In 1614, just prior to his ordination, John Donne renounced the writing of verse. He was well aware of the widespread opinion that rhyming was an inappropriate avocation for a man of the cloth. Yet, on certain occasions, Donne did write poetry again. In this group of five closely related essays, David Novarr takes a new look at Donne's poems—both secular and divine—written before and after his ordination. He reassesses the validity and utility of widely accepted critical contexts which define our understanding of particular poems, and proposes fresh approaches and interpretations. Novarr's knowledge of Donne's life, his critical insight, and his attention to the details of Donne's texts—all join to make The Disinterred Muse a major contribution to our understanding of Donne and his art.
The study of biography has leaped from surveys of biographical writing and statements of biographical practice to semiotic and post-structuralist discussions of the modality of biography without adequate consideration of what has already been done in the theory of the genre. Professor Novarr has closed that gap with this comprehensive and judicious historical survey and assessment of all the major (and many of the minor) statements made about biography in the crucial period 1880-1970. It traces, in the work of writers like David Cecil, Leon Edel, Mark Schorer, Paul Murray Kendall, and others, the nature of the relation between biographer and subject, the concept that biography is essentially the interpretation of one mind by another, and the idea that the biographer's angle of vision is both inevitable and important.
The study of biography has leaped from surveys of biographical writing and statements of biographical practice to semiotic and post-structuralist discussions of the modality of biography without adequate consideration of what has already been done in the theory of the genre. Professor Novarr has closed that gap with this comprehensive and judicious historical survey and assessment of all the major (and many of the minor) statements made about biography in the crucial period 1880-1970. It traces, in the work of writers like David Cecil, Leon Edel, Mark Schorer, Paul Murray Kendall, and others, the nature of the relation between biographer and subject, the concept that biography is essentially the interpretation of one mind by another, and the idea that the biographer's angle of vision is both inevitable and important.
In 1614, just prior to his ordination, John Donne renounced the writing of verse. He was well aware of the widespread opinion that rhyming was an inappropriate avocation for a man of the cloth. Yet, on certain occasions, Donne did write poetry again. In this group of five closely related essays, David Novarr takes a new look at Donne's poems—both secular and divine—written before and after his ordination. He reassesses the validity and utility of widely accepted critical contexts which define our understanding of particular poems, and proposes fresh approaches and interpretations. Novarr's knowledge of Donne's life, his critical insight, and his attention to the details of Donne's texts—all join to make The Disinterred Muse a major contribution to our understanding of Donne and his art.
What might contemporary thinkers learn from prayer? The seventeenth-century French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche suggested a possibility: that prayer teaches us how to attend. This book explores the precedents of Malebranche s advice by reading John Donne s poetic prayers in the context of what David Marno calls the art of holy attention. This requires an understanding of attention s role in Christian devotion, which he provides by uncovering a tradition of holy attention that spans from ascetic thinkers and Church Fathers to Catholic spiritual exercises and Protestant prayer manuals. Donne s devotional poems occupy a unique position in this tradition. Marno identifies in them a devotional model of thinking whose aim is to experience an affect of attention. Marno s argument is framed by compelling close readings of Death, be not proud, Donne s most triumphant poem about the resurrection. Elsewhere, Marno takes up Claudius s prayer in "Hamlet" and Saint Augustine s account of attention in the "Soliloquies" and the "Confessions." The book ends with a Coda on the aftermath of holy attention in the philosophies of Descartes and Malebranche.
The Metaphysical Poets provides an introduction to the work of six strikingly various and original poets- Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, Marvell and Traherne. By closely examining how the poems work, the book aims to help readers at all stages of proficiency and knowledge to enjoy and critically appreciate the ways in which fantastic and elaborate styles may express private intensities. The emphasis is on the differences covered by the term 'Metaphysical' and on the rich and strange diversity of the poets' inner lives. The book examines the expressive forms of interiority, the characteristic inward turn of Metaphysical wit, and compares the wit of its six poets with the non-introspective wit of poets such as Cowley, the Cavaliers and the Augustans. The discussion of each poet is preceded by a 'Life' in which the biographical facts, personal, cultural and political, are treated with a view to illuminating the concerns of the poems.
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.
This book is a survey of personal illness as described in various forms of early modern manuscript life-writing. How did people in the seventeenth century rationalise and record illness? Observing that medical explanations for illness were fewer than may be imagined, the author explores the social and religious frameworks by which illness was more commonly recorded and understood. The story that emerges is of illness written into personal manuscripts in prescriptive rather than original terms. This study uncovers the ways in which illness, so described, contributed to the self-patterning these texts were set up to perform.
John Dryden was first published in 1976. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. This annotated bibliography represents a comprehensive updating of Samuel Holt Monk's earlier work, also published by the University of Minnesota Press, John Dryden: A List of Critical Studies Published from 1895 to 1948 (out of print). Since the publication of that earlier bibliography, the number of studies devoted to Dryden has more than tripled, and thus this new bibliography is essential for scholars of Dryden or related aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English literature. This volume contains four times as many entries as the earlier volume, and there is an extensive introduction by Professor Latt which surveys the historical shifts in critical opinion of Dryden. The new volume incorporates all of the listings contained in the first one. The entries include works that focus directly on Dryden, those that discuss Dryden's works in the context of other writers, and those that investigate material of general importance to Dryden studies. Dissertations from American, German, English, and French universities are included. Complete bibliographic information is provided for virtually every entry. The listings are grouped in nine categories, and there is an additional section which covers festschriften and other collections of essays. Works of exceptional value and those which develop new points of view are so designated. The publishing history of each item is included along with the standard bibliographic information. The index includes topical as well as author entries.
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