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Abstract
The Caroline Era in early modern England was characterized by political instability and theological revolution. In response, there were ideological attempts to regulate desire and a distinct focus on the creation of a public persona. These crises led to anxieties about gender, performance, and the body. Literary production at this time was founded in political conflict and was both a response to and an escape from these events. In this article, I argue that early modern writers literarily regulate gender and bodies through the personal, political and theological happenings that they respond to within their work. John Donne’s metaphysical poetry and George Herbert’s The Temple express the anxiety of desire involved in the process of seeking God. These texts translate this through the language of eros, bodily sacrificial connection to the Divine Logos, and communion that focuses on digestion and inclusion in the corporeal universe as a means to achieve the divine moment. Similarly, John Ford’s The Broken Heart portrays anxieties about desire and appetite through female anatomization. The portrayals of desire, anxiety, and appetite in these texts (all first published in 1633) are representative of the historical, political, and religious ideological structures that informed their creation.
Highlights
Anxieties about gender and the body are a prevalent theme throughout Caroline era poetry and theatre
Access to the divine is largely articulated through desire, consumption, and the Eucharistic moment
The eucharistic moment of communion with the unknowable yet desirable and omnipresent God creates a utopian moment of mutual appetites
Summary
The poetry of John Donne and George Herbert, both first published posthumously in 1633, largely responded to anxieties about desire through the lenses of eros and divinity. Connection to God is found in eucharistic sacrifice but may only be achieved through desirable fear and devout anxiety This masochistic moment demonstrates that self-sacrifice and suppression of appetite may lead to the Divine Logos. Herbert’s purposeful conflation of space, place, and connection to the Divine Logos demonstrates anxieties about desire and appetite Herbert depicts this desire through physical spaces and the materiality of the church, which has status and can be read as a sacred text. Only God and Divine Logos can render a heart true, and only through proper physical space, personal devotion, and regulation of desire can one achieve connection to the ideal By making this poem in the shape of an altar, Herbert is once again re-creating God’s works, since God made the physical world and everything therein. It is instead the act of devotion, being in God’s temple, and partaking in the Eucharist that allows the divine moment
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