soul and its condemnation of its body.Soul and Body I then continues with The Blessed Soul's address, in which the saved soul praises the body for its mortification and thanks the body for all that it gave him. Although the soul laments that the body cannot experience all the joys of heaven at the moment, he reminds him that they will be reunited at God's judgment, and then they will be able to enjoy whatever distinctions they receive in heaven. Religious overtones and their significance Critical assessors of Soul and Body agree that the religious theme of the poem is quite obvious; the soul addresses its body in relation to the Final Judgment of both the soul and its body on the last day. The gruesome details of the damned body’s state are reminiscent of the medical metaphor, which compares sins to wounds or disease and penance and confession to a cure. For this very reason, the details of the body's decay are passed over in The Blessed Soul's address. While a body must decay, the body of the saved soul already did his penance. Penance in this poem is defined by the practice of fasting. Both the damned soul and the blessed soul imply that the body either did or did not fast. In the former, the soul accuses: The body ignored the soul's need for the body and blood of God, i.e. the Eucharist, and indulged in earthly pleasures. Furthermore, because the damned soul reproaches its body for not repenting, the poem seems to suggest that the body is in control, which goes against traditional beliefs of the soul’s superiority. Smetana and other scholars have questioned the unorthodoxy of the theology used in the poem, with some charging the poem with dualism (i.e., the inherent evil of the flesh). However, Frantzen reassesses this apparent inversion of the soul and body hierarchy, arguing that the poem does, in fact, follow normative Christian beliefs because its focus is not on theology, but penitential practice. He states that, while the soul may will repentance, "the body must bear the burden of mortification; if the body does penance it becomes the soul's 'lord' and 'protector' because it ensures the soul's bliss in eternity; and, conversely, if the body refuses to do penance it becomes a tyrant who destroys their union ... and ensures the soul's misery in hell" (Frantzen 81). Additionally, Frantzen