Woman speaking to woman : the reshaping of male conventions in Katherine Philips' "Lucasia" poems

Although Katherine Philips held an unusual position in seventeenth-century society (she was an accepted woman writer), she was praised more for her virtue than her verse. Because of her early fame, modern critics have tended to dismiss Philips' capabilities as a writer, and thus, have overlooked her carefully constructed poetics of friendship between women. In a series of poems addressed to Anne Owen ("Lucasia"), Philips reworks male conventions into a philosophy of friendship. Working from an essentially Christian/Neo-Platonic world view (much like Henry More's), Philips constructs a schematics of friendship which depict "Lucasia" as the embodiment of the Ideal. Philips also utilizes the Pythagorean concept of harmonies and the Alchemical principal of sympathies within the philosophy of friendship.

The "Lucasia Poems" also reflect Philips' reworking of literary traditions. Like much of Donne's poetry, these poems are written in the "private mode" and thus convey the highly personal nature of this friendship. Like Spenser, Philips uses elements of the pastoral to construct an "Arcadia." In addition. Philips is probably the first woman writer since Sappho to put another woman on a pedestal. This thesis analyzes the "Lucasia Poems" in light of Philips' reshaping of these conventions, and suggests that she succeeds in constructing a poetics of friendship for women.