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Targoff, Ramie. John Donne, Body and Soul. Chicago and London

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Targoff, Ramie. John Donne, Body and Soul. Chicago and London Book Reviews / Religion and the Arts 15 (2011) 567–583 581 Targoff, Ramie. John Donne, Body and Soul. Chicago and London: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 213 + 4 illustrations. $29.00 cloth. amie Targoff argues in her “Introduction” that Donne’s most passion- Rate belief is that the union of body and soul “makes up the man,” as Donne himself preached. It is the parting of body and soul that is the great subject of Donne’s writing. She contends that he struggles in his writings to prove that glorified bodies in heaven are essentially identical to the bod- ies possessed on earth. Donne wants to believe this so much because of his desire for absolute continuity between his earthly and his heavenly self. He worries about how in the afterlife he will remain the person that he cur- rently is. Targoff says that Donne wants his heavenly life to achieve “the seamless union between body and soul that eludes him in his mortal life.” She then frames her own arguments about this central theme with ample support and admirably lucid language and syntax. I cannot praise her enough for the avoidance of interfering jargon. She stays on course, logi- cally organizing and applying her specific theses in chapters devoted to Donne’s Letters, Songs and Sonnets, The Anniversaries, Holy Sonnets, Devo- tions upon Emergent Occasions, and Death’s Duel. For example, in line with Targoff ’s main claim, one sees an integral har- mony in attitudes expressed between some of Donne’s letters and some of his poems. Citing primarily some of Donne’s letters to Goodyer, the author makes a good case for Donne’s idea that a letter is an ecstasy, a means by which the soul separates from the body and mingles with another soul. But Donne also sees the news in the letter as the body that is required by the spirit of the letter for its realization. The spiritual transmission of affection and love cannot occur without the “body,” the news. In the poem titled “The Extasie” Donne argues that full consummation requires involvement of both souls and bodies, a view in harmony with his concept of a letter. Targoff likewise believes that one concern of the Songs and Sonnets is Don- ne’s “profound distaste for separation.” His fear of lovers parting is like the fear of death when body and soul part; and so, the bond between the soul and body extends to his attitude toward the bond between two lovers. In both instances, Donne feels, the isolation of one party from the other is a potentially irreversible injury. Interestingly, this attitude, as Professor Targoff notes, leads to the fact that in The Anniversaries Donne takes a position about death that contra- dicts the standard stance of his church. He believes that separation of soul and body is unnatural. This radical view is most evident in The Second © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156852911X580874 582 Book Reviews / Religion and the Arts 15 (2011) 567–583 Anniversary where Donne argues that the body is the prison for the soul but that the soul loves the body despite that. Early in the poem the expres- sion of sympathy for Elizabeth Drury’s body when it loses the soul occurs. In the remainder of the text, we see a soul desiring to remain with the body, a soul not naturally desiring union with God. So, paradoxically, Donne is not picturing the traditional Christian view that the soul is joy- ous in anticipating its freedom from the body. Climactically, the optimism offered by Donne is that the soul and body will eventually be reunited— not that the soul has escaped its bodily prison. According to Targoff, in the Holy Sonnets Donne is more concerned with the fate of the soul than of the body and is less interested in the rela- tionship between the parts of the self than he is in many other works. For example, the sonnet beginning “I am a little world” exemplifies Donne’s view of human dualism and perhaps his most consistent metaphysical principle: that no aspect of our devotional experience belongs exclusively to body or soul. Targoff sees the sonnet beginning “At the round earth’s imagined corners” as embodying a challenge that preoccupied Donne throughout his writing—that of collecting one’s missing parts in order to be fully resurrected. She says that Donne is concerned with physical decay in these poems. An example is the sonnet beginning “Thou hast made me.” Donne wants physical repair to reverse the rapid decay of his body. If Holy Sonnets as a work does not as fully illustrate Donne’s primary concern about the relationship between body and soul as other works, then some of his prose writings make it central. As Professor Targoff con- tends, “Nowhere is the subject so overtly interrogated as in the Devotions.” Donne’s lifelong commitment to understanding his body and soul through their “interinanimation” (Donne’s term) is clearly faced in this prose work. Donne sees his illness as penetrating both body and soul: typhus and sin are both illnesses. “Devotion 13” is central in that the continuity between body and soul is its exclusive concern. Targoff contends that Donne has a “loving attachment to the beauty of the flesh” and that this beauty greatly declines with the departure of the soul. The consolation for Donne is not the taking of the immortal soul into heaven, but it is instead the resurrec- tion of the body to rejoin the soul. Of course, the climactic statement and last word on this longed-for reunion come in his last sermon titled Death’s Duel. Targoff points out that this sermon illustrates how obsessed Donne was by the resurrection: he recounts his fears concerning bodily corruption and his hopes for a divine reconstitution. Indeed, Donne asserts in this sermon that he will be resurrected with the body and soul that he currently possesses..
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