LAUSR

This essay examines the narrative function of envy and emulation in Lady Mary Wroth’s romance, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. In classical and early modern thought, envy and emulation are morally distinct but structurally equivalent passions that organize social life: envy is a negative emotion that seeks to harm those who possess social goods one lacks, while emulation is a positive emotion by which one cultivates in oneself the virtues identified in others. Urania celebrates the constant love of its heroine Pamphilia, but envy, which is a social passion that encompasses jealousy, is crucial to the generation of romance. The emphasis on female subjectivity in previous studies of the romance means that there has been little examination of combat and knightly behavior in Urania. Yet this division of love from combat, the two domains of romance action, also divides jealousy from the related passions of envy and its positive counterpart emulation. Envy provides a link between love and combat and also expresses a gendered, and otherwise inexpressible, critique of romance values of love and constancy. [L.D.]