Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-h6jzd Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-02-25T13:49:24.736Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conception is a Blessing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Evan K. Gibson
Evan K. Gibson*
Affiliation:
Oregon State College, Corvallis, Oregon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

John E. Hankins in his interesting article, “Hamlet's ‘God Kissing Carrion’: a Theory of the Generation of Life” (PMLA, LXIV, 507-516) suggests a possible theological interpretation to the lines: “For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion [or ‘god, kissing carrion’] …” (II, ii, 181). He points out that the belief in the generative power of the sun was not merely a pagan concept and (p. 515) quotes from Alanus de Insulis to show that the worm born in putrifying flesh by the power of the sun was regarded by mediæval theologians as a symbol representing Christ, who was born of carnal flesh and without masculine seed.

Type
Comment and Criticism
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 5: Issue 1 part 1 , December 1949 , pp. 1236 - 1238
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Ibid., p. 36.

3 Ibid., p. 142.

4 Caxton's éd., 1483. Quoted by Todd in The Works of Edmund Spenser, Variorum Edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1934), in, 250.

5 Br. Sar. i, col. cvi. Quoted by Greene, p. 357.

6 Hamlet, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), pp. 237–238.