Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Tokens of LovePart 3: Sign, Sacrament, and Sexuality in the Writings of Aemelia Lanyer and John Milton

Tokens of LovePart 3: Sign, Sacrament, and Sexuality in the Writings of Aemelia Lanyer and John... The third and final installment of this book-length contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Contextualism—the Next Generation” treats two further writers in seventeenth-century England whose work is not representative of any stance or discourse that contextualist historians have recognized as available in that era. In Aemelia Lanyer's poetry, we find a resistance to established perspectives that is related to her sense that divine signification is always incomplete and that, therefore, the diffidence of female cognition is superior, when approaching religious texts, to the assertive mentality that she associates with men. Despite his sex, however, and his reputation for theological and political radicalism, Milton too explicitly contends that the interpretation of scripture should always be “non-committal” because its signification is always incomplete. The “very magnitude” of the “great mystery” of the Incarnation, Milton argues in De Doctrina Christiana, should encourage the reader's mind to stand on “guard from the outset” against the tendency to make “rash or hasty assertions.” The urge to tamper with, pry into, add to, or hasten to understand the signifiers of divine meaning is shown, in Paradise Lost, to be the original sin of the first human couple. As much as for Lanyer, then, sex is for Milton bound up with hermeneutics—and, for both poets, the individual's relationship with God is a consuming passion, about which one may report a phenomenology of affects but can offer no contentions or arguments. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

Tokens of LovePart 3: Sign, Sacrament, and Sexuality in the Writings of Aemelia Lanyer and John Milton

Mascetti, Yaakov A.
Common Knowledge , Volume 27 (3) – Aug 1, 2021
Download PDF
54 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/tokens-of-lovepart-3-sign-sacrament-and-sexuality-in-the-writings-of-p0WGGjUGHo
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754x-9265283
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The third and final installment of this book-length contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Contextualism—the Next Generation” treats two further writers in seventeenth-century England whose work is not representative of any stance or discourse that contextualist historians have recognized as available in that era. In Aemelia Lanyer's poetry, we find a resistance to established perspectives that is related to her sense that divine signification is always incomplete and that, therefore, the diffidence of female cognition is superior, when approaching religious texts, to the assertive mentality that she associates with men. Despite his sex, however, and his reputation for theological and political radicalism, Milton too explicitly contends that the interpretation of scripture should always be “non-committal” because its signification is always incomplete. The “very magnitude” of the “great mystery” of the Incarnation, Milton argues in De Doctrina Christiana, should encourage the reader's mind to stand on “guard from the outset” against the tendency to make “rash or hasty assertions.” The urge to tamper with, pry into, add to, or hasten to understand the signifiers of divine meaning is shown, in Paradise Lost, to be the original sin of the first human couple. As much as for Lanyer, then, sex is for Milton bound up with hermeneutics—and, for both poets, the individual's relationship with God is a consuming passion, about which one may report a phenomenology of affects but can offer no contentions or arguments.

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Aug 1, 2021

References

  • On Authorship, Sexuality, and the Psychology of Privation in Milton's Paradise Lost
    Acheson, Katherine O.
  • Milton's Holy Spirit in De Doctrina Christiana
    Aers, David
  • ‘Rational Burning’: Milton on Sex and Marriage
    Aers, David Hodge, Bob
  • Unfallen Marriage and the Fallen Imagination in Paradise Lost
    Anderson, Douglas
  • In Joannis Evangelium
    Migne, J.-P.
  • Believing the Word: A Proposal about Knowing Other Persons
    Cary, Phillip
  • The Flaming Heart: Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphicall Saint Teresa
    Crashaw, Richard Martin, L. C.
  • Milton's Urania: ‘The Meaning, Not the Name I Call.’
    Davies, Stevie Hunter, William B.
  • Desiring Angels: The Angelic Body in Paradise Lost
    deGruy, Karma
  • At the Haghe Decemb. 19. 1619. I Preached upon this Text. Since in my sicknesse at Abrey-hatche in Essex, 1630, revising my short notes of that Sermon, I digested them into these two, Mat. 4.18, 19, 20
    Donne, John Potter, George Simpson, Evelyn
  • The Harbinger to the Progresse
    Donne, John Milgate, Wesley
  • Ausonio's Mirrors and Galileo's Lenses: The Telescope and Sixteenth-Century Practical Optical Knowledge
    Dupré, Sven
  • The Sexual Mathematics of Paradise Lost
    Duran, Angelica
  • Enchiridion
    O'Malley, John
  • The Paraclesis
    Olin, John
  • The Metaphysics of Milton's Divorce Tracts
    Fallon, Stephen M. Loewenstein, David Turner, James Grantham
  • The Assayer
    Galilei, Galileo Drake, Stillman O'Malley, C. D.
  • Milton's and Donne's Stargazing Lovers, Sex, and the New Astronomy
    Gimelli, Catherine Martin
  • Milton's Angels
    Goldberg, Jonathan
  • ‘Vain Desire,’ ‘Perverseness,’ and ‘Love's Proper Hue’: Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Interest in Paradise Lost
    Graham, Karma
  • The Rhetoric of Feminine Priority and the Ethics of Form in Paradise Lost
    Grossman, Marshall
  • The Gospel according to Aemilia: Women and the Sacred
    Guibbory, Achsah Grossman, Marshall
  • Self and Language in the Fall
    Harada, Jun
  • Sense Metaphors of Cognition in Early Modern Texts
    Harp, Gerald Scott
  • Place, Body, and Spirit Joined: The Earth-Human Wound in Paradise Lost
    Hiltner, Ken
  • ‘That Blindest Weakness Be Not Over-Bold’: Aemilia Lanyer's Radical Unfolding of the Passion
    Keohane, Catherine
  • Description of Cooke-ham
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • To the Doubtful Reader
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • To the Ladie Lucie, Countesse of Bedford
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • To the Queens Most Excellent Majestie
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • An Exchange of Letters: By Sex Obsessed
    Le Comte, Edward
  • ‘Impregn'd with Reason’: Eve's Aural Conception in Paradise Lost
    Lehnhof, Kent R.
  • ‘Nor Tumd I Weene’: Paradise Lost and Prelapsarian Sexuality
    Lehnhof, Kent R.
  • Alhazen's Theory of Vision and Its Reception in the West
    Lindberg, David
  • Lovemaking in Milton's Paradise
    Lindenbaum, Peter
  • Assertio omnium articulorum M. Lutheri per bullam Leonis X. novissimam damnatorum. 1520
    Luther, Martin
  • Milton's Wedded Love: Not about Sex (as We Know It)
    Luxon, Thomas H.
  • ‘Here I Have Prepar'd My Paschal Lambe’: Reading and Seeing the Eucharistic Presence in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
    Mascetti, Yaakov
  • Satan and the ‘Incompos'd’ Visage of Chaos: Milton's Hermeneutic Indeterminacy
    Mascetti, Yaakov
  • ‘This Pretious Passeover Feed Upon’: Poetic Eucharist and Feminine Vision in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
    Mascetti, Yaakov Marotti, Arthur Goodblatt, Chanita
  • Tokens of Love, Part 1: Renaissance and Reconnaissance
    Mascetti, Yaakov
  • Tokens of Love, Part 2: John Donne and the Indeterminacy of Presence
    Mascetti, Yaakov
  • Improbable Liberalisms: ‘Servil Copulation’ and Domestic Liberty in Locke and Milton
    McCready, Amy R.
  • Areopagitica: A Speech of John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parliament of England
    Milton, John Hughes, Merritt
  • The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
    Milton, John Wolfe, Don E.
  • Paradise Lost
    Milton, John Kerrigan, William Rumrich, John Fallon, Stephen M.
  • Tetrachordon
    Milton, John Wolfe, Don E.
  • Introduction: Kuhn's Epiphany
    Perl, Jeffrey M.
  • The Political Economy of Burke's Analysis of the French Revolution
    Pocock, J. G. A.
  • Gender and Spiritual Equality in Marriage: A Dialogic Reading of Rachel Speght and John Milton
    Polydorou, Desma
  • Adam's and Eve's Oneness: Paradise Lost and Virgilian Allusion
    Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
  • Ovid's Art of Love and Augustinian Theology in Paradise Lost
    Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
  • ‘That Fallacious Fruit’: Lapsarian Lovemaking in Paradise Lost
    Savoie, John
  • The Gender of Religious Devotion: Amelia Lanyer and John Donne
    Schoenfeldt, Michael C. Shuger, Debora McEachern, Claire
  • An Apology for Knowledge: Gender and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation in the Works of Aemilia Lanyer and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
    Siegfried, B. R.
  • ‘Thou Art Exact of Taste’: The Ars Amatoria as Intertext in Paradise Lost
    Stapleton, M. L.
  • The Two Great Sexes in Paradise Lost
    Summers, Joseph H.
  • Body Politics in Paradise Lost
    Trubowitz, Rachel J.
  • The Homosexual Temptation of the Son in Milton's Paradise Regained: A Reply to John T. Shawcross and Claude J. Summers
    Urban, David
  • Struggling into Discourse: The Emergence of Renaissance Women's Writing
    Waller, Gary F. Hannay, Margaret P.
  • ‘Their Sex Not Equal Seemed’: Equality and Hierarchy in John Milton's Paradise Lost
    Wilding, Michael Davidson, Lola S. Mukherjee, S. N. Zdenko, Zlatar
  • Galileo's Scientific Method: A Re-examination
    Wisan, Winfred L. Butts, R. E. Pitt, J. C.
  • Kepler and Galileo: Theories of Light and Vision. Practical Knowledge and the Status of the Telescope as a Scientific Instrument at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century
    Zik, Yaakov
  • On Authorship, Sexuality, and the Psychology of Privation in Milton's Paradise Lost
    Acheson, Katherine O.
  • Milton's Holy Spirit in De Doctrina Christiana
    Aers, David
  • ‘Rational Burning’: Milton on Sex and Marriage
    Aers, David Hodge, Bob
  • Unfallen Marriage and the Fallen Imagination in Paradise Lost
    Anderson, Douglas
  • In Joannis Evangelium
    Migne, J.-P.
  • Believing the Word: A Proposal about Knowing Other Persons
    Cary, Phillip
  • The Flaming Heart: Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphicall Saint Teresa
    Crashaw, Richard Martin, L. C.
  • Milton's Urania: ‘The Meaning, Not the Name I Call.’
    Davies, Stevie Hunter, William B.
  • Desiring Angels: The Angelic Body in Paradise Lost
    deGruy, Karma
  • At the Haghe Decemb. 19. 1619. I Preached upon this Text. Since in my sicknesse at Abrey-hatche in Essex, 1630, revising my short notes of that Sermon, I digested them into these two, Mat. 4.18, 19, 20
    Donne, John Potter, George Simpson, Evelyn
  • The Harbinger to the Progresse
    Donne, John Milgate, Wesley
  • Ausonio's Mirrors and Galileo's Lenses: The Telescope and Sixteenth-Century Practical Optical Knowledge
    Dupré, Sven
  • The Sexual Mathematics of Paradise Lost
    Duran, Angelica
  • Enchiridion
    O'Malley, John
  • The Paraclesis
    Olin, John
  • The Metaphysics of Milton's Divorce Tracts
    Fallon, Stephen M. Loewenstein, David Turner, James Grantham
  • The Assayer
    Galilei, Galileo Drake, Stillman O'Malley, C. D.
  • Milton's and Donne's Stargazing Lovers, Sex, and the New Astronomy
    Gimelli, Catherine Martin
  • Milton's Angels
    Goldberg, Jonathan
  • ‘Vain Desire,’ ‘Perverseness,’ and ‘Love's Proper Hue’: Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Interest in Paradise Lost
    Graham, Karma
  • The Rhetoric of Feminine Priority and the Ethics of Form in Paradise Lost
    Grossman, Marshall
  • The Gospel according to Aemilia: Women and the Sacred
    Guibbory, Achsah Grossman, Marshall
  • Self and Language in the Fall
    Harada, Jun
  • Sense Metaphors of Cognition in Early Modern Texts
    Harp, Gerald Scott
  • Place, Body, and Spirit Joined: The Earth-Human Wound in Paradise Lost
    Hiltner, Ken
  • ‘That Blindest Weakness Be Not Over-Bold’: Aemilia Lanyer's Radical Unfolding of the Passion
    Keohane, Catherine
  • Description of Cooke-ham
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • To the Doubtful Reader
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • To the Ladie Lucie, Countesse of Bedford
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • To the Queens Most Excellent Majestie
    Lanyer, Aemilia Woods, Susanne
  • An Exchange of Letters: By Sex Obsessed
    Le Comte, Edward
  • ‘Impregn'd with Reason’: Eve's Aural Conception in Paradise Lost
    Lehnhof, Kent R.
  • ‘Nor Tumd I Weene’: Paradise Lost and Prelapsarian Sexuality
    Lehnhof, Kent R.
  • Alhazen's Theory of Vision and Its Reception in the West
    Lindberg, David
  • Lovemaking in Milton's Paradise
    Lindenbaum, Peter
  • Assertio omnium articulorum M. Lutheri per bullam Leonis X. novissimam damnatorum. 1520
    Luther, Martin
  • Milton's Wedded Love: Not about Sex (as We Know It)
    Luxon, Thomas H.
  • ‘Here I Have Prepar'd My Paschal Lambe’: Reading and Seeing the Eucharistic Presence in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
    Mascetti, Yaakov
  • Satan and the ‘Incompos'd’ Visage of Chaos: Milton's Hermeneutic Indeterminacy
    Mascetti, Yaakov
  • ‘This Pretious Passeover Feed Upon’: Poetic Eucharist and Feminine Vision in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
    Mascetti, Yaakov Marotti, Arthur Goodblatt, Chanita
  • Tokens of Love, Part 1: Renaissance and Reconnaissance
    Mascetti, Yaakov
  • Tokens of Love, Part 2: John Donne and the Indeterminacy of Presence
    Mascetti, Yaakov
  • Improbable Liberalisms: ‘Servil Copulation’ and Domestic Liberty in Locke and Milton
    McCready, Amy R.
  • Areopagitica: A Speech of John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parliament of England
    Milton, John Hughes, Merritt
  • The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
    Milton, John Wolfe, Don E.
  • Paradise Lost
    Milton, John Kerrigan, William Rumrich, John Fallon, Stephen M.
  • Tetrachordon
    Milton, John Wolfe, Don E.
  • Introduction: Kuhn's Epiphany
    Perl, Jeffrey M.
  • The Political Economy of Burke's Analysis of the French Revolution
    Pocock, J. G. A.
  • Gender and Spiritual Equality in Marriage: A Dialogic Reading of Rachel Speght and John Milton
    Polydorou, Desma
  • Adam's and Eve's Oneness: Paradise Lost and Virgilian Allusion
    Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
  • Ovid's Art of Love and Augustinian Theology in Paradise Lost
    Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
  • ‘That Fallacious Fruit’: Lapsarian Lovemaking in Paradise Lost
    Savoie, John
  • The Gender of Religious Devotion: Amelia Lanyer and John Donne
    Schoenfeldt, Michael C. Shuger, Debora McEachern, Claire
  • An Apology for Knowledge: Gender and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation in the Works of Aemilia Lanyer and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
    Siegfried, B. R.
  • ‘Thou Art Exact of Taste’: The Ars Amatoria as Intertext in Paradise Lost
    Stapleton, M. L.
  • The Two Great Sexes in Paradise Lost
    Summers, Joseph H.
  • Body Politics in Paradise Lost
    Trubowitz, Rachel J.
  • The Homosexual Temptation of the Son in Milton's Paradise Regained: A Reply to John T. Shawcross and Claude J. Summers
    Urban, David
  • Struggling into Discourse: The Emergence of Renaissance Women's Writing
    Waller, Gary F. Hannay, Margaret P.
  • ‘Their Sex Not Equal Seemed’: Equality and Hierarchy in John Milton's Paradise Lost
    Wilding, Michael Davidson, Lola S. Mukherjee, S. N. Zdenko, Zlatar
  • Galileo's Scientific Method: A Re-examination
    Wisan, Winfred L. Butts, R. E. Pitt, J. C.
  • Kepler and Galileo: Theories of Light and Vision. Practical Knowledge and the Status of the Telescope as a Scientific Instrument at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century
    Zik, Yaakov