Coincidentia Oppositorum Realized: John Donne’s Life and Poetry, and the Paradox of Sanctity
Dorota GŁADKOWSKA
Department of English Language Literatures and Cultures, Institute of Literary Studies, Faculty of the Humanities, University of Warmia and Mazury, ul. Kurta Obitza 1, room 209, 10-725 Olsztyn, Poland , Polandhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-5223-7662
Abstract
This essay examines John Donne’s life and poetry as a unified expression of a spiritual and intellectual paradox. Drawing on the concept of coincidentia oppositorum, it explores how Donne’s work integrates sacred and secular realms, eroticism and devotion, personal conviction and social expectation. Rather than portraying sanctity as uniform piety, Donne advances a complex vision of Christian spirituality shaped by contradiction. His poetic and biographical trajectory—from his Catholic heritage to his ordination in the Church of England—reveals a courageous engagement with ambiguity as a path to insight. Donne’s intellectual and spiritual stance resists fixed binaries, suggesting that truth may be disclosed not through resolution, but through the tension that unites opposing forces.
Keywords:
John Donne, coincidentia oppositorum, the paradox of sanctity, metaphysical poetry, the sacred and the secular, intellectual courageDepartment of English Language Literatures and Cultures, Institute of Literary Studies, Faculty of the Humanities, University of Warmia and Mazury, ul. Kurta Obitza 1, room 209, 10-725 Olsztyn, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5223-7662
