Elizabeth Patton

Elizabeth Patton

Senior Lecturer

epatton@jhu.edu
603-321-9692

Research Interests: English and continental literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; early modern women writers; post-Reformation English Catholicism and women’s networks; the evolutionary history of the Petrarchan sonnet

Elizabeth Patton directs and teaches the consortium course, Great Books at Hopkins. She offers courses on English and continental literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a primary focus on women writers. She received a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia under the direction of Anne Prescott and Edward W. Tayler; her M.A. work on oral formulaic elements in late Medieval literature was directed by Walter Ong, SJ.

Broadly speaking, her scholarly work focuses on the lives and writings of early modern women in the context of post-Reformation Catholicism. A recent such investigation, into the life of Anne Dacre Howard, countess of Arundel (1557-1630) is part of a collaborative scholarly edition of the seventeenth-century biographies of both the earl and countess of Arundel forthcoming in 2020 from the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (PIMS). Her next book project under contract with PIMS is a reconstruction of the lost English Life of Father John Cornelius (1557-1594) from four contemporary translations into Latin, Spanish and Italian. This is the only biography of a priest by an early modern Englishwoman, Dorothy Arundell (1559/60-1613), distant cousin of the countess of Arundel. Autobiographical insertions by the author, amplified with information from contemporary sources, illuminate Arundell’s life as well as that of her subject.  

In addition to her own scholarly research, during the last two decades at Johns Hopkins Elizabeth Patton has fostered and supervised both undergraduate and graduate level research in the humanities:

  • During 2015 and 2016, with continuing support from the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe, she organized and led the Working Group on Practical Translation and Source Reconstruction. This was a collaborative and interdepartmental effort involving graduate students and faculty in Classics and the premodern languages. Collectively, the group translated and collated unedited sixteenth-century manuscript translations, in Latin, Italian, and Spanish, of a lost English source. Results were presented at a student-organized conference panel at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America in 2016.
  • From 2012-2015 she was interim director of the Undergraduate Honors Program in Humanistic Studies, tasked with assisting the program’s transition through the retirement of its co-founder and longtime director, Richard Macksey.
  • In 2016 and 2017 she directed the KSAS Master of Liberal Arts program (MLA), then in need of direction during a period of rapid growth and transition.
  • She consults with graduate fellows in the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute and supervises undergraduate research as adviser for students in the Krieger school’s undergraduate major, Medicine, Science and Humanities.

Additional full-text publications can be found on Elizabeth Patton's Academia page.

Scholarly Edition of the Seventeenth-Century Biographies of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel and Anne Howard, Countess of Arundel, co-authored with Earle Havens and Susannah Monta (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (PIMS); forthcoming in 2020).

“Praying in the Margins Across the Reformation: Readers’ Marks in Early Tudor Books of Hours,” Early Modern English Marginalia, ed. Katherine Acheson (Routledge, 2019).

“Women, Books, and the Lay Apostolate: a Catholic Literary Network in Late Sixteenth-Century England,” Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Ownership, Circulation, Reading, eds. Leah Knight, Elizabeth Sauer, Micheline White (University of Michigan Press, 2018), 117-134.

“Underground Networks: Prisons and the Circulation of Counter-Reformation Books in Elizabethan England,” co-authored with Earle Havens, Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation, eds. James Kelly and Susan Royal (Brill, 2017), 164-188.

“Four Contemporary Translations of Dorothy Arundell’s Lost English Narratives,” Philological Quarterly, Special Edition on Early Modern Translation, ed. A.E.B. Coldiron (vol. 95.3/4, 2016): 397-424.

“From Community to Convent: the Collective Spiritual Life of post-Reformation English Women in Dorothy Arundell’s Biography of John Cornelius,” in Communities, Culture and Identity: The English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800, ed. Caroline Bowden, intro. Michael Questier (Ashgate, 2013).

“Dorothy Arundell’s Acts of Father John Cornelius: ‘We should hear from her, herself–she who left a record of it in these words’,” ANQ 24: 1-2 (2011): 51-62.

A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen, 1500-1650, ed. Carole Levin (Routledge, 2017); thirty-nine entries:

   “Aletheia Talbot Howard, Countess of Arundel (b. after 1582-d. 1654),” 129-130.

   “Agnes Randall Foxe (1521-1605),” 241.

   “Mary Browne Wriothesley Heneage Hervey, Countess of Southampton (1552-1607),” 248-249.

   “Mary Seymour [da. Katherine Parr] (1548-1550),” 275.

   “Bridget Copley Southwell (d. 1583-1587),” 282.

   “Cecily More Heron (1507-1540),” 456-457.

   “Frances Burroughs (ca. 1576-1637),” 573-74.

   “Agnes Augustine Alford (b. ca. 1523),” 597-598.

   “Anne Stanley Stourton Arundell (ca. 1542-1602),” 598-600.

   “Dorothy Arundell (1559/60-1613),” 601-602.

   “Anne Bellamy (Fl. 1580-1595),” 603).

  “Brome, Elizabeth (d. after 1605) and Bridget (d. 1636),” 605-606.

   “Eleanor Vaux Brookesby (ca. 1560-1625),” 607-08.

   “Magdalen Dacre Browne Montagu (1538-1608),” 608-609.

   “Julian Birley Byrd (d.ca. 1609),” 609-610;

   “Elizabeth Heywood Donne (d. 1631),” 611;

   “Margaret Dormer Constable (1553-1637),” 612;

   “Elizabeth Dacre Howard (ca. 1564-1639),” 615-616;

   “Elizabeth Howard (1583-1598),” 616-617;

   “Elizabeth Leybourne Dacre Howard, Duchess of Norfolk (b. ca. 1536-1567),” 617-619;

   “Catherine Lovell Knyvett (ca. 1565-1610),” 619);

   “Joan [Jane] Ferneley Aldred Lodge (1546-after 1625),” 621.

   “Cecily Hopton Marshall (1559-1625),” 622.

   “Dorothy Pauncefoot (fl. 1586),” 623-624.

   “Margaret Howard Sackville (ca. 1561-1591),” 624-625.

   “Mary Cavendish Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (1557-1632),” 626.

   “Mary Stourton Tregian (ca. 1550-ca. 1608),” 626-627.

   “Muriel Throckmorton Tresham (ca. 1550-1615),” 627-628.

   “Anne Vaux (1562-ca. 1637),” 628-629.

   “Elizabeth Fitzhugh Parr Vaux (1455/65-1508),” 629-230.

   “Elizabeth Roper Vaux (b. ca. 1564-d. after 1627),” 630-631.

   “Mary Tresham Vaux (d. 1597),” 631-632.

   “Isabel Leigh Baynton Stumpe Stafford (1506-1573),” 675-676.

   “Anne Parr Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (b. bef. 1514-1552),” 695.

   “Maud Green Parr (1492-1531),” 708-709.

   “Margaret Plantagenet Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1473-1541),” 710-711.

   “Elizabeth Beaumont Ashburnham Richardson, Baroness of Cramond (1576/7-1651),” 867-868.

   “Margaret Tyler (fl. 1558-1578),” 880-881.

“Reflections on The Poore Man’s Talentt, a medical treatise prepared by Thomas Lodge for Anne Howard, Countess of Arundel (1567-1630),” in “Women’s Ownership,” Beyond Home Remedy: Women, Medicine, and Science, a Folger Shakespeare Library exhibition curated by Rebecca LaRoche with Georgianna Ziegler, 2011.

Database contributor (continuing): Who were the Nuns? A Prosopographical study of the English Convents in exile 1600-1800, Queen Mary University, London. URL: http://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/