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Hester Pulter's Childbirth Poetics

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Ruth Connolly

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Abstract

Hester Pulter's poem from the lying-in chamber, “when I Lay Inn”, exemplifies a wider practice in her poetics of foregrounding the sexed female body in her work. This poem’s literalization of the metaphor of the poet-in-childbirth begins Pulter's re-examination of her culture's positioning of her body and her writing from the point of view of experiential and experimental knowledge. The configurations of bodies—heavenly and human—offered by the early modern habit of thinking about worlds, minds and wombs by correspondence with one another offer Pulter a route to that positioning and to construct a counterperspective from which to survey it.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Connolly R

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Women's Writing

Year: 2019

Volume: 26

Issue: 3

Pages: 282-303

Online publication date: 15/12/2016

Acceptance date: 11/08/2016

Date deposited: 16/12/2016

ISSN (print): 0969-9082

ISSN (electronic): 1747-5848

Publisher: Routledge

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2016.1261639

DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2016.1261639

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