Abstract

Critical approaches to John Donne’s poetry share a general perspective that alleges a dichotomy between the representation of love in his romantic and devotional works. Starting from a position that acknowledges the metaphysical composition of human beings as constituted by equally important body and soul as central to the ontology that informs Donne’s work, I posit that the connection between body and soul is fundamental to Donne’s vision of love—a philosophy of love that can be traced across the corpus of his work. For Donne, fully realized love involves the engagement of both body and soul along with reciprocation. Tracing this pattern through close analysis of Donne’s poetic techniques including his metaphysical conceits, Renaissance cosmography, reversals, and imagery in poems ranging from samples from the Songs and Sonnets, the Elegies, and the Holy Sonnets, I endeavor to build a comprehensive picture of a philosophy of love that engages the whole person. In this era when modern critical concepts of identity increasingly dictate scholarly approaches to love, Donne’s fundamental perspective grounded in the metaphysics of body and soul is rarely a topic of serious exploration, yet serious attention to the interplay of body, soul, and love in Donne is imperative to an informed understanding of his work.