John Donne Poetry
1633
- criticism and interpretation
- english christian literature
- correspondence
- translations into spanish
- english love poetry
- translations into german
- literatura inglesa (historia e critica)
- critique et interprétation
- poetry
- devotional literature
The story
"This new Norton Critical Edition presents a comprehensive collection of Donne's poetry. The texts are divided into sections: "Satires," "Elegies," "Verse Letters to Several Personages," "Songs and Sonnets," and "Divine Poems." They have been scrupulously edited and are from the Westmoreland manuscript where possible - collated against the best exemplars from the most important families of Donne manuscripts: the Cambridge Balam, the Dublin Trinity, the O'Flahertie - and compared with all seven of the seventeenth-century printed editions of the poems as well as with the major twentieth-century editions. Annotations to the texts of the poems define uncommon terms and locate historical references." ""Criticism" is divided into four sections. "Donne and Metaphysical Poetry" includes seventeenth-century views on Donne and his style by Ben Jonson, Thomas Carew, Izaak Walton, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Dennis Flynn, and John Carey. "Satires, Elegies, and Verse Letters" offers insights into Donne's frequently overlooked early poems and their social and literary backgrounds, Collected here are selections by Arthur F. Marotti, M. Thomas Hester, Alan Armstrong, Achsah Guibbory, Margaret Maurer, Heather Dubrow, and Gary A. Stringer. Pieces on Donne the love poet are included in "Songs and Sonnets," by Donald L. Guss, Patrick Cruttwell, John A. Clair, M. Thomas Hester, Theresa M. DiPasquale, and Camille Wells Slights. "Holy Sonnets/Divine Poems" includes essays that discuss Donne's struggles as a Christian, by R.V. Young, Louis L. Martz, David M. Sullivan, and Donald R. Dickson. A Chronology, Selected Bibliography, Index of Titles, and Index of First Lines are also included."--Jacket.
What it’s like
Dense, learned, and quietly intimate on the page: a scholarly Norton Critical Edition whose texts are set in clean, spacious columns, with the poems ringed by footnotes that gloss old words and historical allusions. The voice is seventeenth-century English, all compressed conceits and abrupt turns, and the surrounding criticism reads like a long conversation across centuries, with Ben Jonson's and Samuel Johnson's verdicts sitting alongside modern essays. Its sections move from the rough, combative satires through the bawdy and wry love lyrics to the anguished Holy Sonnets, so the reading rhythm shifts from brisk to slow to meditative. Tone runs from sly and worldly to frank and penitent, with love, desire, mortality and faith handled in close, argumentative detail. Nothing here is violent or graphic, though some love poems are sexually frank in their wit. Best for a slow, focused reading at a desk or in a quiet armchair, and for readers who want to study the poems closely with their context around them.
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