‘Criing quiet’ are the first two words of Elizabeth Isham’s ‘Panel Diary’, an autobiographical manuscript NRO MS IL3365, completed in 1648, now housed in the Northamptonshire Records Office. This research project explores the restorative potential of autobiographical manuscript writing and creativity. Isham’s texts document her bereavement after the loss of her mother. I examine her grief experience and its textual embodiment, as well as mirroring her textual memorial to ‘perform bonds’ with my mother.1 My practice constructs a theatre of medicine using craft, text, objects, film and music as a tribute to my mother and to Elizabeth Isham. This collaboration transcends centuries of time to shape a contemporary restorative writing practice. This project marks the creation of the first exhibited artworks influenced by Elizabeth Isham, her life and her writing. This contribution to the field of early modern women’s writing introduces a new material approach and creative re-vision of Isham’s work, whilst also applying and developing theories from grief studies. My ‘re-visioning’ of Isham’s manuscript is a recycled literary inheritance, an inosculation, devised to sustain an ecology of commemoration.2This thesis aims to explore the materiality of manuscript writing in addition to the corporeal and emotive process of creating autobiographical textualities. A new materialist philosophy compliments this research which investigates the value of autobiography to explore personal bereavement.3 The art of writing and preserving stories is an essential element of autoethnography; which performs as an explorative, creative, methodology to investigate and document this practice research.4
“Criing Quiet”: Elizabeth Isham’s Autobiographical Manuscripts and Contemporary Practice as “Re-vision”
Elvy, J. P. S. (Author). May 2024
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy