The Harrowing of Hell in English Poetry from Spenser to Milton.

This article examines the persistence and transformation of the doctrine of Christ’s literal descent into hell—known as the Harrowing of Hell—in seventeenth-century English poetry, despite its theological controversy following the Reformation. It argues that the narrative tradition of the descensus survived through the works of Edmund Spenser and his followers (the Spenserians), including Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Aemilia Lanyer, and Joseph Beaumont, who adapted the theme amid evolving Protestant doctrines. The essay further explores how John Milton’s mortalist theology in *De Doctrina Christiana* provided a framework for depicting a local descent to the realm of the dead in *Paradise Lost*, continuing the harrowing tradition in a reformed context. Finally, it considers later seventeenth-century poets Henry More and Samuel Wesley, who, while acknowledging doctrinal uncertainties, demonstrate the enduring imaginative power of the harrowing motif in English literature.