John Donne's An Anatomy of the World

The main purpose of this paper is to examine how John Donne's An Anatomy of the World features the recurrent motifs of mortality and decay embedded in both the world and human beings. A number of textual evidences in the poem, in addition to other prose works, clearly reveal his unswerving meditations on the irresistible facets of mortality and decay as the infirmities of the human domain. The poem delineates not only the author's reaction to the individual loss of his patron's daughter but also his perception of a more general condition of the human realm. In dealing with the key subjects of mortality and deterioration in the work, the author investigates, in the first place, the limitation of the world which tends to bring about decease, corruption, and derailment from the established order. He then propounds his contemplations on the thematic ideas of death and ruin, by expanding them into the microcosmic range of the paramount dispositions of human beings. He vigorously moves into examining the corresponding tendencies of mortality and decay between the world and man, focusing on those characteristics in the mind and heart of man. Donne's keen investigation into the limitation and degeneracy in man concentrates on his nothingness, loss of spiritual vigor and integrity. Indeed, he utilizes the distressing moment of one's death through positioning his relentless meditations on the demolition and boundaries affiliated to both the world and its dwellers.