’s work, and explain his re-framing of classical exile in a politically controlling renaissance humanist world.
Prison/Exile: Controlled Spaces in Early Modern Europe 