Traducing the Soul: Donne's Second Anniversarie

Readers have long acknowledged John Donne's lament for the decay of the world in the two Anniversarie poems commemorating Elizabeth Drury. What has not been acknowledged is the extent to which the second of these poems stages the reluctance of the soul to depart from the carcass of the earth so vividly depicted in the first. In The Second Anniversarie, Donne does something unprecedented in early modern literature: he gives voice to a soul that cannot bear to leave its earthly body behind. This essay argues that Donne represents a mutual longing between soul and body that stands in marked contrast to conventional Protestant depictions of the relationship between the two parts of the self. His explanation for such mutual longing, I contend, derives from his belief in the corporeal origins of the soul. (RT)