To Our Bodies Turn We Then: Body as Word and Sacrament in the Works of John Donne - Softcover

McDuffie, Felecia Wright

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826416772 ISBN 13: 9780826416773

Publisher: Continuum, 2005

Synopsis

From his early love poetry to his late religious writing, John Donne speaks of the human body as a book to be read and interpreted. Unlike modern thinkers who understand the body as a purely material phenomenon or post-modern critics who see in it a "text" produced by culture, Donne understands the body as a (scriptural) text written by God.

In this study, McDuffie offers a comprehensive interpretation of Donne's reading of the body. In Donne's imaginative universe, the human person lies at the center of the great interconnected web of God's signs and acts. As such, he makes it the touchstone of his own theology. While his anthropology is basically orthodox, the emphasis Donne places on the body and the role it plays in his religious poetics are distinctive. Refusing to restrict God's revelation to the written words of Scripture, Donne turns habitually to the book of the human body as a collection of signs that indicate God's nature, his intent, and the human condition. He also, at times, represents the human body not as a "mere" sign but as sacrament: a seal of the promises of God that conveys his presence and grace.

In his reading of the book of the body, Donne discerns the narrative of salvation history: the trajectory proceeding from creation, through fall to redemption and resurrection. He sets the body and salvation history into a dialogical relationship, always reading one in terms of the other. Donne reads in the body God's great love for the material, the ravages of the Fall, God's redemptive action in Christ and in the lives of the saints, and the literal and figurative deaths that serve as gateways to resurrection and eschatological fulfillment.

About this title

About the Author:

Felecia W. McDuffie is T. Jack Lance Professor of Religion at Young Harris College, Georigia, where she teaches philosophy, religion, and ethics.

Review:

"In this essay, Felecia McDuffie retireves the full theological significance of the "body" in Joh Donne's theology. Eschewing partisan paradigms, McDuffie instead embraces faithful close-reading of Donne in context. Her rigor and attentiveness richly reward the reader with a bench-mark study in the history of Donne scholarship that upends much of what we thought we knew of his theology." -David S. Pacini, Emory University

Title mention/ brief summary in Church Times (Church Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0826416772
• ISBN 13: 9780826416773
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192