Handmaid to Divinity: Natural Philosophy, Poetry, and Gender in Seventeenth-century England

Front Cover
University of Oklahoma Press, 2000 - Literary Criticism - 218 pages

In Handmaid to Divinity, Desiree Hellegers establishes seventeenth-century poetry as a critical resource for understanding the debates about natural philosophy, astronomy, and medicine during the Scientific Revolution. Hellegers provides important insights into seventeenth-century responses to the emergent discourses of western science and into the cultural roots of the current environmental crisis.

Drawing on recent cultural and feminist critiques of science, Hellegers offers finely nuanced readings of John Donne’s Anniversaries, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Anne Finch’s The Spleen.

From inside the book

Contents

Francis Bacon and the Advancement of Absolutism
22
Poetry
67
The Fall of Science in Book 8 of Paradise Lost
103
An Anatomy of the Handmaids Tale
168

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2000)

Desiree Hellegers is Professor of English and Director of Collective for Social and Environmental Justice at Washington State University, Vancouver.