John Donne's Professional Lives by John Donne , David Colclough (review)

Abstract

MLR, ioo.i, 2005 199 pretence to redress what Morose represents, the mysogynistic, Lenten rejection ofthe festive: 'Morose is an eccentric whose persecution is carnivalised, rather than an eccentric who can be redeemed by festive lampooning' (p. 103). Here, as elsewhere, the discussion is enriched by comparative materials (plays of Aretino and Macchiavelli). Bartholomew Fair (1614) should have been perfect for Coronato's approach: while seemingly capitulating to vulgarity in providing carnivalesque realism, Jonson is asserting a metadramatic defence of his artistic judgement and authority in that 'special decorum' of his poetic licence. The play is almost wholly concerned with the abuse of authority, and the discerning auditor is expected to recognize the satire on the groundlings' incapacity forjudgement. Coronato allows his tendency to learned digressiveness belatedly to diffuse his argument until the last pages on 'license'. Shrovetide is announced at the opening of The Staple of News (1631), setting the stage for a version of Carnival vs. Lent, here Peniboy Junior vs. Peniboy Senior, prodigality versus usury. Drawing on Lucian, the traditions of moralities and interludes , and following Breugel, Jonson stresses the culinary grotesque. Coronato is at his best here, subtly analysing self-consuming miserliness and Lenten repast, and helping to rescue such an absorbing play from relegation to 'dotage'. This study makes an interesting contribution to early modern English theatre stu? dies and to the debate on Bakhtinian carnivalesque. Coronato's writing is at times very subtle, but at times difficultto follow: it is hard to believe that a native Englishspeaking editor could have accepted such obsolete baroque inkhornisms as 'coacervate ', 'mordaceous', 'erubescent', 'edulcorated', and several others. Still, Ben Jonson would have been tickled? University of Reading Ronald Knowles John Donne's Professional Lives. Ed. By David Colclough. (Studies in Renaissance Literature) Cambridge: Brewer. 2003. xiii + 272pp. ?45; $75. ISBN 0-859911775 -4. The professional poet, making a living only from his writing, is a relatively new phe? nomenon, and rarer than one might think even today. Geoffrey Chaucer earned his living as a customs officer;Edmund Spenser was a colonial administrator and Christo? pher Marlowe, a spy; while John Donne, the subject of this volume, was by turns a secretary, a diplomatic aide, and Dean of St Paul's. Are such facts of anything more than historical interest? The answer, as supplied by this collection of essays on John Donne's Professional Lives, is an emphatic 'yes'. Even the casual reader of Donne's verse cannot fail to notice the way in which itborrows and redeploys ideas and vocabu? lary froma dizzying variety ofprofessional fields: the law; science; theology; medicine. (Indeed, the notion of the conceit, which dominates discussion of his poetry,depends upon just such a collision of distinct semantic fields.) The opening essay here, by the late Jeremy Maule?to whom the volume is dedicated?provides an exemplary instance of analysis in this vein, demonstrating the dependence of the twelfth Holy Sonnet upon the language and structure of a legal plea. More generally, however, this volume explores the various senses in which Donne's writings (and not just the verse) might be considered in the context ofthe idea of 'profession', from poetry as a means of angling for a professional position, to Donne's engagement with a variety of pro? fessional languages and, finally,a 'professional' as one professing faith or friendship. The book is divided into three sections. In the first,'Law and Letters', we have Jeremy Maule on Donne's engagement, not just with specific legal coteries, but also with 'the idea of the law and with its language'; Louis A. Knafla provides an extraordinarily detailed account of Donne's legal background and work as secretary to Sir 200 Reviews Thomas Egerton; Johann P. Sommerville uses an analysis of Pseudo-Martyr to rebut modern accounts of Donne as politically subversive and residually Catholic; David Cunnington deals with 'professions' of friendship to female patrons; while Alison Shell provides evidence forcollaboration between Donne and Sir Edward Hoby. The second section, on 'Professing the Word', is perhaps the strongest and most focused in the volume. It opens with a piece by Jeanne Shami on Donne's vocational identity and the politics of labelling in seventeenth-century...