That is, Lanyer produces in her poem what is more aptly called a genealogy of woman rather than a history precisely because the typological structure of promise, fulfillment, and supersedure employs a pattern of spiritual in heritance and lineage, which simultaneously resounds to a similar pattern of material inheritance and lineage through which so many of Lanyer's dedicatees define themselves, in particular her two principle dedicatees, Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, and her daughter Anne, Countess of Dorset.
In addition, she has problems controlling the way typology's logic of promise, fulfillment, and (in particular) supersedure applies to her dedicatees, especially the most most prominent ones: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke; as well as the Countess of Cumberland, and her daughter Anne.
Freq uently, the unease with typology's structure of promise, fulfillment and supersedure leads critics to describe Lanyer's relationship to biblical exegesis in far less precise terms -- as allegory and exemplum.
At the same time, Lanyer rewrites the image of the elect, the "four and twenty elders" in Revelation 5, to include women, suggesting that her typological model of promise, fulfillment, and supersedure does nor lead to the eradication of the shadowy types of the apotheosized Countess.
Lanyer not only uses the typological model of promise, fulfillment, and supersedure to structure her representation of women's spiritual genealogy but also to examine the spiritual and material aspects of the relationship between the woman writer and a specifically female literary tradition.
Given the poem's references to apocalyptic time, this anachronism underlines Lanyer's feminist appropriation of typoiogy's model of promise, fulfillment, and supersedure in order to structure women's literary history.
Clearly, Lanyer is very careful to assure the reader that, in terms of the model of promise, fulfillment, and supersedure which she is building into every level of her poem, Mary Sidney's literary achievements have won her "noble Fame" (99) and future generations of committed and grateful readers.
In the case of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, Lanyer can produce a gracious compliment to this noblewoman's poetic skill within the poem's structure of promise, fulfillment and supersedure, given that Sidney will live forever as the translator of the Psalms, those divinely-inspired words which will never pass away; they and Mary Sidney become the apogee of poetic skill and spiritual excellence.
Once a queen bee is getting old or weak, the intensity of her pheromones will diminish and her workers will sense this, kill her and replace her with a new queen, this is called
supersedure. One of my favourite social spectacles is when you approach a hive of the Giant Asian honey bee, the workers create a wave on its single comb, a bit like an 'hola' running through a football stadium, although much more terrifying.