Milton and Maternal Mortality (Paperback)

Introduction; Part I. Behind the Veil: Childbirth and the Nature of Obstetric Anxiety in Early Modern England: 1. 'Exquisitt torment' and 'infinitt grace': maternal suffering and the rites of childbirth; 2. When things went wrong: maternal mortality and obstetric anxiety; 3. Religious frameworks; Part II. 'Scarce-Well-Lighted Flame': The Representation of Maternal Mortality in Milton's Early Poetry: 4. 'Too much conceaving': Milton's 'On Shakespear'; 5. 'Tears of perfect moan': Milton and the Marchioness of Winchester; 6. 'Farr above in spangled sheen': A Mask and its epilogue; Part III. Conscious Terrors: The Problem of Maternal Mortality in Milton's Later Poetry: 7. The wide wound and the veil: Sonnet 23 and the birth of Eve; 8. 'Conscious terrors' and the 'Promised Seed': seventeenth-century obstetrics and the allegory of sin and death; 9. The 'Womb of waters' and the 'Abortive Gulph': on the reproductive imagery of Milton's cosmos.