John Donne: An Annotated Bibliography of Modern Criticism, 1979-1995

1981

152. Aers, David, and Gunther Kress. “‘Darke Texts Needs [sic] Notes’: Versions of Self in Donne’s Verse Epistles,” in Literature, Language and Society in England, 1580–1680 by David Aers, Bob Hodge, and Gunther Kress, 23–48. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble. Reprinted in John Donne, ed. Andrew Mousley, New Casebooks, gen. eds. John Peck and Martin Coyle (London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 122–34. Pages 23–34, 40–48, 200–202 reprinted in John Donne’s Poetry, ed. Arthur L. Clements, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1992), 255–70. Attempts “to establish . . . a framework and carry out an analysis which will locate, describe, and account for versions of the self” that emerge in Donne’s verse epistles (23). Examines in detail BedfRef, pointing out a tension in the poem between a person’s inherent worth and his market or social worth, and claiming that, although it is a patronage poem, Donne emerges as the “central object of attention” (26). Points out that Donne as a Catholic was a member of an alienated group, that his marriage to a woman of higher social class increased his alienation, and that his desire to be a member of court created tension in his life and in his patronage poems. Discusses three verse epistles not written to patronesses—HWKiss, RWThird , and EdHerb—all of which assume “a simple version of the self” (41) on the surface, but when looked at more closely, reveal the same tension between inherent worth and social worth found in the poems to patronesses. 153. Aers, David, and Gunther Kress. “Vexatious Contraries: A Reading of Donne’s Poetry,” in Literature, Language and Society in England, 1580–1680, by David Aers, Bob Hodge, and Gunther Kress, 49–74. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan ; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble. Reads selected love poems in the light of Donne’s letters concerning the consequences of his marriage. Explicates GoodM and Canon, seeing in them an expression of Donne’s alienation from society caused by love and of his attempt to rise above that alienation by creating an alternative world, “an autonomous Utopian anti-world freed from social and historical processes with all their complex antagonisms and contingencies” (57). Discusses HSVex to show that Donne’s longing “for a self fixed in one timeless state” “matches the dreams of lovers’ transcendent and static union encountered in the Songs and Sonnets” (69). Considers HSShe, however, as “an exception to his habitual outlook” (69). Concludes with an analysis of Christ, written when Donne was an elite of the state church, maintaining that the hymn shows that at last Donne found that “the way to establish his selfidentity was exactly the one he had always wanted—incorporation in the establishment,” for after all “the life of an alienated intellectual was not one Donne could embrace” (74). 1981 47 48 1981 154. Aizawa, Yoshihisa. “John Donne no ‘Shunen Tsuitoshi’ Ko” 4. [A Study of John Donne’s Anniversaries (4)]. Bunkei Ronso [Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities , Hirosaki University] 16, no. 1: 95–107. Part 4 of an eight-part series of articles . Discusses the Anniversaries and comments on Donne’s secret marriage and the period of unemployment, failure, and frustration following his marriage. 155. Andrews, Michael Cameron. “Donne’s ‘The Ecstasy.’” Expl 39, no. 4: 5–6. Disagrees with Helen Gardner’s assertion in her edition of the Elegies and Songs and Sonnets (Oxford, 1965) that the “violet” in Ecst (l. 3) has no sexual connotations, but agrees with her that in Elizabethan literature the violet was associated with purity, modesty , and virginity. Maintains that, in fact, the violet in l. 3 has “both erotic and spiritual associations” and that, “[l]ike the souls of the two lovers [in the poem], the two senses interinanimate each other” (6). 156. Aramaki, Chisako. “Holy Sonnets ni oeru Sezoku Hyogen” [Secular Expressions in the Holy Sonnets], in Yamakawa Kozo Kyoju Taikan Kinen Ronbunshu [Essays Presented to Professor Kozo Yamakawa on the Occasion of His Retirement from Osaka University], 106–16. Toyonaka: Eihosha. Argues that in the Holy Sonnets Donne treats not his personal feelings nor theological doctrines but rather fairly commonplace subjects, showing the way to the truth of God by the wordplay that mingles secularity and religiousness effectively. 157. Banerjee, Chinmoy. “Metaphysical Concreteness: John Donne’s Better Hemispheres .” N&Q, n.s. 28: 39–40. Suggests that the “two better hemispheres ” in GoodM (l. 17) may refer to a “hemispherical map...