Refiguring the Sacred Feminine: The Poems of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton by Theresa M. DiPasquale

Abstract

MLR, 105.4, 2010 1141 stamp of scholarly heft. Cohering the work around close analyses of individual words employed by Milton, the author's stated aim, consonant with the recent academic trend (as exemplified in Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns's John Milton: Life,Work, and Thought from the same publisher (2008), reviewed above), is threefold: to rehabilitate her subject's neglected prose works; to encourage, confident in its canonical status, a less deferential attitude towards theMilton corpus in general; and relatedly, to emphasize its contingency, the 'series of changes of direction, impulsive gestures, apologies, revisions, and thoughts worked out in the very process ofwriting them down' (p. 14). An engaging chapter on the divorce pamphlets argues plausibly thatMilton presents a logical case for reform of the divorce law, superimposed on a subtext of emotional chaos' (p. 48), the latter evidenced by the copious deployment of metaphor and euphemism in the Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce (1643) which underscores his apparent physical and intellectual difficulties with sexual intercourse at this time. The most diverting?and important?chapter, however, concerns the still under-studied Paradise Regained (1671). In it,Patterson argues for, among other things, the significant influence on Milton's epic of JohnBale's Temptacyon of Christ (1538), evidenced in both writers' vividly transforming the biblical account of Christ's trial in the wilderness into dramatic literature. Inwhat for Patterson is tantamount to an audacious mission to rework, and even rewrite, Scripture itself, Milton exhibits recognizably Socinian sympathies through rendering God's redemption ofmankind a corollary of Christ's passing, through constant reference toOld Testament writings, a word-based test of intellectuality. Birkbeck, University of London Philip Major Refiguring the Sacred Feminine: The Poems of JohnDonne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton. By Theresa M. DiPasquale. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. 2008. xiii+392 pp. ?49.99. ISBN 978-0-8207-0405-0. This tripartite study of the importance of the 'sacred feminine' for the poetics of JohnDonne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton is asworthy an act of scholarship as Theresa DiPasquale's previous book from the same publisher, her award-winning Literature and Sacrament: The Sacred and the Secular inJohnDonne (1999)- As in her previous research, DiPasquale's historical and philological understanding and her considerable sensitivity to the implications of patristic,medieval, Reformation, and post-Reformation theology enrich her formalist readings of early modern poetry. The focus of her enquiry concerns these seventeenth-century poets' portrayal of 'the feminine as a reflection of the divine, and woman herself, at her best, as an agent of redemption or conduit of grace' (p. 2), and the journey on which she takes her reader surveys individual poetic treatments of, variously, the biblical figure of divine, created, and practical Wisdom, the bride of the Song of Songs, the Pauline and apocalyptic Ecclesia, and theVirgin Mary. DiPasquale selects these three particular poets over the likes ofVaughan or Herbert because, 1142 Reviews she maintains, they are all [. . .] exceptionally provocative in their approaches to sex and gender as aspects of the sacred' (p. 2). As a leading Donne scholar, DiPasquale is in her element in the study's first chapter. She provides a fresh Trinitarian interpretation of Donne's little-read 'The Annuntiation and Passion', inwhich she uncovers a feminine triad of 'the cogitating Christian soul, the woman upon whom her mind's eye gazes (the Blessed Virgin), and her guide (the church)' (p. 24), and finds in the occasion celebrated, the coincidence of Lady Day and Good Friday, as much a celebration of 'the flesh of a woman (worn by her son) that redeems humanity' (p. 33) as a memorialization of the redeemer himself. Her analysis of one ofDonne's most intricate sonnets, the sonnet upon the death of his wife entitled 'Since She whome I lovd', is also worthwhile for its tactful handling of Donne's conflicted sense of Anne Donne as a human sacrament, his remembrance of her present absence as a celestial bride drawing his spirit heavenward even as his desire forher absent presence attracts his flesh to earth. The chapter concludes with an extended analysis of Donne's Anniversaries that resumes DiPasquale's enduring interest in sacramental poetics. In the First and Second Anniversaries...