John Donne's Exploration Of Harmonious Love Relationship

Primarily known as a metaphysical love poet, John Donne provides a profound thought in his lyrics. His ideas about love are both disbelieving and yearning; his attitudes towards women are depreciating as well as praising. Yet from among the seemingly paradoxical points of view, Donne's incessant exploration of ideal love and love relationship can be distinctly perceived. To Donne, two things are involved in the harmonious love relationship: the unification of body and soul internally and the harmony of the male and the female externally. The thesis views his life and his poetry as the stages of his exploration of harmonious love relationship.This thesis is divided into three chapters.Chapter One explores Donne's biased attitude towards men and women in his early period. In some of his poems, women are regarded as"inferior"while men"superior". Men have the unconditional"power"to flirt with, command and dominate women. This biased attitude results in the poet's doubt about women and his disappointment in true love. In terms of feminism, Donne's strong Male-Chauvinism can be explicitly detected.Chapter Two deals with Donne's failed attempt to achieve body-and-soul unification.Firstly indulging himself in physical pleasure and then trying to find true love in spiritual attachment, what he gets are only the doubt about true love, the disillusionment and the frustration.Chapter Three is a devoted study of Donne's successful attempt of harmonious love relationship in his late poems. He realizes that the essence of the harmony of love is the perfect unification of body and soul. Also women must be put to an equal position to men in love. Idealized and harmonious love relationship requires as well full devotion of love, self-sufficiency of love, love's exclusiveness and mutuality.Donne is a"realistic idealist"in his exploration of harmonious love relationship. It is his incessant pursuit and exploration that sublimate and eternalize his love lyrics, rendering them well in advance of the age in which he lived and suggesting a progress in the motif of love in literature.