Milton, Lucy Hutchinson, and the Lucretian Sublime

Abstract

Lucretius’s De rerum natura is a neglected source for the emergence of the theory and practice of the sublime in the early modern period. This paper shows how two committed Puritans, the poets John Milton (1608–1674) and Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681), engaged with Lucretius. After examining Lucretius’s quest for sublimity in subject and style, the article considers the ways in which Milton and Hutchinson responded to his presentation of the gods, his cosmology, his treatment of the death of the soul, his politics, and the ways in which sublimity might be gendered