The Harrowing of Hell in English Poetry from Spenser to Milton

By Spenser’s time, the doctrine of Christ’s literal descent to hell was controversial in the Church of England, and English harrowing poetry all but disappears in the following century. And yet we find a depiction of Christ’s descensus in Book 3 of Paradise Lost, as many critics have acknowledged. Why does the doctrine appear in a Puritan poem of the seventeenth century? This essay argues that the narrative tradition of Christ’s descent survived in the poetry of the seventeenth-century Spenserians. After introducing the Reformation controversy, the first section explores how Spenser and his followers—Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Aemilia Lanyer, and Joseph Beaumont—preserve the tradition, but also how they respond to contemporary theological debate. The second section examines, first, how mortalism offers Milton a theological rationale for a local descent (i.e., a literal visit to the place of the dead) in De Doctrina Christiana, and then how this theological recovery allows him to continue the tradition of harrowing poetry in Paradise Lost. The final section considers two additional poets and thinkers of the late seventeenth century, Henry More and Samuel Wesley, who attest to the doctrine’s imaginative power and hence offer insight into why it persisted long after it failed to meet the Reformation’s new standards of credibility.