Product Description
This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1779 edition by the Apollo Press, Edinburgh. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This anthology comprises approximately 1000 extracts, 800 of which are prose from the writings of John Donne. An extended introduction considers the complex and contradictory character of John Donne, the wellspring of his literary genius. ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A book for anyone who is interested in Donne
Donne's poetry was a major factor in my eventual conversion to the
Anglican Church.Whether you are interested in the Anglican tradition or just interested in Donne's amazing poetry, you should read this book.It exhibits all the sensitivity and scholarship which this complex man and poet deserves.

Is This the Same Book?
Not simply to engage with the previous reviewer, but I must wonder if we are reading the same book?Edwards' volume on Donne presents a very human view of the complicated individual that Donne was; very far from hagiography.Donne's own distinctive place in the Church of England of his time - and what we would now call Anglicanism - is vividly presented. This book does seem to me to be well informed in terms of literatary criticism and engages responsibly with Donne scholarship across the spectrum.The poetry is not disparaged; it's just not the main focus.This would be a fine introduction to Donne's theological and homiletical work.

Donne Undone Again
This "biography/criticism" of John Donne does little more than reveal Mr. Edwards' own prejudices.As a theologian, Mr. Edwards showcases his contempt for Donne's early life and work, and uses Donne's later sermons and religious poems to display his own religious erudition.Mr. Edwards appears to see Donne as nothing but an Anglican apologist.The book shows limited understanding of historical or literary criticism, and scant sympathy with Donne's very human struggles.This book merely reinforces the already muddled body of Donne scholarship. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1906, having been assigned Izaak Walton's Life of Donne to read for his English class, a Harvard freshman heard a lecture on the long disparaged "metaphysical" poets. Years later, when an appreciation of these poets was considered a consummate mark of a modernist sensibility, T. S. Eliot was routinely credited with having 'discovered' Donne himself.

John Donne in the Nineteenth Century tracks the myriad ways in which "Donne" was lodged in literary culture in the Romantic and Victorian periods. The early chapters document a first revival of interest when Walton's Life was said to be "in the hands of every reader"; they explore what Wordsworth and Coleridge contributed to the conditions for the 1839 publication of the only edition ever called The Works, which reprinted the sermons of "Dr Donne". Later chapters trace a second revival, when admirers of the biography, turning to the prose letters and the poems to supplement Walton, discovered that his hero's writings entail the sorts of controversial issues that are raised by Browning, by the 'fleshly school' of poets, and by self-consciously "decadent" writers of the fin de siècle.

The final chapters treat the spread of the academic study of Donne from Harvard, where already in the 1880s he was the anchor of the seventeenth-century course, to other institutions and beyond the academy, showing that Donne's status as a writer eclipsed his importance as the subject of Walton's narrative, which Leslie Stephen facetiously called "the masterpiece of English biography". ... Read more

Product Description

John Donne is considered a master of the metaphysical conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two vastly different ideas into a single idea, often using imagery. An example of this is his equation of lovers with saints in "The Canonization." Unlike the conceits found in other Elizabethan poetry, most notably Petrarchan conceits, which formed clichéd comparisons between more closely related objects (such as a rose and love), metaphysical conceits go to a greater depth in comparing two completely unlike objects, although sometimes in the mode of Shakespeare's radical paradoxes and imploded contraries. One of the most famous of Donne's conceits is found in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" where he compares two lovers who are separated to the two legs of a compass.

Product Description
John Donne (1572-1631) is perhaps the most important poet of the seventeenth century, and has often been referred to as the founder of the metaphysical genre. His poetry is highly distinctive and individual, adopting a multitude of tones, images, forms, and personae. This collection of Donne's verse includes a wide selection from both his secular and divine poems, including such well-known poems as "Air and Angels," "The Flea," the "Holy Sonnets", and "The Progress of the Soul." The poems are provided with full Notes and a useful Introduction to Donne's life and poetry. ... Read more

Product Description
The best-known works of more than 60 British and American poets, written over a period of nearly 400 years, comprise this superb collection of verse. Focusing on poems of faith--inspiring, comforting, and profound works with religious themes and ideals--the volume includes "Holy Sonnets" by John Donne, Ben Jonson's "To the Holy Trinity," "Paradise" by George Herbert, "On His Blindness" by John Milton, as well as poems by Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, Edward Taylor, Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, William Blake, Emily Bront', Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and many others. A rich treasury of stirring verse, this collection is ideal for classroom use or for independent study but will also appeal to lovers of exceptional English and American poetry. Dover original selection of poems from standard editions.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A bright, shining light...
John Donne, in addition to being one of the leading lights in Anglican church history as well as the art of use of the English language, was once Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London - a distinction he shares with John Moses, the editor of this great volume of his work.The volume begins on an auspicious note, with a Foreword by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who likens Donne to both a saint and sinner (which, of course, he was); his contribution to the English language is rare in both poetry and prose, and his legacy as part of the Anglican tradition and ethos is unending.

John Moses begins with a three-part introduction about Donne, his life, work, and spirit.Dating events and writings are difficult, but the overall development is fairly clear.Donne's poetry is much better known than his sermons (despite the fact that some excerpts - 'For whom the bell tolls', for example - come from sermon and meditation sources), but Donne's popularity has experienced a resurgence of late.This is part of the impetus for this volume.There is an irony here, since Donne apparently was interested and well organised in preserving his sermons, but didn't seem to care much to preserve his poetry.

Moses' introductory essays (which include a piece on Donne's time at St. Paul's, undoubtedly a labour of love in contrast and comparison with Moses' own experience) are only a small portion of the volume.By far the greatest portion is the collection of quotations, more than 1000 of them, organised topically.Throughout the texts, some as short as a few lines, and some which go on for pages, there is a tension between the sacred and secular, the worldly and the otherworldly.Donne's fitful life, full of passion and despair, triumph and failure, provides a very fertile field from which Donne's poetic voice and prose compositions spring.

Donne married his love, Ann, against the wishes of her father, who cut them off and cost Donne his job.Years of poverty and the reliance on strangers gave Donne both a sense of grace and gratitude as well as a sense of despair and tragedy; through love and generosity, anger and passion, foolishness and sublime creativity, Donne experienced life fully, and incorporated this into his writing.Ann's relatively early death most likely inspired Donne to a deeper religious sense of vocation and connection with God.

As part of the group of writers who formed the English Renaissance, Donne was a true artist, even though he didn't acknowledge his early poetry later in his life.Along with writers such as Marlowe, Spenser, Bacon, and Shakespeare, Donne's influence continues to be felt in diverse ways throughout ages of poets and writers, to the present generations.T.S. Eliot is but the brightest of twentieth century lights to owe much to Donne.

Donne's Anglican sensibilities also help define the present via media of the church - living at a time between solid Roman Catholicism and solid state Anglicanism, he learned to navigate a middle path with skill and sensitivity, never being contrived or forced in directions lacking spiritual integrity.This sense is greatly needed in the church today.

This is a glorious volume, full of life, and light. ... Read more

Product Description
During his life, John Donne occupied a range of professional positions, in all of which he produced writings considered by his contemporaries to be worthy of interest, collection and annotation. Donne's lifetime also coincided with the period during which the notion of the profession became increasingly significant. This volume makes a strong argument for the importance of Donne's professional writings to our understanding of his oeuvre and of the culture of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. Studying in depth his remarkable use of a wide range of terms and even whole vocabularies - legal, theological, and medical, among others - it shows how Donne moulded his identity as a professional intellectual with the languages that were at hand. A tightly focussed series of essays by scholars of international reputation and younger experts in the field, John Donne's Professional Lives contains new discoveries and fresh interpretations. It offers a revisionist interpretation of Donne's career and makes a polemical case for studying the full range of his writings.Contributors: JAMES CANNON, DAVID CUNNINGTON, LOUIS A. KNAFLA, PETER MCCULLOUGH, JESSICA MARTIN, JEREMY MAULE, MARY MORRISSEY, STEPHEN PENDER, JEANNE SHAMI, ALISON SHELL, JOHANN P. SOMMERVILLE. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description

"Flynn's work makes fascinating reading not only for students of literature, but also for all those interested in the history of the period. The text often reads like a contemporary story of estpionage... " -- Catholic Library World

"Flynn's book is important 'recovery' work."  -- Achsah Guibbory, University of Illinois

"Flynn's book not only adds crucial new facts but also interprets them freshly and convincingly, so that even Donne's oldest admirers will see him in a new light." -- Studies in English Literature

New archival work on the Catholic heritage that informs Donne's life and art.

Customer Reviews (1)

Re-assessing John Donne
I was researching the life and times of John Donne for a new play "Reinvention" (www.reinvention.co.uk) and wasn't really getting very far. I had previously found Donne to be distant and dislikeable, a careerist who was allegedly willing to betray his faith (Catholicism) despite hailing from an impressive lineage. Somehow, it didn't add up. His poems still remained inaccessible, his life, relatively uninteresting. Then, I discovered Dennis Flynn. Not only was this book responsible for a complete reveresal in my opinion of Donne's life, it made me look more carefully at the poems - and I began to understand that here, at last, we have a drama, a man whose life was a constant paradox between his past, present and future. Not only that, Dennis Flynn writes with a clarity and an ease of style which masks the fact that this book is based on solid research - with a welcome degree of free thinking thrown in for good measure. Read this book - Flynn demonstrates more than anything that he understands the man (Donne) and his times elevating this biography beyond a dry, linear approach.
... Read more