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Milton, Jerome, and Apocalyptic Virginity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Brooke Conti
Brooke Conti*
Affiliation:
Cleveland State University
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Abstract

Milton's youthful interest in virginity is usually regarded as a private eccentricity abandoned on his maturation. His “Mask” is often read, analogously, as charting the Lady's movement from temporary virginity to wedded chastity. This essay challenges those claims, arguing that Milton's understanding of virginity's poetic and apocalyptic powers comes from Saint Jerome, whose ideas he struggles with throughout his career. Reading “A Mask” alongside Jerome suggests that Milton endorses the apocalyptic potential of virginity without necessarily assigning those powers to the Lady herself. In later works, Milton modifies and adapts Jerome before finally producing the perfect eremitic hero of “Paradise Regain'd.”

Type
Articles
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , Spring 2019 , pp. 194 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to the Milton Society of America for a 2017 MLA panel that allowed me to present these ideas in preliminary form; to Tobias Gregory, Wendy Beth Hyman, James J. Marino, Austin Busch, Katherine Clark, and David G. Hunter for valuable feedback, advice, or direction in my research; and to the superb editorial staff and outside readers for Renaissance Quarterly, especially John Leonard.

References

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