Death, Dream, and the Dissonance of the Soul: Uncharted Spiritual Symbolism in John Keats and John Donne

Dr. Afroza Banu & Dr. Md. Shahidul Islam

July-Agu-Sep

Abstract
This literary piece is a qualitative, comparative research study of the unknown spiritual symbolism in the poems of the poet John Donne and John Keats in the context of the related themes of death, dream and the soul, the discordance with the soul. The first goal is to discuss how both poets address the metaphysical and existential questions by symbolically presenting the images of mortality and transcendence. Based on the chosen works, including the Holy Sonnets by Donne and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, or the Ode to a Nightingale by Keats and The Fall of Hyperion, the paper will discover the stratum of spiritual conflict and dream-like processing that points to the inner struggle regarding dying, religion, and poetry immortality. Information is obtained by up-close textual commentary and fortified through critical theory in metaphysical and Romantic poetics. They are analyzed by hermeneutic and dialogic analysis in symbolic and thematic interpretation. The findings show that there is a rather complicated juxtaposition between spiritual self-confidence and existential fear: Donne is sure in his theological vision of soul-producing and attaining immortality by the power of poetry contrasting to Keats who is ambivalent in his aesthetical vision of existence and its poeticization. This paper has shown that between Donne and Keats, two writers divided by time and ideology resides a shared symbolic language which serves to disarm the linear interpretation of their deaths and reiterates that human progress is defined with regard to metaphysical meaning on the one hand expressed through dream and on the other through dissonance.

Keyword: Spiritual Symbolism, Death and immortality, Metaphysical poetry, Romantic Aestheticism, Dream and Soul Dissonance

Research Area: English Literature

Country: Bangladesh

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