The Disinterred Muse: Donne's Texts and Contexts (review)

BOOK REVIEWS sacred parody), along with the eccentric and interesting study of "The Sonne" by Frederick von Ende. A few years ago, Roberts put all Herbert scholars in his debt with his bibliography . He has served us well yet again. Harpur College — S. U.N. Y. at Binghamton David Novarr, The Disinterred Muse: Donne's Texts and Contexts. Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1980. 218 pp. $19.50. by Ilona Bell In this collection of old and new essays on John Donne, David Novarr looks back at the past in order to make some astute recommendations about the future of literary criticism and scholarship. Since so much has been written about Donne (more, John Roberts reports, in the last ten years alone than in The Complete Bibliography of George Herbert) Novarr draws his conclusions from a great storehouse of data. And since Herbert was for so many years described, and depreciated, as a minor follower of Donne, this retrospective assessment of Donne criticism should be of particular interest to Herbert scholars. I sometimes think that Donne criticism has had a more significant influence on The Temple than Donne's poetry. Although this book is only peripherally concerned with Herbert, it deserves special notice in the George Herbert Journal for questioning the canonized truths of literary history and suggesting that Herbert influenced Donne. Before Amy Charles's Life of George Herbert scholars simply assumed, with no hesitation and apparently no evidence, that Herbert's "Church-porch" echoes Donne's "To Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders." Novarr is eager to prove the reverse — eager, in 53 Ilona Bell fact, to demonstrate that Donne's relationship with Herbert was much more intimate and substantial than we have assumed. Chapter 5, "Two Flamens: The Poems of Dr. Donne," will be of most direct interest to Herbert scholars. Novarr shows Donne to be a highly ambitious, worldly man who wrote "much of his poetry in order to further his career" (p. 95). Highly conscious of his own pragmatic goals, Donne decided that his efforts to woo, flatter, and thank powerful patrons through poetry were no longer appropriate. Consequently, in 1614 Donne renounced poetry altogether, because (as Novarr puts it) his "world, though it tolerated, even applauded, the youthful demonstration of skill in versifying, thought that too long and too great a preoccupation with verse indicated a fundamental lack of seriousness" (p. 99). Yet Donne continued to write poems now and then for most of his life, and that causes Novarr to remark just "how deeply ingrained in him was the habit of verse and how much it continued to matter to him" (p. 103). These later poems (and to date these poems is a major purpose of the chapter) are impersonal and occasional, inspired by and at least partially limited to an identifiable historical purpose. Twice Donne broke his silence for George Herbert. Upon first entering the church, Donne wrote "To Mr. George Herbert, with my Seal, of the Anchorand Christ."Since Donne went to some trouble to please Herbert with "a verse letter, a Latin letter, a witty letter," in "twenty-two lines of ingeniously conceited verse" (pp. 107, 105), the poem is "evidence that Donne's familiarity with Herbert and his affection for him are greater than has customarily been assumed" (p. 107). The poem shows that Donne identified with Herbert's ambition for a career at court and hoped Herbert would succeed where he himself had failed. Given Donne's injudicious marriage and Herbert's early success at Cambridge, Herbert's future in the world certainly seemed more promising. Moreover, Herbert's Latin poems show that, like Donne, he was willing to mix ambition and art. Subsequently, when Donne was more convinced of "the nobility and dignity of his position" in the church (p. 114), he wrote "To Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders," also with Herbert in mind. This time, Novarr argues, Donne intended to encourage his young friend's religious 54 BOOK REVIEWS aspirations. Since Novarr's account of the relationship between Donne and Herbert stops here, it does not elaborate on what it suggests: important differences between the two careers. While Donne saw poetry as...