According to tradition, Anne Bradstreet like many other Renaissance writers, introduces her work, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650), through a prologue. Not only is it intended to acquaint the reader with the subject of the quaternions (set of four related poems), but it also allows the poet to "address the reader directly about the art, or about the likely reception of the work he expects." ” (Dasgupta, 16). Just like his other public works, the Prologue also adopts the tone of humility characteristic of Bradstreet's writing style. What strikes her as unusual is the excessive nature of his modesty which borders on self-deprecation. One must be warned not to take the poet's words at face value. This article attempts to determine whether the purported tone of humble compromise in the Prologue is, in fact, a posture assumed by Bradstreet to facilitate "affection" (Isobel Armstrong) among her readers, thus convincing them of her abilities as a writer. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Although often understood as a reflection of the "ethic of Puritan self-effacement" (Dasgupta 8), the Prologue is actually a clever ploy that is used to appropriate Bradstreet's art by appeasing the predominantly male conservative audience who he read. As stated by Eileen Margerum, "In the classical poetic tradition, the success of a poem depended not on the validity of the poet's feelings but on his successful use of prescribed formulas" (152). Anne Bradstreet, as a 17th-century poet, draws on the classical poetic tradition of her predecessors as well as the Puritan narrative tradition that forces her to include the “formulae of humility” in her works, regardless of her personal feelings (Margerum 152). The incorporation of both these conventions is evident in the following lines of the Prologue: "To sing of wars, of captains and kings, of cities founded, of states begun, for my puny pen are things too superior; or like them all, or each, their dates have passed, let poets and historians express them, my dark verses will not cloud their value." The aforementioned Rejection outlines the fact that her poetry does not extend to historical writing, a male-dominated sphere. , just like composing poetry. Her seemingly meek attitude results in a degree of ambiguity around the idea that she shapes her public persona to fit what she perceives to be a man's world. He also goes on to highlight his poetic ancestry by quoting Guillame de Salluste Du Bartas (a French Protestant poet) and frequently referring to Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poetry. This act highlights her insecurities as a writer stemming from the lack of a lineage of female poets. It is on this basis that the eminent feminists Gilbert and Gubar later argue that, just as male writers experience an “anxiety of influence” as proposed by Harold Bloom, so female writers suffer an “anxiety of authorship” (“The Infection in the Sentence: The writer and the anxiety of being an author”, 25). Bradstreet's work dramatically identifies itself as an example of this phenomenon, thus fueling the idea that this too is fiction and that she is very consciously constructing an anxious and insecure image of the process of creation. We witness a transition from the Rhetoric of impossibility to the Rhetoric of deception, which is achieved through the heavy use of irony. Judith Butler's concept of the performance of the self comes into play when we see Bradstreet engage in the use of the first person as a means of persuasion and several rhetorical figures and clichés present.