‘Nil penna sed usus’: Negotiating Female Authoriality in Esther Inglis’s Solomon’s Proverbs (Pforzeimer MS40)

Abstract

This article centres on the specific case of Pforzeimer MS40 and probes Inglis’s position within her family ‘cottage industry’ by exploring the technique of ‘ambiguation’ in her beautiful presentation manuscript. Borrowed from the rhetorical analysis of diplomatic discourse, ambiguation belongs to the field of irony. Esther Inglis is generally considered as a conciliatory figure, what I will define as a textual diplomat, within the international Protestant community, as her volumes cross the Channel, as well as within her own family circle; indeed her diplomatic strategy in Solomon’s Proverbs needs also to be considered within her own production, as the tiny volume occupies a special place within her other sixteen so called ‘flower manuscripts’. What is more, the book is also part of a series of three copies which share material elements but yet widely differ in terms of patronage research. This double comparison allows to analyse how, even as Inglis creates a new style of manuscript presentation, she negotiates a space for her personal career within her family by a strategic use of several elements, some of them paratextual. This will lead to contextualize the meaning of a unique – to the best of my knowledge – dedicatory Latin poem, signed by her husband, appended to Pforzeimer MS40, which teases out Inglis’s diplomatic technique of ambiguation in her scribal creation.