Mary Sidney's embroidered psalms.

This article examines ways in which Mary Sidney's psalms demonstrate an intertextual play between pen and needle. Her translations are a linguistic embroidery of the biblical poems: attention to colours and to cunning, to ornamentation and to pattern characterizes Sidney's psalms as much as they do any priestly girdle or linen ephod. To demonstrate this, I reference criticism regarding women's words and needlework as 'interrelated'; next, I argue that these female textualities are linked biblically, making Sidney's choices particularly appropriate for biblical translation. The merging of literary and material texts in Sidney's psalms is driven home in the demonstration of how her translations and linguistic word-play mirror needlework practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]