What happens when we cease to view the sexual and the sacred as distinct, let alone diametrically opposed, categories? Early modern poets routinely employ erotic—and at times even viscerally somatic—language and imagery to give expression to the depths of their devotion to the divine. In this course, we explore a rich cross-section of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century verse that dwells at just this nexus of sexuality and the sacred, often referred to in modern criticism as "sacred eroticism." Topics include prelapsarian and postlapsarian sexuality; biblical and classical legacies (including the Song of Songs, Ovid, and Petrarch); the early modern religious sonnet; mystical eroticism and depictions of spiritual ecstasy in Catholic devotional poetry and visual culture; "homodevotion" and divine embodiment; female somatic spirituality; and early modern angelology, including debates about the nature of angelic bodies and sexuality, particularly with respect to John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. Likely authors include Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey), Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Robert Southwell, Richard Crashaw, George Herbert, Amelia Lanyer, and John Milton.
- Docente: Nadine Weiss