Manuscript Matters
Subtitle: Reading John Donne's Poetry and Prose in Early Modern England
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780198821861
Subjects: Donne, john, 1572-1631; English literature, history and criticism, early modern, 1500-1700
Description: This book illuminates responses to some of John Donne's most elusive texts by his contemporary audiences. Since examples of seventeenth-century literary criticism prove somewhat rare and frequently ambiguous, this book emphasizes a critical framework rarely used for exhibiting early readers' exegeses of literary texts: the complete manuscripts containing them. Many literary manuscripts that include poems by Donne and his contemporaries were compiled during their lifetimes, often by members of their circles. For this reason, and because various early modern poems and prose works satirize topical events and prominent figures in highly coded language, attempting to understand early literary interpretations proves challenging but highly valuable. Compilers, scribes, owners, and other readers - men and women who shared in Donne's political, religious, and social contexts - offer clues to their literary responses within a range of features related to the construction and subsequent use of the manuscripts.