Marian Musings: Reflections on Blessed Virgins in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry

John Sitter argues that the gender of personifications in eighteenth-century English poetry is cognitively significant rather than merely conventional or “grammatical,” and that many of the “celestial” maids described in quasi-religious terms in the period's poetry function as permissibly secularized versions of the Blessed Virgin—in a country suspicious of any leaning toward Mariolatry. Poets considered include Chudleigh, Prior, Parnell, Watts, Akenside, Thomas Warton, Collins, Smart, Carter, and Chatterton.