Milton and maternal mortality / Louis Schwartz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schwartz, Louis, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Milton, John, 1608-1674--Criticism and interpretation.

Death in literature.

Mortality in literature.

Mothers in literature.

Mothers--Mortality--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 269 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Milton & Maternal Mortality

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

All too often, childbirth in early modern England was associated with fear, suffering and death, and this melancholy preoccupation weighed heavily on the seventeenth-century mind. This landmark study examines John Milton's life and work, uncovering evidence of the poet's engagement with maternal mortality and the dilemmas it presented. Drawing on both literary scholarship and historical research, Louis Schwartz provides important readings of Milton's poetry, including Paradise Lost, as well as a wide-ranging survey of the medical practices and religious beliefs that surrounded the perils of childbirth. The reader is granted a richer understanding of how seventeenth-century society struggled to come to terms with its fears, and how one of its most important poets gave voice to that struggle.

Contents:

"Exquisitt torment" and "infinitt grace" : maternal suffering and the rites of childbirth

When things went wrong : maternal mortality and obstetric anxiety

Religious frameworks

"Too much conceaving" : Milton's "On Shakespear"

"Tears of perfect moan" : Milton and the Marchioness of Winchester

"Farr above in spangled sheen" : A mask and its epilogue

The wide wound and the veil : sonnet 23 and the "birth" of Eve in Paradise lost

"Conscious terrours" and "The promis'd seed" : seventeenth-century obstetrics and the allegory of sin and death in Paradise lost

The "womb of waters" and the "abortive gulph" : on the reproductive imagery of Milton's cosmos.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-511-69861-5

1-107-20171-3

1-282-30285-X

9786612302855

0-511-58117-3

0-511-58085-1

0-511-57939-X

0-511-57865-2

0-511-58013-4

OCLC:

609843100