Literature Compass Panel Cluster Research Articles

‘Apparitions, and Ghosts’: H(a)unting Donne's Letters

AbstractThis paper is part of a Literature Compass panel cluster on the forthcoming Oxford edition of Donne's letters.Margaret Maurer introduces the cluster which offers papers by the three editors and seeks to examine the new directions the edition will pursue. The papers were originally delivered to the members of the John Donne Society in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in February 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘The Oxford Edition of Donne's Letters: Well Underway’, Margaret Maurer, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00598.x.‘“Apparitions, and Ghosts”: H(a)unting Donne's Letters’, M. Thomas Hester, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00599.x.‘“Only in Obedience” to Whom? – The Identity of a Donne Correspondent’, Dennis Flynn, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00600.x.‘Problems in Editing John Donne's Letters: Unreliable Primary Materials’, Ernest W. Sullivan, II, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00601.x.***One way in which we might (in part) approach the problem of establishing the canon of Donne's familiar letters is indicated through a brief review of two of what Donne called his epistolary ‘apparitions, and ghosts’– letters lacking ‘a convenient handsome body of news. . . . spun out of nothing’ (Letters 121), two letters, that is, that lack (or at first hand seem to lack) any substantial internal data beyond their style that would identify them as Donne's: (a) his problematic letter ‘To the Lady G.’ (first printed in Marriott's 1635 Poems); and (b) the transcription of the unsigned, unaddressed, and undated ‘I promised a iorney’ in the even more problematic ‘Burley MS’. An examination of the approach of both nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century readings of the first letter provides an example of how we can determine Donne's authorship of the second letter through particular attention to the style of these two representative letters.

Problems in Editing John Donne's Letters: Unreliable Primary Materials

AbstractThis paper is part of a Literature Compass panel cluster on the forthcoming Oxford edition of Donne's letters.Margaret Maurer introduces the cluster which offers papers by the three editors and seeks to examine the new directions the edition will pursue. The papers were originally delivered to the members of the John Donne Society in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in February 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘The Oxford Edition of Donne's Letters: Well Underway’, Margaret Maurer, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00598.x.‘“Apparitions, and Ghosts”: H(a)unting Donne's Letters’, M. Thomas Hester, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00599.x.‘“Only in Obedience” to Whom? – The Identity of a Donne Correspondent’, Dennis Flynn, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00600.x.‘Problems in Editing John Donne's Letters: Unreliable Primary Materials’, Ernest W. Sullivan, II, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00601.x.***This essay examines some of the difficulties in producing the kind of edition of Donne's prose letters that everyone would like – one that establishes the canon, dates, recipients, and texts that accurately represent what Donne wrote. By examining the texts of the two Donne letters that survive in holograph as well as in various seventeenth‐century printings (letters to Edward Herbert and Lady Kingsmill) as well as one to the Duke of Buckingham that survives in holograph and in a nineteenth‐century transcription and printings, I show how editorial intervention and physical degradation have so compromised the texts of some of the letters in Donne's Letters to Severall Persons of Honour (1651) and A Collection of Letters, Made By Sr Tobie Mathews (1660) and even in the holograph to Buckingham that the surviving texts (including their dates and recipients) of nearly all of Donne's letters are problematical. Worse, the evidence shows that the changes to the originals would not have been recoverable had these few holographs not survived. Any edition of Donne's prose letters, then, will have to attend to risk assessment as well as to the traditional features of an edition.

‘Only in Obedience’ to Whom? – The Identity of a Donne Correspondent

AbstractThis paper is part of a Literature Compass panel cluster on the forthcoming Oxford edition of Donne's letters.Margaret Maurer introduces the cluster which offers papers by the three editors and seeks to examine the new directions the edition will pursue. The papers were originally delivered to the members of the John Donne Society in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in February 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘The Oxford Edition of Donne's Letters: Well Underway’, Margaret Maurer, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00598.x.‘“Apparitions, and Ghosts”: H(a)unting Donne's Letters’, M. Thomas Hester, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00599.x.‘“Only in Obedience” to Whom? – The Identity of a Donne Correspondent’, Dennis Flynn, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00600.x.‘Problems in Editing John Donne's Letters: Unreliable Primary Materials’, Ernest W. Sullivan, II, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00601.x.***Work on the Oxford edition so far confirms that fifteen of the letters transcribed in the Burley manuscript are Donne's; most of their addressees have been established, and most of them have been dated within a period of about five years, in the late 1590s and early 1600s. In particular, this essay discusses the letter beginning ‘Only in obedience I send you my Paradoxes’– long thought to have been addressed by Donne to Henry Wotton. Though the matter has long been controverted, various evidence now suggests that this letter was instead addressed to Sir Henry Goodere.

The Oxford Edition of Donne's Letters: Well Underway

AbstractThis paper introduces a Literature Compass panel cluster on the forthcoming Oxford edition of Donne's letters.Offering papers by the three editors, this cluster seeks to examine the new directions the edition will pursue. The papers were originally delivered to the members of the John Donne Society in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in February 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘The Oxford Edition of Donne's Letters: Well Underway’, Margaret Maurer, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00598.x.‘“Apparitions, and Ghosts”: H(a)unting Donne's Letters’, M. Thomas Hester, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00599.x.‘“Only in Obedience” to Whom? – The Identity of a Donne Correspondent’, Dennis Flynn, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00600.x.‘Problems in Editing John Donne's Letters: Unreliable Primary Materials’, Ernest W. Sullivan, II, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00601.x.

What We Think About Donne: A History of Donne Criticism in Twenty Minutes

This paper is part of the second Literature Compass panel cluster arising from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition. [Correction added after online publication 24 October 2008: ‘This paper introduces the second Literature Compass panel cluster’ changed to ‘This paper is part of the second Literature Compass panel cluster’.] Comprising an introduction by Gary Stringer and three of the papers presented at the symposium, this cluster seeks to examine the current state of Donne Studies and aims to provide a snapshot of the field. The symposium was held April 6–7, 2006. The cluster is made up of the following articles: ‘Introduction to the Second Donne Cluster: Three Papers from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition’, Gary A. Stringer, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00551.x. ‘Donne into Print: The Seventeenth-Century Collected Editions of Donne's Poetry’, Ted-Larry Pebworth, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00552.x. ‘“a mixed Parenthesis”: John Donne's Letters to Severall Persons of Honour’, M. Thomas Hester, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00553.x. ‘What We Think About Donne: A History of Donne Criticism in Twenty Minutes’, Paul A. Parrish, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00554.x. *** The standard paradigm of critical responses to John Donne from the seventeenth century to the present is not seriously contested: during his own day Donne was reasonably well known, albeit a somewhat controversial poet. As the century progressed, Donne became increasingly out of fashion, and throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, Donne had largely disappeared from the public and critical eye. The ‘rescue’ of Donne in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has led to an interest that has continued largely unabated to the present, though often without the unbridled enthusiasm that characterizes some responses early in the twentieth century. In the past few decades, Donne's work has been viewed through the lenses of virtually every critical and theoretical approach one could identify. More recent efforts, particularly as exemplified by the Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, have not so much challenged the standard paradigm regarding Donne criticism as to add to our knowledge and understanding by filling in gaps and shading in historical transitions, the better to provide a more comprehensive understanding of what we have thought about Donne for more than four centuries.

‘a mixed Parenthesis’: John Donne'sLetters to Severall Persons of Honour

This paper is part of the second Literature Compass panel cluster arising from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition. [Correction added after online publication 24 October 2008: ‘This paper introduces the second Literature Compass panel cluster’ changed to ‘This paper is part of the second Literature Compass panel cluster’.] Comprising an introduction by Gary Stringer and three of the papers presented at the symposium, this cluster seeks to examine the current state of Donne Studies and aims to provide a snapshot of the field. The symposium was held April 6–7, 2006. The cluster is made up of the following articles: ‘Introduction to the Second Donne Cluster: Three Papers from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition’, Gary A. Stringer, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00551.x. ‘Donne into Print: The Seventeenth-Century Collected Editions of Donne's Poetry’, Ted-Larry Pebworth, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00552.x. ‘“a mixed Parenthesis”: John Donne's Letters to Severall Persons of Honour’, M. Thomas Hester, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00553.x. ‘What We Think About Donne: A History of Donne Criticism in Twenty Minutes’, Paul A. Parrish, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00554.x. *** This 1651 (rpt. 1654) edition of 129 letters composed by John Donne (1572–1631) presents the witty poet and preacher in many of his most significant styles and roles; ‘conveyors of me to you’, he called them. Despite the ‘tampering’ of many of the letters by its editor or collector, the letters yet maintain an overall impression of the ‘vitality of mind’ and ‘purposeful mental recourse’ for which this Renaissance poet and preacher was known. Attacks on the corruption of the court are balanced in the volume overall by its many meditative considerations; the portrait here of Donne the family man and loving father and husband is set beside the clever writer who declared friendship to be his ‘second religion’; and these revealing insights into his public and private self are balanced by letters affirming his life-long assertion that ‘There is no Vertue, but Religion’. Letters about the ongoing religious conflicts in Europe are followed often by newsless letters he called ‘ghosts’ and ‘apparitions’, both examples of his epistolary art expressed in those dexterous conceits that characterize his vibrant poetry and prose. This varied collection of Donne's letters seems often, that is, to be framed to illustrate his understanding of that ancient and Renaissance adage, Stylus virum arguit: ‘Style argues the man’.

Introduction to the Second Donne Cluster: Three Papers fromThe Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition

This paper introduces the second Literature Compass panel cluster arising from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition. Comprising an introduction by Gary Stringer and three of the papers presented at the symposium, this cluster seeks to examine the current state of Donne Studies and aims to provide a snapshot of the field. The symposium was held April 6–7, 2006. The cluster is made up of the following articles: ‘Introduction to the Second Donne Cluster: Three Papers from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition’, Gary A. Stringer, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00551.x. ‘Donne into Print: The Seventeenth-Century Collected Editions of Donne's Poetry’, Ted-Larry Pebworth, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00552.x. ‘“a mixed Parenthesis”: John Donne's Letters to Severall Persons of Honour’, M. Thomas Hester, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00553.x. ‘What We Think About Donne: A History of Donne Criticism in Twenty Minutes’, Paul A. Parrish, Literature Compass 5 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00554.x.

Introduction: Three Papers from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition

AbstractThis paper introduces a Literature Compass panel cluster arising from the The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition. Comprising an introduction by Gary Stringer and three of the papers presented at the symposium, this cluster seeks to examine the current state of Donne Studies and aims to provide a snapshot of the field. The symposium was held April 6–7, 2006.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘Introduction: Three Papers from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition,’ Gary A. Stringer, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00420.x.‘Donne and Disbelief: The Early Prose,’ Ernest W. Sullivan, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00421.x.‘The Cultural Significance of Donne's Sermons,’ Jeanne Shami, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00422.x.‘T. R. O’Flahertie's Copy of Donne's Letters,’ Donald R. Dickson, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00423.x.

Donne and Disbelief: The Early Prose

AbstractThis paper is part of a Literature Compass panel cluster arising from the The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition. Comprising an introduction by Gary Stringer and three of the papers presented at the symposium, this cluster seeks to examine the current state of Donne Studies and aims to provide a snapshot of the field. The symposium was held April 6–7, 2006.The cluster is made up of the following articles:“Introduction: Three Papers from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition,” Gary A. Stringer, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00420.x.“Donne and Disbelief: The Early Prose,” Ernest W. Sullivan, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00421.x.“The Cultural Significance of Donne's Sermons,” Jeanne Shami, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00422.x.“T. R. O’Flahertie's Copy of Donne's Letters,” Donald R. Dickson, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00423.x.Unlike his ancester, Sir Thomas More, who attempted to control audience response to his printed Utopia by encoding paradoxical and ambiguous elements into his text, John Donne attempted to control his audience and its response to his Paradoxes and Problems as well as his Biathanatos by restricting their manuscript circulation and by using “metacommentary” in the form of letters to his readers calling attention to the paradoxical qualities of these works. When the Paradoxes and Problems as well as Biathanatos were printed after Donne's death, however, his now unrestricted audience no longer had access to his personal letters of metacommentary, resulting in substantial confusion and ambiguity regarding Donne's intended messages.

T. R. O’Flahertie's Copy of Donne's Letters

AbstractThis paper is part of a Literature Compass panel cluster arising from the The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition. Comprising an introduction by Gary Stringer and three of the papers presented at the symposium, this cluster seeks to examine the current state of Donne Studies and aims to provide a snapshot of the field. The symposium was held April 6–7, 2006.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘Introduction: Three Papers from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition,’ Gary A. Stringer, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00420.x.‘Donne and Disbelief: The Early Prose,’ Ernest W. Sullivan, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00421.x.‘The Cultural Significance of Donne's Sermons,’ Jeanne Shami, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00422.x.‘T. R. O’Flahertie's Copy of Donne's Letters,’ Donald R. Dickson, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00423.x.This article offers a description of the Cushing Library copy of 1654 issue of Donne's Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, formerly owned by the Rev. T. R. O’Flahertie, with an analysis of his extensive annotations and glosses. Details of O’Flahertie's life are presented along with an assessment of his role in Donne studies in the mid‐nineteenth century.

The Cultural Significance of Donne's Sermons

AbstractThis paper is part of a Literature Compass panel cluster arising from the The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition. Comprising an introduction by Gary Stringer and three of the papers presented at the symposium, this cluster seeks to examine the current state of Donne Studies and aims to provide a snapshot of the field. The symposium was held April 6–7, 2006.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘Introduction: Three Papers from The Texas A&M John Donne Collection: A Symposium and Exhibition,’ Gary A. Stringer, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00420.x.‘Donne and Disbelief: The Early Prose,’ Ernest W. Sullivan, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00421.x.‘The Cultural Significance of Donne's Sermons,’ Jeanne Shami, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00422.x.‘T. R. O’Flahertie's Copy of Donne's Letters,’ Donald R. Dickson, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00423.x.Donne's sermons are a lens through which to understand his culture, not because he is representative but because he is unique. This is because his sermons reveal clearly the hotly contested matters of his day, and, paradoxically, because they are in no way typical, they articulate the crises on which they comment in their most complex forms and expose the fault lines of their religious and political contexts. Donne is so helpful in understanding his culture's anxieties because he brings all of these to the forefront, often engaging his hearers in a self‐conscious reflection on matters of interpretation. In him, we encounter a passionate intellect, prompted by the crises threatening religion and the state, to great efforts of moderation and negotiation between hard‐line extremes. His capacious imagination envisioned – and then modelled – ways of dealing with these crises, ways that resisted the pressure to radicalise, although his sermons bear all the marks of the stress of remaining whole. In his sermons, Donne developed a professional and personal identity that confronts in all its complexity the contentious temper of both the Renaissance and the post‐modern worlds. While other preachers were using the pulpit to deliver ‘position papers’, then, Donne the preacher, like the poet, saw its potential as a place of conversion. Through his emphasis on teaching the processes of moral decision‐making rather than enforcing blind obedience or dogma, Donne links the most private of arbiters – conscience – to the most public of media – the sermon. Among many contributors to this discourse, Donne's exercises in interpretation stand out for the inclusiveness of their reach, the accommodation of his rhetorical gestures and the imagination of their ability to renovate controversial words. His sermons present him as an ethical model of integrity and a force of cohesion in an institution – the English Church – that was fractured by religious debate and polemic. While many used sermons to preach extremist views, Donne opted instead to moderate the heated religious and political debates of his day, and to do so without sacrificing conscience or integrity.