Hellmouth

[Bob Haas]

In "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," doesn't Jonathan Edwards depict
hell as a horrific, gaping mouth over which we're all suspended?  I don't have
it in front of me right now, and it's been years since I've read it, but I
seem to recall that image.

Kathleen Miller wrote:

> I just finished this one for Mr. Safire. His curiousity was piqued by a
> Times Magazine article back in October. The OED has Edmund Spenser's Faerie
> Queene 1590 - "Betwixt them both was but a little stride, That did the
> house of Rishesse from Hell-mouth divide." Kipling used it as well.
> Almost all of the other references I could find (that didn't come from
> Buffy) had to do with the stage design of Medieval plays. They depicted the
> mouth to hell as a huge dragon's (Leviathan's)gaping mouth.

--

Bob Haas
Department of English
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

                   "No matter where you go, there you are."