This book is a historical and theoretical study of some of John Donne's less frequently discussed poetry and prose; it interrogates various trends that have dominated Donne criticism, such as the widely divergent views about his attitudes towards women, the focus on the Songs and Sonets to the exclusion of his other works, and the tendency to separate discussions of his poetry and prose. On a broader scale, it joins a small but growing number of feminist re-readings of Donne's works. Using the cultural criticism of French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, Meakin explores works throughout Donne's career, from his earliest verse letters to sermons preached while Divinity Reader at Lincoln's Inn and Dean of St. Paul's in London.

The Cambridge Companion to John Donne introduces students (undergraduate and graduate) to the range, brilliance, and complexity of John Donne. Sixteen essays, written by an international array of leading scholars and critics, cover Donne's poetry (erotic, satirical, devotional) and his prose (including his Sermons and occasional letters). Providing readings of his texts and also fully situating them in the historical and cultural context of early modern England, these essays offer the most up-to-date scholarship and introduce students to the current thinking and debates about Donne, while providing tools for students to read Donne with greater understanding and enjoyment. Special features include a chronology; a short biography; essays on political and religious contexts; an essay on the experience of reading his lyrics; a meditation on Donne by the contemporary novelist A. S. Byatt; and an extensive bibliography of editions and criticism.

Becoming a father was the main way that an individual in the English Renaissance could be treated as a full member of the community. Yet patriarchal identity was by no means as secure as is often assumed: when poets invoke the idea of paternity in love poetry and other forms, they are therefore invoking all the anxieties that a culture with contradictory notions of sexuality imposed. This study takes these anxieties seriously, arguing that writers such as Sidney and Spenser deployed images of childbirth to harmonize public and private spheres, to develop a full sense of selfhood in their verse, and even to come to new accommodations between the sexes. Shakespeare, Donne and Jonson, in turn, saw the appeal of the older poets' aims, but resisted their more radical implications. The result is a fiercely personal yet publicly-committed poetry that wouldn't be seen again until the time of the Romantics.

John Donne: In the Shadow of Religion explores the life of one of the most significant figures of the English Renaissance. The book not only provides an overview of Donne’s life and work, but connects his writing and thinking to the ideas, institutions, and networks that influenced him. The book shows how Donne’s faith underpinned his career, from aspirational courtier to phenomenally successful clergyman and preacher, when he became dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Donne emerges as a figure obsessed with himself, tormented by the fear that his transgressions may have condemned him to eternal damnation. This fine new account uses Donne’s correspondence, writing, and poetry to give a rounded portrait of a bold, experimental thinker, who was never afraid of taking risks that few others would have countenanced.

Based on an exhaustive study of the manuscripts and printed editions in which these poems have appeared, the eighth in the series of The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne presents newly edited critical texts of thirteen Divine Poems and details the genealogical history of each poem, accompanied by a thorough prose discussion. Arranged chronologically within sections, the material is organized under the following headings: Dates and Circumstances; General Commentary; Genre; Language, Versification, and Style; the Poet/Persona; and Themes. The volume also offers a comprehensive digest of general and topical commentary on the Divine Poems from Donne's time through 2012.

John Donne is best known as a poet of live, brilliantly able to recreate a man's experience of emotions and realities. But he is also a poet of the spiritual journey. His religious poems speak of shame, fear and self-concious complexity and doubt, but his sermons can soar into a word-music seldom equalled, or can condense theology into epigrams as witty as those which date from his youthful lusts. He fascinates because he is a man battered by sex - and by God. David Edwards has written an extremely readable book which ranges over all Donne's poetry and prose, and relates the literature to what is known or probable about his life. He takes twentieth-century research and criticism into careful account but aims to provide more than a detailed examination of a limited part of the subject. He is not sentimental about Donne's faults and limitations, and he does not try to sound superior to either the poet or the preacher. His aim is to achieve a portrait of a living man, a man who both suffered and gloried in his experience of flesh and spirit. David L. Edwards retired as Provost of Southwark Cathedral in 1994. He was formerly a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Editor of the SCM Press, Dean of King's College, Cambridge, and a Canon of Westminster Abbey and the Speaker's Chaplain in the House of Commons.

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature looks afresh at major nondramatic texts by Donne, Marvell, Browne, Milton, and Dryden, whose digressive speakers are haunted by personal and public uncertainty. To digress in seventeenth-century England carried a range of meaning associated with deviation or departure from a course, subject, or standard. This book demonstrates that early modern writers trained in verbal contest developed richly labyrinthine voices that captured the ambiguities of political occasion and aristocratic patronage while anatomizing enemies and mourning personal loss. Anne Cotterill turns current sensitivity toward the silenced voice to argue that rhetorical amplitude might suggest anxieties about speech and attack for men forced to be competitive yet circumspect as they made their voices heard.

This book fills a lacuna in the intellectual history of the seventeenth century by investigating the role that skepticism plays in the declining prestige of memory. It argues that Shakespeare and Donne revolutionize the art of memory, thanks to their skepticism, and thereby transform literary strategies like mimesis, exemplarity, and pastoral.

Saunders explores the dialectic of desire, re-evaluating both Donne's poetry and the complex responses it has inspired. This study takes into account recent developments in the fields of historicism, feminism, queer theory, and postmodern psychoanalysis, while offering dazzling close readings of many of Donne's most famous poems.

This remarkable anthology assembles for the first time 144 primary texts and documents written by women between 1550 and 1700 and reveals an unprecedented view of the intellectual and literary lives of women in early modern England