ABSTRACT
This analysis of cultural constructions of childhood and female youth in early modern English literature reveals diverse perspectives on the child’s moral nature evident in three distinct ideas of childhood. Puritan writers frequently instructed their young readers about the problems arising from inherent corruption, while poets such as Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne re-imagine childhood by situating it within a framework of innocence. These poets anticipate Wordsworth’s Neoplatonic conception of a child whose alignment with divinity bestows power and agency. This proto-Romantic conception, when inflected by gender as happens in some of Andrew Marvell’s lyric poetry, offers a distinctive space for re-imagining female youth, and an illuminating contrast to the less adequate version of innocence granted to Milton’s youthful Eve.
