In Handmaid to Divinity, Desiree Hellegers establishes seventeenth-century poetry as a critical resource for understanding the debates about natural philosophy, astronomy, and medicine during the Scientific Revolution. Hellegers provides important insights into seventeenth-century responses to the emergent discourses of western science and into the cultural roots of the current environmental crisis.
Drawing on recent cultural and feminist critiques of science, Hellegers offers finely nuanced readings of John Donne’s Anniversaries, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Anne Finch’s The Spleen.