The Philosophy Of Love In John Donne's Poetry

John Donne, known as the greatest Metaphysical poets, deserved this reputation. His poetry is different from that of other poets of his age. This paper concentrates on his Songs and Sonets and The Elegies and only several religious poems, which study his love philosophy in his poems and it is divided into three chapters.The first chapter focuses on his male complaint poems. Firstly, it talks about the reasons for Donne's melancholy, one being his apostasy, the other being his ambition. Secondly, it sets some examples of his male complaint in some of his poems and explains the reasons as well. In this kind of poems, Donne shows his dissatisfaction with women, reflecting his dissatisfaction with the world in which he lived.The second chapter studies the lack of female discourse from the perspective of feminism, which is the second of his love philosophy. This chapter is divided into three small parts: female and"equality", female and reticence, and the criticism of women, making an analysis of the reasons mixed with it. The disdain shown on women is actually the substitution by Donne to manifest his contempt of his unfortunate experience and the resistance against the female domination at that time.The third chapter talks about his criteria of ideal love, which shows his great longing to be cared for and loved. The ideal love also shows his true love for his wife, because by using the ideal love he can console his wife that their love can conquer everything. His marriage caused great disaster on him and his career; he once thought that his life was ruined at that time, so he can find consolation in his ideal love poems. And Donne, also known as the melancholic poet with inner conflict, can also find comfort in this kind of poems. He thinks that real love is the combination of the body and the soul; through the body the soul can reach a higher level and be purified.This paper concludes all these three parts together and sums up the reasons with a conjecture about Donne the person. What kind of person is Donne? No one knows. He never tells us the exact answer in his poems. So it waits to be found out.