Tension Between The Body And Soul

John Donne always stands in the center of the study of Metaphysical poets. But Donne studies both in English countries and in China are largely confined to his love poems rather than religious works; even less can be found in the study of the combination of his love poems and religious works.The present thesis attempts to investigate into the tension between the "Body" and the "Soul" which is pervasive in Donne by combining Donne’s love and religious poems from the perspective of New Criticism. And two collections of Donne’s poetry, namely Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets, which respectively represent Donne’s love and religious poetry, are taken as the objects of the present study.Chapter1of the thesis explores the tension in Donne’s pursuits of love in his erotic poems, manifested in the tension between sexual love and pure spiritual love. Donne is first indulged in sexual love but then totally abandons it and pursues pure spiritual love instead, which indicates his waver between Body and Soul. Union of sexual and spiritual love is Donne’s conception of love’s perfect state, which is the religious elevation of pure sexual love and the realistic supplement of spiritual love. But Donne’s skepticism of the possibility of the perfect state of love results in his abandoning both the sexual and spiritual love.Chapter2expounds the tension between the separable and inseparable body and soul, which originates from Donne’s belief in the Original Sin and Salvation as well as his perplexity over Death and Resurrection. On the one hand, body and soul can be separated with the soul being released from the body as a way of cleansing the spirit, and with the death of the body giving the soul a new life. On the other hand, Donne emphasizes the inseparability of the Body and Soul because there is the mutual necessity of Body and Soul. Behind such tension of Body and Soul is Donne’s obsessive thoughts of Sin, which can be further developed in his apostasy and the Calvinistic influence.Chapter3discusses the tension between the body in Donne’s religious poetry as represented by Holy Sonnets and the soul in his love poetry as represented by Songs and Sonnets, which functions to highlight the religious rift in Donne’s love poems and the sublimate love in Donne’s religious poems. It is exposed that his religious rift revealed in his love poetry often finds the illusion of salvation in his love poetry, and that in his religious poetry, his love is elevated to be the unity of the secular and the divine, the unification of sense and sensibility.The present study hopes to offer some referential value in deeper understanding of John Donne’s poetry and the conflicts of his age.