Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne, and Increase and Multiply: Arts-of-Discourse Procedure in the Preaching of Donne by John S. Chamberlin (review)

420 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 work, or the vague references Erasmus gives to people or places or classical texts. Just so is 'the whole of Erasmus ... born again.' (SISTER GERALDINE THOMPSON) John Donne. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasiolls. Edited by Anthony Raspa. McGill-Queen's University Press 1975. lvi, 192. $18.00 John S. Chamberlin. Increase and Multiply: Arts-oJ-Discourse Procedure ill the Preaching of Donne. University of North Carolina Press. xvi, 197. $12.95 Although Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions is among the finest of Donne's prose writings, it has been surprisingly neglected by editors. Despite the great modern interest in Donne, no scholarly or critical edition of this work appeared during the fifty years prior to the recent publication of Anthony Raspa's edition. This edition makes amends for the long neglect and is much to be welcomed. Raspa has done all that one should ask of an editor. He has established his text through collation of copies of early editions. He has provided an introduction which includes discussion of the nature of Donne'5 sickness that occasioned the Devotions , and consideration of the relation of this work to traditions of devotional writing, as well as information about the history of publication and textual problems. He has also provided annotation to elucidate medical, theological, and other obscurities. The volume is admirably designed and printed, in keeping with the reputation McGill-Queen's Press has rapidly established for the production of exceptionally handsome books. It is probably impossible to produce a critical edition of a major work of Donne that is without controversial aspects. In his introduction Raspa displays a special interest in the endlessly debated question of the influence on Donne of Ignatius's methods of formal meditation. He considers that the influence of these methods was decisive: 'How, rather than if, they influenced Devo/ions is the question at stake.' Among students ofDonne there are still to be found sceptics about this influence. Indeed, there has been at least one recent attempt to demonstrate that the Devo/ions is influenced primarily by distinctively Protestant traditions of meditation. The sceptics will probably remain unconvinced by Raspa's discussion, but they should be pleased that he has rejected arguments based on superficial similarities between the tripartite structure of the Devotions and the three stages of 19natian meditation, and has concluded that the form is original, devised by Donne 'because he needed such an argumentative structure to satisfy the dialectical cast of his mind.' He has recognized quite properly that the introduction to an edition is not the place to develop his special arguments at length, and he has recognized too that, whatever Donne may owe to tradition, the Devo/ions is in the HUMANITIES 421 end a work of striking individuality, without close precedent or definite model. Donne's Devotions are not sermons, but they could have been written only by an author who was at once a great preacher and a great poet. Donne's relation to traditions of preaching is John Chamberlin's subject in his Increase and Multiply. He attempts to show the ways in which Donne's sermons are influenced by three traditional 'arts of discourse': grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, which he traces through their various phases of development, patristic, medieval, and Renaissance. He holds that Donne aligned himself w ith a 'High Church' movement in reaction against Puritan methods of preaching, and deliberately turned back to patristic and scholastic models and methods. The subject of patristic and medieval influences upon Donne is a familiar one, as Chamberlin is well aware, but he is probably the first to offer so systematic a survey of the three areas he explores in relation to Donne. His study has some decided merits. He writes well and gives a lucid account of much complicated material. His work helps place Donne in three contexts that are undoubtedly relevant and important. There are, however, limitations that cause some disappointment. The author is slow in coming into contact with Donne. The first two thirds of his study is principally about the nature and history of his three traditions , with little direct reference to Donne; only in the last third is there much...