All too often, childbirth in early modern England was associated with fear, suffering
and death, and this melancholy preoccupation weighed heavily on the seventeenth-century
mind. This landmark study examines John Milton's life and work, uncovering evidence of
the poet's engagement with maternal mortality and the dilemmas it presented. Drawing on
both literary scholarship and up-to-date historical research, Louis Schwartz provides
important new readings of Milton's poetry, including Paradise Lost, as well as a wide-
ranging survey of the medical practices and religious beliefs that surrounded the perils
of childbirth. The reader is granted a richer understanding of how seventeenth-century
society struggled to come to terms with its fears, and how one of its most important
poets gave voice to that struggle.

http://www.amazon.com/Milton-Maternal-Mortality-Louis-Schwartz/dp/052189638X

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