Directory of Reviews Resources

Home > Arts > Literature > World Literature > British > 17th Century > Donne, John > Reviews

Essays, articles, sites that relate to furthering research and/or commentary on John Donne.

Resources in This Category

• "I haue often such a sickly inclination": Biography and the Critical Interpretation of Donne's Suicide Tract, Biathanatos

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/siemens.htm
  R. G. Siemens suggests that the tract should be read "as a detached . . . examination of the moral implications of an action," rather than a reflection of Donne's state of mind.

• "The strangest pageant, fashion'd like a court": John Donne and Ben Jonson to 1600 -- Parallel Lives

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/blissett.htm
  William F. Blissett suggests that a Jonson reference to a "Dr. Done . . . encourages a consideration of the parallel literary lives of Jonson and Donne."

• "Witness this Booke, (thy Emblem)": Donne's Holy Sonnets and Biography

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/benet.htm
  Diana Treviño Benet argues that the sonnets have been widely studied in terms of the poet's theology, but "their recourse to biography" deserves critical attention.

• Book Review

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/03-3/rev_hod2.html
  Elizabeth Hodgson reviews The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, Volume 8: The Epigrams, Epithalamions, Epitaphs, Inscriptions, and Miscellaneous Poems. Gary A. Stringer, et al.

• Book Review

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/02-2/rev_tin1.html
  Nathan P. Tinker reviews Barbara Estrin's Laura: Uncovering Gender and Genre in Wyatt, Donne, and Marvell.

• Book Review

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/01-3/rev_sum1.html
  Claude J. Summers reviews The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne (vol. 6): The Anniversaries and The Epicedes and Obsequies. Gen. Ed. Gary A. Stringer.

• Book Review

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/06-1/kuchrev.htm
  Gary Kuchar reviews Ronald Corthell's Ideology and Desire in Renaissance Poetry: The Subject of Donne.

• Book Reviews

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/02-1/rev_hod1.html
  Elizabeth Hodgson reviews two books: John Donne. Pseudo-Martyr. Ed. Anthony Raspa; John Donne and the Ancient Catholic Nobility, by Dennis Flynn.

• Britten and Donne: Holy Sonnets Set to Music

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/gooch.htm
  Bryan N. S. Gooch argues that the ordering of the Sonnets in Britten's Opus 35 reflects the composer's personal experience of visiting German concentration camps.

• Cambridge History of English and American Literature

  http://www.bartleby.com/214/
  Covers the period from Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton, which includes "Donne's Relation to Petrarch," "His Life," "Songs and Sonets," "Letters and Funerall Elegies," and "His Position and Influence."

• Colon and Semi-Colon in Donne's Prose Letters: Practice and Principle

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/03-1/rothdonn.html
  Suggests that "Donne's colon and semicolon usage reveals several Donnean principles of punctuation." By Emma L. Roth-Schwartz.

• Donne, Herbert, and the Worm of Controversy

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/martz.htm
  By Louis Martz. Ecclesiastical dispute in the British Church as reflected in the works of Donne and Herbert.

• John Donne the Divine and Mundane

  http://www.kwansei.ac.jp/s_sociology/kiyou/87/87-ch11.pdf
  Analyzes Donne's poetry in terms of his change in lifestyles throughout his career. By Yoshiko Fujito. [.PDF]

• John Donne's "Lamentations" and Christopher Fetherstone's Lamentations . . . in prose and meeter (1587)

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/pebworth.htm
  Ted-Larry Pebworth argues that Donne engaged the 1587 edition of Fetherstone's "Lamentations" to translate the text into English.

• John Donne's Use of Space

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/04-2/gortjohn.htm
  "Donne's spatial imagination: its cosmographic assumptions, and its many contradictions," by Lisa Gorton.

• Love Poetry of John Donne

  http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/donne.html
  An essay by Ian Mackean on the role of love in Donne's Songs and Sonnets.

• New Pleasures Prove: Evidence of Dialectical Disputatio in Early Modern Manuscript Culture

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/02-2/downdonn.html
  Margaret Downs-Gamble examines Donne's poems in terms of the manuscript culture of the times.

• Paraphrase Used in a Review

  http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/empson.donne.html
  Excerpt from the Eric Griffiths review of William Empson's posthumous Essays on Renaissance Literature.

• Political and Social Criticism in "The Calme"

  http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/destefan.htm
  Student essay by John DeStefano.

• The Metaphysical Sonnets of John Donne and Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski: A Comparison

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/09-2/kaysep.html
  Magdalena Kay suggests that "Both poets work out their ideas through paradox and syntactic play."

• Trumpet Vibrations: Theological Reflections on Donne's Doomsday Sonnet

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/bridge.htm
  G. Richmond Bridge relates the octave of Holy Sonnet VII to "the substance of much millenarian thought and preaching."

• W[illiam] S[hakespeare]'s "A Funeral Elegy" and the Donnean Moment

  http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/summers.htm
  Claude J. Summers argues that "A Funeral Elegy" shares an affinity with Donne's mourning poems, but "rejects those very qualities of expansive symbolism and abstraction that the later plays share with the Anniversaries."

 

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