- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; 2nd Revised edition edition (21 May 1990)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571143377
- ISBN-13: 978-0571143375
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.4 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 221,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
An examination of the life and work of John Donne. The book begins with an account of Donne's life and takes as its domain not only the whole range of poetry, but also the sermons, the letters, the spiritual and controversial works, and such highly personal documents as the treatise on suicide.
About the Author
John Carey is an Emeritus Professor at Oxford University. His books include studies of Donne, Dickens and Thackeray, The Intellectuals and the Masses, What Good Are the Arts? and a life of William Golding.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A sometimes insightful but essentially hostile view of Donne,
By A Customer
This review is from: John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (Hardcover)
Carey is an undeniably brilliant critic and a subtle analyst. However, his basic premises focus on Donne as a guilty apostate Catholic, overwhelmingly ambitious,sycophantic and self-centred. That Donne had feet of clay, I have no doubt, but I find the hostility to Donne here a tad heavy-handed. People looking to understand Donne should read this as a corrective to the hagiographic tradition which started with Walton. On the other hand, I find it hard to embrace so fundamentally unfriendly a view, and I incline to agree with David Edwards in his critique of Carey in his "John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit". I accept Donne's sincerity as an Anglican convert, and find in him a more intense and essentially honest spirituality than Carey seems ready to credit.Still, a stimulating book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Realistic insight,
By
This review is from: John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (Paperback)
I found this book excellent as it deals honestly with the obvious psychological problems that Donne had, while emphasising his extraordinary talent. I personally did not find it at all negative, in fact I felt that Mr Carey was extremely sensitive in his treatment of this very difficult poet and seemed to be writing as an old friend of Donne's. It certainly increased my appreciation of John Donne whose poetry had struck me as perverse when I was first introduced to it at a course. My only caveat: if you don't believe in the influence of the psyche on one's life and writing, this is not the book for you.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unnuanced,
By
This review is from: John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (Paperback)
Originally published in 1981, this is a bit of a one-trick pony: as another reviewer has said, Carey interprets the central act of Donne's life as his conversion away from Catholicism, and reads all his texts (poetry as well as sermons and miscellaneous pieces) as evidence of his life-long sublimated guilt and sense of disloyalty.
I guess I think that very few individuals can be boiled down to just one act in this way, and I think this does a disservice to Donne the man who, I suspect, was far more complex, ambivalent and multifaceted that Carey allows for. I also particularly dislike books which equate poetry and other fictional texts with simple autobiography, and find Carey's readings overly simplistic and unnuanced. Donne is sadly out of fashion at the moment, even amongst Early Modern scholars, so there aren't many really good books out there on his poetry - but there are better essays and articles than this book.
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