Quote:
Originally posted by weinhold
Andrew, thanks for posting on Donne. He's one of my favorites! I'm wondering, thought, what you make of his use of clearly sensual and erotic language in his religious poems. Maybe we should keep Samuel Johnson's critique in mind as we read Donne. He wrote of Donne's metaphysical conceits that they are "two unlike ideas yoked together by violence." Your thoughts?
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Good question. I can't help though but look back to the Bible, especially the Song of Solomon, or the example of Isaac sporting with Rebekah (Gen. 26.8), and appreciate the Biblical and Puritan (as opposed to Victorian, not saying that Donne was a Puritan) perspective of sensuality in the context of holy and chaste love, not only between a man and his wife, but between the Church, the Bride of Christ, and the Bridegroom.
Edward Taylor is a Puritan who wrote in similar vein based on the Song of Solomon, as illustrated
here.
[Edited on 7-15-2006 by VirginiaHuguenot]
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Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor,
The Matthew Poole Project
"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole