Learned Colleagues,

My name is Gary Ettari and I teach Renaissance literature at UNC-Asheville. I'm currently teaching a special topics course entitled "Renaissance Bodies and Souls" and an interesting discussion occurred the other day. After having read the Holy Sonnets and various love poems (the usual suspects like "The Extasie," etc.) the students commented that Donne often defines or at least seems to view love in spiritual terms and God in resolutely physical or material terms. After talking about how problematic such terms as "spiritual" and "material" are when referring to the early modern period, the class still kept coming back to their original ideas about this. This eventually led to questions about early modern thoughts on what the soul consisted of. Donne implies in "The Extasie" that lovers' souls are able to intermingle and exchange certain characteristics, in part because they resemble the "ayre," but that they also need the body's "affections" and "faculties."

My question is this: Can anyone suggest a suitable article/book that reviews various renaissance thoughts on the soul? This would be for fairly bright undergraduates who are not overly familiar with either Renaissance thought or theory. Many thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Best,

Gary Ettari