Philosophy and Literature

Abstract:

If early modern English medical texts use the word "egg" interchangeably with "fetus" to describe something vital but unborn, tenuous but complete, early modern English poets resist this thinking, handling the future with less assurance and new life with more uncertainty. Shakespeare uses "egg" to describe fragile things that must be crushed or killed; and there is no mention of "eggs" in Spenser's Faerie Queene. Unlike Shakespeare, however, Spenser imagines fairyland as a place where the protections eggs provide are revealed, where forms of being and nonbeing coexist, where new lives take shape alongside other forms that pass away.