Donne's 'The Ecstasy.' (John Donne)

From: The Explicator | Date: June 22, 1993| Author: Farmer, Stephen | Copyright information

The ambiguity of John Donne's analogy of 'equal armies' with body and soul in 'The Ecstasy' has resulted in differing interpretations. However, Donne's ambiguity is intentional. It allows multiple definitions of 'we' as the body and the soul. In this way Donne overcomes the traditional distinction between the physical body and spirituality.

As 'twixt two equal armies, Fate

Suspends uncertain victory,

Our souls, (which to advance their state, 15

...

Read all of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles from HighBeam Research

Can't buy me love: money, gender, and colonialism in Donne's erotic verse *.(17th-century poet John Donne)(Critical Essay)
Criticism ; 1 SUPPRESSED BY THE LICENSER from the 1633 printed text of John Donne's poetry, the elegy Loves Progress seems also to have escaped sustained critical discussion, despite the twentieth-century revival of Donne studies. The comparative neglect does not, I ...
T/K : The passion of John Donne.(profile of English poet)(Critical Essay)
World and I ; Laurie Morrow is the host of the talk radio show True North with Laurie Morrow, heard on WDEV 550 AM and 96.1 FM, Burlington, Vermont. A former English professor, she is the president of the Vermont Association of Scholars. Bad poets don't intend to write bad poetry. Too often, imagination, ...
words : Ecstasy
The Independent - London ; THE Texan drugs dealer who, about 10 years ago, coined the name Ecstasy for methylene dioxy methamphetamine (MDMA) was on to a winner; but it was really ... I don't mean because a tablet of it has just killed a teenager, but because ecstasy, the word, didn't have much to do with Ecstasy ...
Metre maid; Say 'haiku' to Daisy Goodwin, presenter of a new poetry show for Valentine's Day
The Sunday Herald ; ... told it might get me some action. Our old English teacher opened our ears when he said that the girls always go with the boys with the flow, or words to that effect. And that from John Donne's The Dream ("Enter these arms/For since thou thought it best/Not to dream my ...
Winterson's Written on the Body.(Jeanette Winterson)(Critical Essay)
The Explicator ; The self-conscious narrator of Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body, speaking from the timeless dimension of a rhetorically realized ... thermostatic feedback loop infelicitously styled the slop bucket of romance (21). As narrator she ... as a character she/he suffers for it. When the narrator ...