by Sarah Fyge Egerton
Introduction and Editing by Regan Lucero
Regan Lucero is an English MA student at the University of Central Arkansas
I initally chose The Female Advocate by Sarah Fyge Egerton because of her poem in defense of women. I was drawn to the fact that it was written in response to another text by Robert Gould who created satirical poetry to condemn women and their supposed endless faults. I love that I was able to witness a debate on women loyalty, their place in society, and equality during the 17th century through this poem. I also wanted to highlight a young female writer who spent her writing career advocating for women’s rights. For the edition I retained the original italics and capitalization of the text as well as the brackets from the original 1686 printing found in the margins of the poem. These brackets are traditionally added to a text during printing to emphasize certain groupings of lines, accentuating the importance to the readers. This project allowed me to explore new interests as well as put names to old ones (marginalia in particular). The group of student I had in mind for the text would be for an upperdivision undergraduate course. With this group in mind, I wanted to modernize some of the text to allow for students to have a smoother reading experience. I didn’t want readers to get hung up on smaller, obsolete words, leave the texts and look up their meanings (changing smaller contractions, removing additional s’s, and the spelling of older words). Although I smaller changes to the text to modernize the piece, I wanted to retain some of the original contractions to keep the spirit of a 17th century piece alive. I was able to maintain this through the addition of glossaries to the right side of the text to sustain the original writing while also providing readers with a modern examplation/definition. In my experience I enjoyed having most of the original text without editions to see the change in writing over time. Another way I wanted to maintain the flow of reading for students was to create footnotes for major allusions or historical examples Fyge embedded into her poem. By providing brief explanations of the stories and people she used, readers can have a more well-round understanding of the text without having to leave the edition to get it.
My personal favorite part of editions to texts is the footnotes explaining each story intertwined with the text. I love the feeling of being inside the writers mind as much as possible and understanding the examples they used allows me to maintain that proximity. I learned from this process that, although timeconsuming, I genuinely enjoyed breaking a piece into its smaller parts and analyzing why a writer (Fyge in particular) chose to write a certain way. I was able to learn new stories, literary examples, and playful/witty writing style in action. I love being able to dive into the history behind a piece that is already a snapshot of its time. The project also allowed me to employ valuable resources, including the Oxford English Dictionary, in my own research. Finding and using valuable resources and source texts also applies to my goals (from by Assignment Plan and Goal Statement) of developing my research skills as well as engaging more with texts from the course. I definitely pushed myself with my decision-making process through determining what words to modernize or what moments to annotate (a goal I had before starting the project). I loved the finer details of combing through various sources and background information to understand just a word, name, or phrase used. I am glad I pushed myself to do this project rather than the syllabus inclusion and I would love to do this process again.