John Donne: Life, Mind and Art
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £5.45
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in John Donne: Life, Mind and Art for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £5.45, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
'Donne is perhaps the most intellectual of English poets, and John Carey is perhaps the most intelligent of contemporary English literary critics. The encounter, as one might expect, is fierce and enthralling... This book is sensitive, searching, powerful, exciting, provocative and witty. It is a superb achievement.' Christopher Hill, TLS
John Donne: Life, Mind and Art is a unique attempt to see Donne whole. Beginning with an account of his life, it takes as its domain not only the whole range of the poetry, but also the sermons, the letters, the spiritual and controversial works, and such highly personal documents as the treatise on suicide. The result is a clearer picture than has hitherto emerged of one of the most intricate and compelling of literary personalities.
'The one book we have needed all along... A magnificent exercise in reappraisal. I have never read a critical work which reaches as deeply inside the mind of its subject.' Jonathan Raban, Sunday Times
'Carey's book is itself alive with the kind of energy it attributes to Donne.' Christopher Ricks, London Review of Books
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.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format: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.
Format: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.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format: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.
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.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
