John Donne: Master of Contradiction and Theology - Research Paper

Introduction

John Donne was a famous English poet and an Anglican chaplain from the early 20th century. He was one of the writers presumed to write texts that had a contradicting nature. He uses metaphors and conceits in some of his writings while others he used plain English. Most were theological, talking about abstract elements: addressing God while others were of his lustful infatuations on erotic intimacy. John would confess that he loves his mistress, and yet in some texts, he doubted the existence of love. He described the deathly feeling a woman has when overwhelmed with pleasure, while others he mentions that these women fake their orgasms to make men feel they have conquered something. He wrote many poems, and a reader can end up noticing how contradicting the texts are to each other.

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"The flea," one of John's famous poems, talks about love. He writes to his mistress of how he wants their bodies to mingle like their blood sucked by the flea. The poet says plainly to the mistress that he wants them to have sexual intercourse. When reading his other texts, one would find it rather odd that he used this phrase casually instead of polishing it up by putting it metaphorically. Another writing of John describes that finding love is next to impossible. He argues in "Go Catch a Falling Star" that to find a faithful woman is as hard as to catch a star falling from the sky. The two poems contradict each other in that one is of his confessions of love, and the other he seems to discern that love can even exist.

"Batter my heart" is a sonnet by John Donne. This piece of writing is full of contradictions in its wordings. He wants the supernatural to manifest itself in physical form, yet that is impossible. He expresses Christianity as eternal happiness, yet one must go through earthly suffering. The speaker in this text is confused with what he wants. John writes in stanza two, "knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend," and then inline four "break, blow, burn, and make me new," which is a chain of counterstatements. The words are contradicting each other - another train of contradictions found in lines three and four. The act of overthrowing someone is usually subduing someone and not establishing him or her. The persona requests that God bend his force so that he may rise. "So that I may rise and stand, overthrow me and bend me." In lines eleven and twelve, he mentions, "Untie me so as to imprison me." The persona goes on in lines twelve and fourteen by asking to be imprisoned, delighted, and raped so that he can be free and chaste. All these statements are opposing each other.

"The good morrow" is among the best poems by John Donne, written during that time Spain and England set to explore the new world of America: he alludes to various travels in the text. This text differs from several of John's poems in that it captures love more that his sacred believes. In the first stanza, he starts by asking his beloved to remember that moment in time before they fell in love with how they enjoyed life in different places. He compares that feeling to the same feeling a baby has before weaning. John suggests that when he is with his lover, his past enjoyments only feels like a taste of what he is experiencing. Other men exploring other worlds should also explore the world that they have created; that is how intense their relationship is. In stanza three, the speaker is engrossed by the moment the lovers gaze at each other and looking deeply into each other's eyes. A reader can genuinely believe that the woman is also truly in love with him, which contradicts his opinion in the poem "Go Catch a Falling Star," which implies finding a woman who genuinely falls in love is close to impossible.

"The Canonization" has its paradox between religion and love. He tries to establish a link between love and devotion. The text describes lovers as saints, which is somewhat insulting to Christian scripture or religion. There is nowhere in the bible that tries to explain the process of lovemaking: this is usually between man and wife, and it is intimate, sacred to some point that discussing it is seen as offensive. John was Anglican and raised in a religious background where he was ought to know this and not contradict the ways of the church. The text being unorthodox shows that it clarifies the thesis statement of John being contradictive (Grant, 550).

The contradiction is evident in John's other poem, "The Sun Rising," where the speaker tries to express that the room he lives with his beloved is a world on its own. He does not want anything to interfere with their love, or in this case, their "world." He asserts that their love is not limited by time and that all other external factors should only revolve around them and not come in between them. Therefore, what he means by this claim is that he excludes everything earthly: the sun and the cultural surroundings of his world. However, in lines 27 and 28, the speaker argues that the sun is supposed to shine on the earth. Therefore, it must light up their world: him and his lover. Here we can identify the contradiction when he expels the sun from his world but still wants it to shine on them.

Conclusion

John Donne is thought of as one of the prominent writers in history. His writings were based on love and religion, mostly, which came out as a paradox. The poems covered above highlights how contradicting his thoughts were. His pursuit of setting side by side the real love with the divinity of doctrine made his texts to be distinct from other conventional writings. Most of the things he wrote contradicted what was expected from a religious leader. This style of writing made his pieces to be disapproved by his peers, which made his work fade in the seventeenth century. However, the paradox in his texts appealed to our modern readers.

Work Cited

Donne, John. The complete poetry and selected prose of John Donne. Modern Library Classics, 2001.

Grant, Patrick. "Augustinian Spirituality and the Holy Sonnets of John Donne." ELH 38.4 (1971): 542-561.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Contradictions in Batter my heart (Holy Sonnet 14)." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2019.