Through a comparative analysis of Edson’s W;t and Donne’s Holy sonnets, the metaphysical questions of life are illuminated, with the paradigms associated with the Jacobean period, as expressed in the sonnets, effectively appropriated to address a 20th century audience in W;t. These explicit and implicit links allow for an intensified understanding of the acceptance of death and the human quest to come to terms with salvation/redemption, further conveying the relationship between text and context. Thus the reciprocal values of these texts’ transcend their contextual limitations. Their meaning immortalised, they remain forever relevant to the human attempt to derive meaning.
Through a comparative study of the texts, the eternal paradox of the complex journey (and process of suffering) required to realise the importance of accepting embracing values of faith, simplicity and, human mortality, in the process of achieving redemption (and forming a new identity )has been exemplified. “And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die”. This use of personification encapsulates the beginning of a journey both Vivian and Donne undertake upon reaching a state of “salvation anxiety”. Immersed in the death of his four still born children, and the plague ridden society that was in the process of forming the first cracks in what would be a paradigm shift away from blind faith, Donne initially struggled to accept his mortality, using “verbal swordplay” as a means in which to “run and hide” from a death which was no longer a mere gateway to the inevitable afterlife. He attempts to conquer death, as seen through the emotive apostrophe and personification of death in Death be not Proud, in which he claims of death, “mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so”. However, just as Vivian realises that “now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for metaphysical conceit, for wit” he to