AUTHENTICITY, ARTIFICE, AND OVID'S HEROIDES IN MARY STUART'S CASKET SONNETS.

This article responds to the interpretative legacy emphasizing English reception of Mary Stuart's Casket Sonnets, by situating the poems within a context of French Renaissance literary production. It begins by elucidating how a specific biographical reading was put into place strategically by the Scottish queen's political adversaries and disseminated in early print editions, as well as how this tradition continues to inform modern readings. The remainder of the article proposes an alternative reading that highlights the author's intertextual borrowing from Ovid's Heroides. Particular attention is paid to claims of 'sincerity', both as the central literary topos around which the Casket Sonnets are rhetorically structured and as a critical term of assessment applied to the work of Renaissance lyric poets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]