Catherine Parr Critical Essay | Critical Essay by C. Fenno Hoffman, Jr.

Critical Essay by C. Fenno Hoffman, Jr.

SOURCE: Hoffman, C. Fenno, Jr. “Catherine Parr as Woman of Letters.” Huntington Library Quarterly 23, no. 4 (1960): 349-67.

In the following essay, Hoffman assesses Parr's career as an author, finding that although she was not a significant literary figure, her writings represent important historical documents and that she exemplifies the personality of a learned Tudor lady in the age of humanism.

Among England's learned ladies of the early sixteenth century, those to whom, in William Bercher's phrase, “bothe greke and lattynne [were] vulgare,” Catherine Parr knew little Latin and no Greek but had the distinction of utilizing the “vulgare” to spread her religious convictions and of befriending good learning when opportunity permitted.¹ By her contributions to learning and literature Catherine became, according to Agnes Strickland, “the admiration of the most learned men in Europe and the intellectual model of the ladies of England.”² But room remains to define more...
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