Critical Analysis Of Donne's 'To His Mistress Going To Bed'?

In Donne’s poems, particularly his early love poems Donne explains how love involving the body aids the soul in gaining redemption from God. This perspective may be observed in Donne’s poem, To His Mistress Going to Bed, which is centered on the events leading up to a couple’s sexual union. More specifically, the speaker says, “unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime tells me from you, that now ‘tis your bed time” (10). In other words, the speaker aims to persuade his lover to join him in bed. Donne further conveys, through the speaker, that sexual union is the union of the souls, “as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys” (33). Though Donne too uses erotic, sexual language to describe love’s effect on an individual’s

In this work, Donne states the necessity to join in physical union with another “else a prince in heaven lies” (67). In other words, Donne maintains that if one never strays from God, one’s intellect will not develop. The speaker describes how the souls of the two lovers leave their bodies during sexual union—”love these mix’d souls doth mix again, and makes both one, each this and that” (34-36). In other words, through the speaker, Donne shares that sex should not be viewed in a sexual framework; instead, Donne views sex as a joint framework of sharing the soul 's knowledge, and thus journey to God. Donne further argues that the power of sexual union “interinanimates two souls”, which bring them closer to God (42). Ultimately, as seen in both poems, Donne does not reject the human body as Augustine does. Instead, he embraces the body and love’ relationship and power on the

Because Donne describes the connection between the body and union with God in the form of a poem, Donne is able to evoke his readers. Unlike Augustine 's readers who just read of Augustine’s anguish and experience, those who read Donne 's poems actually experience anguish, frustration, and ultimately the unavoidable reliance one has on God, which most Christian followers eventually experience on the road to redemption. Furthermore, writing in a Petrarchan sonnet form, Donne provides an alternate meaning to Augustine’s medieval concept of the souls’ journey to unity with God. In the examination of Donne’s language, which is permeated with many emotions, Donne introduces the new idea that the journey to redemption involves not only a movement away from loving sin but a movement towards loving oneself so that one is not afraid to be loved. In other words, Donne introduces—through his diction—that the process of redemption involves self-love, which will, in turn, allow one to accept God’s already existing