The class has been busy researching the published authors of the WLCB. I’ve assigned each of them a group of texts for the Parole Femine anthology to annotate, and they are also doing research to flesh out the introductory headnotes for each author.

Researching annotations is a fascinating process. I think so, anyway! I realize that many people never look at annotations–members of the class have told me as much. But they can provide fascinating subtexts and suggest all kinds of ways to interpret literary texts. That said, researching and writing those annotations can feel a little bit like diving down the rabbit hole . . . over and over again.

One of my students, Alyssa Schilke, discovered just this when she tried to annotate the title of Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer’s poem, “St. Anthony.” Through her research, she was able to trace a complicated story of knights, crusaders, and saints, and how they got all thrown together in the Victorian imagination. Her research spurred us to dig deeper into the career of one of the Club’s most prolific authors. Read on.

Alyssa posted this to the course blog in March:

I spent time investigating “St. Anthony, A Christmas Eve Ballad” by Elizabeth Latimer. What bugged me the most is trying to solve which St. Anthony Latimer is writing about. She refers to him as Italian, which brings to mind St Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan monk from the 12th century.

But the poem features Latimer’s character recounting a tournament and the saint’s knightly duties, and the copy-text even features an image of a crusader resting against his horse. St. Anthony of Padua was a monk his whole life, entering the religious order at 15. [My note: So I guess he never went on a crusade.]

I came closer with a scene featuring St. Paul later in the poem. St. Anthony of Egypt is featured in a story with St. Paul of Thebes, where, as in Latimer’s poem, Anthony is present for the hermit saint’s death. But this Anthony was an early Christian ascetic from the 4th century, never a knight and too early for the Crusades. Although Latimer is using this story of a St. Anthony, this is not who she is discussing in the beginning.

Finally I found it.  A reference to Anthony as “One of the world’s great Champions Seven”  led me to a brief Wikipedia page, attributing the term to a Richard Johnson’s The Seven Champions of Christendom published in 1597.

Through some more searching and reading, I confirmed that Latimer’s St. Anthony is in fact, Johnson’s fictional character based off of St. Anthony of Padua. But in the style of Arthurian romances, St Anthony of Italy, decked out in blue, wins a tournament in front of the Byzantine Emperor in Chapter 12. This passage is exactly the piece Latimer references in her Christmas tale.

Through this long journey, I grew in appreciation for annotated works. Reading this poem the first time through, I had no idea that there are 2 St. Anthonys, nor would I have ever connected the story to Johnson’s work.

In fact, I found that Johnson work was edited to a ‘modern tone’ in 1863 by W. H. G. Kingston and republished. Perhaps Latimer encountered Kingston’s edition and it inspired her poem published in 1891. Her audience would have better understood her reference as well because the tale had been recently republished and was not 200 years old.

Latimer clearly enjoyed this story of the Champions of Christendom. She even presented a piece on St. Patrick, another of Johnston’s characters, for St. Patrick’s Day in 1903 to the club.