How can John Donne, as a love poet, be seen as both a rebel and a conformist? Do any of his poems, in particular, reveal this combination of traits?

John Donne, in his love poetry, can be seen as both a
conformist and a rebel in several senses. A particularly interesting example of both
tendencies occurs in his famous poem “Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to
Bed.”

In this poem, a male speaker apparently lies naked in
bed and tries to convince a woman, whom he desires sexually, to join him. This poem
would have seemed shocking to many readers of Donne’s era, and it still has the power to
shock today.

One aspect of the poem that makes it somewhat
shocking is its relative sexual explicitness. For example, three times in a few lines,
the speaker jokes about male erections (4, 12, 24). Other language in the poem is, if
anything, even more overtly suggestive sexually, such as the speaker’s exclamation,
“License my roving hands, and let them go / Before, behind, between, above, below”
(25-26). Another sexual joke appears in the reference to “whole joys” in line 35.
Finally, the speaker’s reference to his own nakedness (47) comes as one last surprise.
Many readers would have seen (and still do see) this poem as an example of Donne’s
daring, of his rebellious nonconformity to the generally decorous standards of much love
poetry of his day. If Donne can be classified as a “rebel” in his love poetry, poems
such as “Elegy 19” seem to offer convincing evidence to support that
label.

On the other hand, it is possible to argue that even
such a poem as “Elegy 19” is fundamentally conformist. It is possible to argue that even
this apparently shocking text conforms to the religious standards of the day
if the presentation of the speaker is read ironically. In other
words, if the poem is read as an implied satire of the foolishness, presumption, and
pride of the speaker, as a mockery of his shallow lust rather than as an endorsement of
it, then the poem conforms quite nicely to standard Christian ideals of the
era.

It is possible to read this poem as an increasingly
biting satire of the cocky speaker, whose own use of religious language becomes almost
blasphemous by the end of the poem, as in lines 39-43. In those lines, the speaker
compares women’s bodies to the Bible in ways that would have struck many readers of
Donne’s era as almost sacrilegious. Did Donne, a genuinely devout Christian, sympathize
with speakers such as this one? This seems unlikely, although the claim has certainly
been made.  Perhaps it makes more sense to read “Elegy 19” and poems like it as implied
satires of their highly flawed speakers.

If poems such as
this one (poems including “The Flea”) are read ironically, then Donne can justly be
called a rebel in his subject matter but a conformist in the attitudes he implies toward
such subjects. Another way to make the same point is to argue that Donne’s
speakers may be rebels, but that Donne himself is quite orthodox in
his own underlying attitudes.

For a superb development of
this basic attitude toward Donne’s love poems, see especially N. J. C. Andreasen,
John Donne: Conservative Revolutionary (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1967).