The Oxford Handbook of John Donne: (Oxford Handbooks)

The Oxford Handbook of John Donne presents scholars with the history of Donne studies and provides tools to orient scholarship in this field in the twenty-first century and beyond. Though profoundly historical in its orientation, the Handbook is not a summary of existing knowledge but a resource that reveals patterns of literary and historical attention and the new directions that these patterns enable or obstruct. Part I - Research resources in Donne Studies and why they matter - emphasizes the heuristic and practical orientation of the Handbook, examining prevailing assumptions and reviewing the specialized scholarly tools available. This section provides a brief evaluation and description of the scholarly strengths, shortcomings, and significance of each resource, focusing on a balanced evaluation of the opportunities and the hazards each offers. Part II - Donne's genres - begins with an introduction that explores the significance and differentiation of the numerous genres in which Donne wrote, including discussion of the problems posed by his overlapping and bending of genres. Essays trace the conventions and histories of the genres concered and study the ways in which Donne's works confirm how and why his 'fresh invention' illustrates his responses to the literary and non-literary contexts of their composition. Part III - Biographical and historical contexts - creates perspective on what is known about Donne's life; shows how his life and writings epitomized and affected important controversial issues of his day; and brings to bear on Donne studies some of the most stimulating and creative ideas developed in recent decades by historians of early modern England. Part IV - Problems of literary interpretation that have been traditionally and generally important in Donne Studies - introduces students and researchers to major critical debates affecting the reception of Donne from the 17th through to the 21st centuries.

Table of Contents:
List of illustrations and maps Note to Readers General introductionJeanne Shami, M. Thomas Hester and Dennis Flynn: Part 1: Research resources in Donne studies and why they matter Jeanne Shami: Introduction Gary A. Stringer: The composition and dissemination of Donne's writings Ernest W. Sullivan, II: John Donne's seventeenth-century readers Lara M. Crowley: Archival research Gary A. Stringer: Editing Donne's poetry: part 1: From John Marriot to the Donne Variorum Richard K. Todd: Editing Donne's poetry: part 2: The DonneVariorum and beyond Ernest W. Sullivan, II: Modern scholarly editions of the prose of John Donne Donald R. Dickson: Research tools and their pitfalls for Donne studies Hugh Adlington: Collaboration and the international scholarly community Part 2: Donne's genres Heather Dubrow and M. Thomas Hester: Introduction M. Thomas Hester: The epigram Gregory Kneidel: The formal verse satire R. V. Young: The elegy Michael W. Price: The paradox Ernest W. Sullivan, II: The paradox: Biathanatos Anne Lake Prescott: Menippean Donne Dayton Haskin: The love lyric Margaret Maurer: The verse letter R. V. Young: The religious sonnet Kirsten Stirling: Liturgical poetry Michael W. Price: The problem Graham Roebuck: The controversial treatise Jeffrey Johnson: The essay Graham Roebuck: The anniversary poem Claude J. Summers: The epicede and obsequy Camille Wells Slights: The epithalamion Kate Narveson: The devotion Jeanne Shami: The sermon Margaret Maurer: The prose letter Part 3: Biographical and historical contexts Dennis Flynn and Jeanne Shami: Introduction Patrick Collinson: The English Reformation in the mid-Elizabethan period Dennis Flynn: Donne's family background, birth, and early years Alexandra Gajda: Education as a courtier Dennis Flynn: Donne's education Albert C. Labriola: Donne's military career Paul E. J. Hammer: The Earl of Essex and English expeditionary forces Steven W. May: Donne and Egerton: the Court and courtship Andrew Gordon: On late-Elizabethan courtship and politics Dennis Flynn: Donne's wedding and the Pyrford years Anthony Milton: New horizons in the early Jacobean period Johann Sommerville: The death of Robert Cecil: end of an era Dennis Flynn: Donne's travel and earliest publications Jeanne Shami: Donne's decision to take orders Alastair Bellany: The rise of the Howards at court Peter McCullough: The hazards of the Jacobean court Emma Rhatigan: Donne's readership at Lincoln's Inn and the Doncaster embassy Malcolm Smuts: International politics and Jacobean statecraft Clayton D. Lein: Donne: the final period Simon Healy: Donne, the patriot cause, and war, 1620-29 Arnold Hunt: The English nation in 1631 Alison Shell: The death of Donne Part 4: Problems of literary interpretation that have been traditionally and generally important in Donne studies Dennis Flynn: Introduction Achsah Guibbory: Donne and apostasy Theresa M. DiPasquale: Donne, women, and the spectre of misogyny Debora Shuger: Donne's absolutism Albert C. Labriola: Style, wit, prosody in the poetry of John Donne Hugh Adlington: Do Donne's writings express his desperate ambition? Judith Scherer Herz: "By parting have joyn'd here ": the story of the two (or more) Donnes Lynne Magnusson: Danger and discourse Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Jeanne Shami is Professor of English at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, where she has taught since 1977. In 1992, she discovered a manuscript of a John Donne sermon corrected in his hand. She published a parallel-text edition of this sermon in 1996 (John Donne's 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon: A Parallel-Text Edition). Shami is the author of John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit (D.S. Brewer, 2003) and Renaissance Tropologies: The Cultural Imagination of Early Modern England (Duquesne University Press, 2008). She is past president of the John Donne Society (2002-03) and has won its award for distinguished publication three times (1996, 2000, 2003). Dennis Flynn is Professor of English at Bentley University and a past president of the John Donne Society. He has published numerous review and articles in Donne studies; authored John Donne and the Ancient Catholic Nobility; and co-edited three volumes in the ongoing Donne Variorum project as well as John Donne's Marriage Letters at The Folger Shakespeare Library. M. Thomas Hester is Alumni Distinguished Professor of English at North Carolina State University and the author/editor of numerous books and articles on Renaissance literature---most recently, Donne's Marriage Letters in the Folger Shakespeare Library (with Dennis Flynn and Robert P. Sorlien) and Talking Renaissance Texts: Essays on the Humanist Tradition (with Jeffrey Kahan). At present he is an editor of The Oxford Edition of the Prose Letters of Donne, with Dennis Flynn and Ernest W. Sullivan, II. He is also Editor of The John Donne Journal.

Review :
`field of Donne studies that would be difficult to equal elsewhere.' Ruth Mills Robbins, Comitatus