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The most instructive feature of this semester’s research project on Queen Elizabeth I’d “When I was Fair and Young” was not the destination, but the difference between the destination and the place where I began. In early February, I read the poem as a confession and I was confident I had read the poem correctly. Elizabeth was a sovereign who had grown “the prouder,” and willed herself into solitude by her own dismissal of an infinite number of suitors. By late March, after weeks of close reading, peer reviewed research, and direct response to Dr. Solomon’s rubric, I began to see that it was Cupid, working through Ovid’s two arrow apparatus who was the actual architect of the speaker’s emotional journey, and that Elizabeth’s agency was always on loan. That was the crux of my own argument – that it was Elizabeth who was exhibiting her own agency, when close reading revealed it was Cupid. The three artifacts I have selected, my initial close reading exercise, my peer review draft of “The Sovereign’s Snare,” and my final textual analysis “From Individual Hubris to Cupid’s arrow,” document interpretive distance with the precision of a paper trail. They also revealed two distinct kinds of revision at work: that sentences need to be concise and sharp and that a global architecture can change with further research, and that “to write is to revise.”

The first artifact uses a “surface to depth” method and ends with the thesis that Elizabeth, who is asserting her claim “not only by Divine Right, but as a person unto herself, willed herself into a corner of perpetual loneliness by trying to control the uncontrollable.” Reading my thoughts now and how confident I was in Elizabeth’s own isolation, I can see how important reading deep and wide is the way to test any claim. I did not sit with the poem by myself for long enough, I was too eager to begin researching what others had said about the poem. This first artifact observes that Cupid “comes in and shuts her down and turns her own words around,” but I write of an intervention that comes as a correction of her pride rather than the structural agent of the entire poem. I also did not cite very many sources in this artifact, so my claim had a confirmational bias to it. A bias that I was unable to see because I did not have enough research to test my claim against. I have included this artifact because it shows where I began my claim, which did not turn out to be a correct one, and I had to make a lot of revisions. I assumed Elizabeth was acting in her own agency when the true claim was that Cupid was in control all along.

Artifact 2: “The Sovereign’s Snare” (Peer-Reviewed Draft, March 8)

This peer review draft represents my first major expansion of my project proposal. The thesis I write about preserves my own close reading emphasis on Elizabeth own agency, which turns into self imprisonment. Elizabeth “willed herself into a finite world of loneliness” while she seems to be in complete control of the situation. Where I saw hubris, the real claim here was one of political crisis I did not fully understand, nor did I research the cultural context of the poem. Because of that, I did not realize that this poem was written during the Anjou marriage crisis of 1578–1582. While Elizabeth did write profusely in letters and memorandums as queen, her poetry was usually meant for her private moments. The more I saw Elizabeth as acting on her own agency, I saw a Petrarchan framework emerging into my research essay.

I treated the draft as Cupid being a late arriving antagonist rather than the agent of the entire poem. Stanzas one and two belong to the speaker: Cupid arrives in stanza number three; and then Elizabeth was left to grieve her own hubris and isolation. It would take Dr. Solomon’s kind intervention and a return to the Ovidian framework to dismantle that shape entirely.

Artifact 3: “From Individual Hubris to Cupid’s Arrow” (Final Textual Analysis, March 29)

The final essay announces the re-orientation in the opening paragraph: close reading “revealed that what I had attributed to the speakers own character was, in fact, the work of Cupid’s two arrows.” The peer review draft organized the analysis around Elizabeth’s own agency, her hubris, and her final destination of isolation. The final essay organizes around Cupid and his arrows. Paragraphs that had been about “the speakers hubris” were reframed into paragraphs that talked about “the golden arrows effect on the speaker.” One sentence I am proud of is “the speakers pride, then, is an unintended consequence, and not a character flaw.” This reversal of thesis in the research essay opened the door to a more deeper reading of this short, private poem.

The essay also engages literary craft more precisely. The peer review draft used “Petrarchan” imagery loosely, but the final essay names anaphora in the “how many” constructions, occupatio in the speakers modesty of rhetoric, the caesura that produces “finality enclosure” before “impartune me no more,” and the volta of stanza three. Dr. Solomon’s rubric singled this out in her review of my essay. She says “your attention to literary craft supports the argument well.” It was then that I knew I was at least on the right track. Dr. Solomon also wrote in the rubric comments that further revision of my reflective scaffolding as my argument unfolded in my “initial reading” was necessary. Her recommendation was to “remove reflective commentary about how your interpretation developed and present those insights as confident analytical assertions.” This was very helpful and helping me to scaffold my thesis argument and helping to develop a thorough and critically thought out thesis statement.

Local and Global Revisions

Putting all three documents together, I see two different paths of revision. The local revisions are visible at the sentence level: the close readings claim that “her words… doom her to a loneliness that repentance cannot remove” becomes a more concise, though incorrect thesis when I wrote, “her pen became the ultimate in self imprisonment.”The final observation that “Cupid was pulling the mythological strings” came from the same idea that there was movement that began in voice and led to silence, but that claim needed to be sharpened and made more complete through further research.

The global revisions took on a more important role in my writing this semester. Artifact one gives agency to Elizabeth and treats Cupid as the correction to the hubris that can only lead to isolation. Artifact two also assigned agency to Elizabeth but put that agency in her sovereignty, Divine Right, and Body Politic. Artifact two also treats Cupid as the antagonist who leads Elizabeth to repentance that does not end in peace but isolation. Artifact three assigned agency to Cupid and gives Elizabeth’s own agency and sovereignty an invisible thread through the first half of the poem. With every revision, I had to dismantle the scaffolding of the version that proceeded it. Paragraphs were deleted and only survived when their textual evidence could be supported through the Ovidian framework. The revision also brought about new vocabulary– golden arrow, lead arrow, and the literary frameworks that re-oriented the changes that I made that would have made no sense in my earlier version of my essay.

The journey of these three artifacts are not one of smooth improvements that happened over time. The close reading gave me a starting thesis: the peer review draft tested it against scholarship, and I was found lacking; and the final analysis had to be dismantled and replaced with a stronger one. What I have learned is that a research essay is not written around an interpretation with evidence gathered around it – that became my own confirmation bias, my Achilles heel. The process of writing a research claim where interpretation is built, contested, and rebuilt, over time and pressure of evidence. The most honest thing I can say about my growth as a writer this semester is that I learned to let the evidence re-organize my thesis, rather than the other way around.