The physiology of penitence in 1590s weeping texts

Petrarchan sonnets are often discussed in terms which reflect Laura Mulvey' s work on the gaze, either as identification with the idealized object, the beloved, or her fragmentation by the poet's defensive description. Devotio nal sonnets written during the 1590s, however, cannot do this about the div ine object of their love. Robert Southwell, Thomas Lodge, William Alabaster , and Henry Constable handle the features of the secular sonnet in a delibe rately literal way, to reflect the doctrinal position.