Description
Book SynopsisFrom 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
Trade 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 * Blurb from reviewer *
Title mention/ brief summary in Church Times * Church Times *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments; Introduction; 1. The Created Body; 2. The Fallen Body; 3. Bodies Redeemed and Redemptive; 4. The Eschatological Body; 5. Reading the Trajectory of Salvation in the Book of the Body; Appendix A: Literature Review - The Body in the Context of Donne Scholarship; Appendix B: Donne's Representations of the Body in the Their; Historical Context; Works Cited
