Refiguring the Sacred Feminine: The Poems of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer and John Milton

Contents

Contents List of Abbreviations ix Editorial Note xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 DONNE 13 1. Donne in the Late Elizabethan and Early Jacobean Milieux 15 2. The Feminine Trinity in “The Annuntiation and Passion” 20 3. Donne’s Ambivalent Mourning: Woman as Mortal Sacrament 35 4. Donne’s “Show me deare Christ” and Augustine’s Exposition of Psalm 33 51 5. Sacramental Poetics and Right Reading in the Anniversaries 64 6. The Final Cause of Sacramental Womanhood in The First Anniversarie 78 7. Moving Beyond Earthly Womanhood in “A Funerall Elegie” and The Second Anniversarie 88 LANYER 105 1. Lanyer as Anti-Jacobean and Neo-Elizabethan Translator of Scripture 107 2. Lanyer’s Incarnational Poetics 126 3. The Womanhood of the Church and the Priesthood of Woman 137 4. Lanyer’s Critique of Apostolic Priesthood 149 5. Sacred Eros in Salve Deus 162 6. Envisioning Heterosexual Alternatives to Pauline Marriage 181 7. Lanyer’s Artful and Natural Homoerotics 195 MILTON 215 1. Maternal Wisdom and Pastoral Ministry in Arcades 217 2. Ecclesiastical Discipline and Virginal Wisdom in A Mask 231 3. Eve and Wisdom in Paradise Lost 254 4. Jesus as Son and Student of Mary in Paradise Regained 283 Coda: Marian Poetics 311 Notes 317 Bibliography 355 Index 383 viii Contents ...