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An Appendix on Criticism of Donne's Writings An Appendix on Criticism of Donne's Writings I RESPONSES BEFORE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The fullest accessible collection of such responses is A. J. Smith's volume John Donne: The Critical Heritage (1975). A slighter selection may be found in F. Kermode (ed.) Discussions of John Donne (Boston, 1962). The 'Elegies on the Authors Death' printed with Miles Flesher's Poems by J.D. (1633) and reprinted by H. Grierson in Donne's Poetical Works (1912) provide an interesting illustration of the 'image' of Donne by the time of his death. R. Granqvist's The Reputation of John Donne 1779-1873 is a useful discussion of the reception of Donne's work in the nineteenth century. Such items allow a reader to chart movemen~s in Donne's reputation from the seventeenth century to the end of the nine­ teenth. They also provide insights into what aspects of Donne's work were of most interest and thereby illustrate both features of taste in earlier centuries and some of the ways in which texts are conditional rather than transcendental. Finally, taken together, such items subvert the once-common view that Donne was essen­ tially re-invented by the twentieth century, which is not to deny that Donne in our time is a rather different figure from the Donnes of earlier periods. II. DISCUSSIONS OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY Some useful material is to be found in Kermode' s Discussions (above) and in J. Lovelock (ed.) Donne: Songs and Sonets (Casebook series, 1973). Two documents are particularly important in the history of Donne criticism: Grierson's introduction to his edition of the poems (above) and T. S. Eliot's essay 'The Metaphysical Poets' (1921). Grierson's introduction and edition (together with his anthology Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems (1921) with its introduc­ tion) importantly stress the idea of a metaphysical 'school' and 126 An Appendix on Criticism of Donne's Writings 127 Donne's place at its head. Eliot's essay extends this emphasis, while also linking an interest in Donne with one in French poetry of the nineteenth century. Grierson and Eliot provide the impetus for much of what followed in studies of Donne. III DONNE IN THE LATER TWENTIETH CENTURY It is Donne's poetry (and especially the Songs and Sonnets and religious poems) which has dominated discussion of his work since Eliot, although Evelyn Simpson published A Study of the Prose Works in 1924 (Oxford) and there has been considerable specialised scholarly work on aspects of his prose writing. Some examples of the latter can be seen in A.]. Smith (ed.) John Donne. Essays in Celebration (1972). The concept of a metaphysical school, established by Eliot and Grierson, was developed in the 1930s. G. Williamson, explicit about his debt to Eliot, published The Donne Tradition in 1930, while F. R. Leavis in Revaluation (1936) briefly and brilliantly extended Eliot's observations in his chapter 'The Line of Wit', importantly stressing Eliot's idea of a 'dissociation of sensibility' in the mid-seventeenth century (an idea which did much to increase interest in metaphysical verse 1600-50, misleading though the idea is). This concern with a school of Donne was taken further by A. Alvarez in The School of Donne (1961) and E. Miner in The Metaphysical Mode from Donne to Cowley (New Jersey, 1969), both of whom provide a stimulating mixture of scholarship and critical perception. Over the same period, however, there has been the accumula­ tion of monographs on Donne's poetry, and these have inclined either to handbooks of close reading or to studies which emphasise particular types of context. C. Hunt's Donne's Poetry (New Haven, 1954) is sub-titled Essays in Literary Analysis and demonstrates well the former inclination, while W. Sanders' John Donne's Poetry (Cambridge, 1971) has a wider range but shows a similar preoccu­ pation with detailed discussion of voice and tone. J. B. Leishman's The Monarch of Wit (1951) is a more scholarly work, but one of remarkable theoretical and critical naivety. Such works have tend­ ed to stress Donne's individuality (here again following Eliot) and to underplay traditions which bear upon his work, but other 128 John Donne writers have tried to correct this imbalance. That part of L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven, 1954) which is concerned with Donne seeks to place his religious poetry within a tradition of religious meditative theory and practice, while among the monographs D. Guss, in John Donne, Petrarchist (1966), is interested in 'ltalianate Conceits and Love Theory', and N. Andreasen in John Donne: Conservative Revolutionary (New Jersey, 1967) with medieval and sixteenth century Christian love. M. Roston in The Soul of Wit (Oxford, 1974) studies Baroque and Mannerist elements in the poetry and W. Zander in The Poetry of John Donne (Brighton, 1982) subtitles his study Literature and Culture in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Period. Hunt's book (above) was an extreme example of a New Critical approach, decontextualising individual poems almost completely. Other accounts retain tradition and literary histories, either by looking back from Donne (Guss, Andreasen) or by seeing him as beginning a tradition (Leavis, Alvarez), but there has been a marked tendency to divorce texts from biographical and socio­ political considerations and verse from prose. Leishman's handling of biography is elementary; Zander's of the socio-political dimen­ sion sketchy. However, John Carey in John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (1981) made an ambitious attempt to write of a whole Donne, only to come unstuck through coarseness of response and a failure to understand history adequately. Nevertheless, Carey and Zander have written books which suggest where critical studies of Donne may go in the future. When Smith's collection of Essays in Celebration (of the four hundredth anniversary of Donne's birth) was published in 1972 it looked both like a celebration of fifty years of activity in Donne studies and an indication of incipient exhaustion. Since 1972 there have been relatively few books on Donne, but there will be more if serious study of the socio-political context develops, perhaps along the lines suggested by Lauro Martines in Society and History in English Renaissance Verse (Oxford, 1985). Notes In the notes to each chapter London is, unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication. Dates are of editions used; dates in square brackets are of first publication where this is different from the edition used. Chapterl 1. R. C. Bald, fohne Donne: A Life (Oxford, 1970). 2. J. Carey, fohn Donne: Life, Mind and Art (1983 [1981)) p. 10. 3. A. Sinfield, Literature in Protestant England 1560-1660 (New Jersey, 1983). 4. See on this F. Jameson, The Political Unconscious (1981). 5. See, for example, P. Laslett, The World We Have Lost (1979 [1965)) Chapter IV; and H. Kamen, European Society 1500-1700 (1984) Chapter I. 6. Bald, p. 27. 7. Although D. Ogg tells us that 'the physicians suddenly leaped into high status by their incorporation into a royal college' in the reign of Henry VIII (England in the Reign of Charles II (Oxford, 1984 [1934)) p. 130) it remains true that the profession was widely criticised and not seen as suitable for a gentleman. 8. But seeR. Houlbrooke, The English Family 1450-1700 (1984) Chapter VI, for evidence that this is a more complicated topic than used to be believed. 9. I. Walton, 'Life of Dr. John Donne', in Lives (Oxford, 1962 [1927)) p.23. 10. Walton, p. 24. 11. See B. W. Whitlock, 'Donne's University Years', English Studies, vol. 43 (1962) p. 12. 12. Walton, p. 26. 13. Bald, p. 51, but also Whitlock pp. 14-18. 14. The 'Life of Dr. John Donne' seems to have been written not long before its first publication in 1640. 15. Carey, p. 71. 16. See Kamen, Chapter I. 17. The classic sixteenth-century account of social organisation is William Harrison's Description of England (1577). See also J. Youings, Sixteenth-Century England (Harmondsworth, 1984) Chapter V. 18. For theatrical presentation of this see Thomas Dekker, The Shoemakers' Holiday (?1601). 19. For a convenient summary of Cranfield's career see J. Watts in T. Eustace (ed.) Statesmen and Politicians of the Stuart Age (1985). 20. Walton, p. 23. 21. Ibid. On the Welsh connection see Bald, pp. 2(}..2. 129 130 Notes 22. Walton, p. 23. 23. See A. L. Rowse, The England of Elizabeth (1964 [1950]) p. 246f 24. Male primogeniture is the most obvious demonstration of the primacy of the male line. The analogies so often drawn between God as head of everything, king as head of state, and husband as head of family make the same point. Donne treats of the subject in his sermon for Sir Francis Nethersole's marriage. See, G. Potter and E. Simpson (eds) The Sermons, Vol. 2 (Berkeley, 1955) p. 17. 25. Perhaps the most vivid example is the network established by Buckingham under James I and Charles I. Sir Walter Scott's novel Kenilworth gives a good sense of such careers under Elizabeth. 26. Bacon trailed favourites and holders of major office for years before he broke through into the top levels of administration and power. 27. Youings quotes Sir Thomas Smith as saying, 'Whosoever studieth the Iawes of the realm, who studieth in ... the universities ... shall be taken for a gentleman.' Youings, p. 321. 28. See P. Finkelpearl, fohn Marston of the Middle Temple (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969). 29. R. O'Day points out that tutors' guides for university students sometimes stressed travel as part of a desirable plan of studies: R. O'Day, Education and Society 1500-1800 (1982) p.
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