The Oxford Handbook of John Donne presents scholars with the history of Donne studies and provides tools to orient scholarship in this field in the twenty-first century and beyond. Though profoundly historical in its orientation, the Handbook is not a summary of existing knowledge but a resource that reveals patterns of literary and historical attention and the new directions that these patterns enable or obstruct.

Part I--Research resources in Donne Studies and why they they matter--emphasizes the heuristic and practical orientation of the Handbook, examining prevailing assumptions and reviewing the specialized scholarly tools available. This section provides a brief evaluation and description of the scholarly strengths, shortcomings, and significance of each resource, focusing on a balanced evaluation of the opportunities and the hazards each offers.

Part II--Donne's genres--begins with an introduction that explores the significance and differentiation of the numerous genres in which Donne wrote, including discussion of the problems posed by his overlapping and bending of genres. Essays trace the conventions and histories of the genres concerned and study the ways in which Donne's works confirm how and why his "fresh invention" illustrates his responses to the literary and non-literary contexts of their composition.

Part III--Biographical and historical contexts--creates perspective on what is known about Donne's life, shows how his life and writings epitomized and affected important controversial issues of his day, and brings to bear on Donne studies some of the most stimulating and creative ideas developed in recent decades by historians of early modern England.

Part IV--Problems of literary interpretation that have been traditionally and generally important in Donne Studies--introduces students and researchers to major critical debates affecting the reception of Donne from the 17th through to the 21st centuries.

Jeanne Shami is Professor of English at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, where she has taught since 1977. In 1992, she discovered a manuscript of a John Donne sermon corrected in his hand. She published a parallel-text edition of this sermon in 1996 (John Donne's 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon: A Parallel-Text Edition). Shami is the author of John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit (D.S. Brewer, 2003) and Renaissance Tropologies: The Cultural Imagination of Early Modern England (Duquesne University Press, 2008). She is past president of the John Donne Society (2002-03) and has won its award for distinguished publication three times (1996, 2000, 2003).

Dennis Flynn is Professor of English at Bentley University and a past president of the John Donne Society. He has published numerous review and articles in Donne studies; authored John Donne and the Ancient Catholic Nobility; and co-edited three volumes in the ongoing Donne Variorum project as well as John Donne's Marriage Letters at The Folger Shakespeare Library.


M. Thomas Hester is Alumni Distinguished Professor of English at North Carolina State University and the author/editor of numerous books and articles on Renaissance literature---most recently, Donne's Marriage Letters in the Folger Shakespeare Library (with Dennis Flynn and Robert P. Sorlien) and Talking Renaissance Texts: Essays on the Humanist Tradition (with Jeffrey Kahan). At present he is an editor of The Oxford Edition of the Prose Letters of Donne, with Dennis Flynn and Ernest W. Sullivan, II. He is also Editor of The John Donne Journal.

List of illustrations and maps
Note to Readers
General introduction Jeanne Shami, M. Thomas Hester and Dennis Flynn
Part 1: Research resources in Donne studies and why they matter
Introduction, Jeanne Shami
The composition and dissemination of Donne's writings, Gary A. Stringer
John Donne's seventeenth-century readers, Ernest W. Sullivan, II
Archival research, Lara M. Crowley
Editing Donne's poetry: part 1: From John Marriot to the Donne Variorum, Gary A. Stringer
Editing Donne's poetry: part 2: The DonneVariorum and beyond, Richard K. Todd
Modern scholarly editions of the prose of John Donne, Ernest W. Sullivan, II
Research tools and their pitfalls for Donne studies, Donald R. Dickson
Collaboration and the international scholarly community, Hugh Adlington
Part 2: Donne's genres
Introduction, Heather Dubrow and M. Thomas Hester
The epigram, M. Thomas Hester
The formal verse satire, Gregory Kneidel
The elegy, R. V. Young
The paradox, Michael W. Price
The paradox: Biathanatos, Ernest W. Sullivan, II
Menippean Donne, Anne Lake Prescott
The love lyric, Dayton Haskin
The verse letter, Margaret Maurer
The religious sonnet, R. V. Young
Liturgical poetry, Kirsten Stirling
The problem, Michael W. Price
The controversial treatise, Graham Roebuck
The essay, Jeffrey Johnson
The anniversary poem, Graham Roebuck
The epicede and obsequy, Claude J. Summers
The epithalamion, Camille Wells Slights
The devotion, Kate Narveson
The sermon, Jeanne Shami
The prose letter, Margaret Maurer
Part 3: Biographical and historical contexts
Introduction, Dennis Flynn and Jeanne Shami
The English Reformation in the mid-Elizabethan period, Patrick Collinson
Donne's family background, birth, and early years, Dennis Flynn
Education as a courtier, Alexandra Gajda
Donne's education, Dennis Flynn
Donne's military career, Albert C. Labriola
The Earl of Essex and English expeditionary forces, Paul E. J. Hammer
Donne and Egerton: the Court and courtship, Steven W. May
On late-Elizabethan courtship and politics, Andrew Gordon
Donne's wedding and the Pyrford years, Dennis Flynn
New horizons in the early Jacobean period, Anthony Milton
The death of Robert Cecil: end of an era, Johann Sommerville
Donne's travel and earliest publications, Dennis Flynn
Donne's decision to take orders, Jeanne Shami
The rise of the Howards at court, Alastair Bellany
The hazards of the Jacobean court, Peter McCullough
Donne's readership at Lincoln's Inn and the Doncaster embassy, Emma Rhatigan
International politics and Jacobean statecraft, Malcolm Smuts
Donne: the final period, Clayton D. Lein
Donne, the patriot cause, and war, 1620-29, Simon Healy
The English nation in 1631, Arnold Hunt
The death of Donne, Alison Shell
Part 4: Problems of literary interpretation that have been traditionally and generally important in Donne studies
Introduction, Dennis Flynn
Donne and apostasy, Achsah Guibbory
Donne, women, and the spectre of misogyny, Theresa M. DiPasquale
Donne's absolutism, Debora Shuger
Style, wit, prosody in the poetry of John Donne, Albert C. Labriola
Do Donne's writings express his desperate ambition?, Hugh Adlington
"By parting have joyn'd here": the story of the two (or more) Donnes, Judith Scherer Herz
Danger and discourse, Lynne Magnusson
Bibliography
Index