earticle

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A number of John Donne’s prose and divine poems clearly enumerate his unswerving preoccupation with human mortality and the spiritual domain after death. Donne, installed Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1621, foregrounds such thematic concerns on the basis of his religious perspectives and attitudes. The Progress of the Soul—a commemorative verse for the death of Elizabeth Drury and written along with Holy Sonnets features his key subjects of man’s death and immortal soul after his bodily extinction. The main purpose of this paper is to examine how this poem embodies the transmigration of the soul after human mortality. The article investigates how the speaker unfolds his reflections on mortality, the human world, and the soul’s entering the imperishable realm beyond death. In dealing with this matter, the paper incorporates the author’s prose and other religious pieces of works which enrich his thematic ideas on the profound voyage of the soul into the spiritual haven after the physical demise of human beings.