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 concered 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.

Annual collection of essays, this year treating works by Donne, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Spenser, among other topics. Renaissance Papers is a collection of the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The conference accepts papers on all subjects relating to the Renaissance -- music, art, history, literature, etc. -- from scholars all over North America and the world. Of the nine essays in the 2002 volume, three have to do with John Donne; among the topics here are Donne and Pietro Aretino, Donne and "All the World," andauthorial intention in the Holy Sonnets. Two essays deal with Shakespeare, specifically the discourse of dilution in 2 Henry IV and the Ovidian underworld in Othello. Other essays treat Marvell and the temporality of paranoia; poetry, patronage, and identity in Spenser's The Faerie Queene; and the visual culture of the Elizabethan prodigy house. Contributors: Nicholas Crawford, Dennis Flynn, Heather Hirschfeld, Pamela Royston Macfie, Anne E. McIlhaney, Graham Roebuck, Gary Stringer, James M. Sutton, Alzada Tipton. M. Thomas Hester is professor of English at North Carolina State University

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 concered 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. Contents List

Renaissance Papers is a collection of the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. Organized and sponsored in the early 1950s by Duke University and the universities of South Carolina and North Carolina, the annual meeting is now hosted by various colleges and universities across the southeastern United States. The conference accepts papers on all subjects relating to the Renaissance -- music, art, history, literature, etc. -- from scholars all over North America and Europe. This is the forty-seventh volume of Renaissance Papers. It includes articles on 15th-c. Florentine wedding chests, called cassoni, on Isabella Whitney, on Spenser's 'April' woodcut, on Cervantes' El Trato del Argel, on Thomas Nashe's Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, on the crone as type in English Renaissance drama, on female speech and disempowerment in Marlowe's Tamberlane I, on Shakespeare's Richard II and Marlowe's Edward II, on Chaucer's contribution to The Tempest, and on echoes of Ovid in Donne's elegies. T. H. HOWARD-HILL and PHILIP ROLLINSON are professors of English at the University of South Carolina.

Based on an exhaustive study of the manuscripts and printed editions in which these poems have appeared, the fifth volume in the series of The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne presents newly edited critical texts of the five canonical satires and "Metempsychosis" and details the genealogical history of each accompanied by a thorough prose discussion. The analysis contained in the volume shows that Donne revised each of the poems and explains how readings from the competing versions were intermingled in the early editions and transmitted to subsequent generations. The volume also presents a comprehensive organized digest of the critical-scholarly commentary on these poems from Donne s time through 2001."

This is a complete facsimile edition of fourteen autograph letters of John Donne that are among the greatest treasures of the Folger Library. The letters, dating from February and March 1602, relate to Donne's clandestine marriage to Anne More and are addressed to his father-in-law, Sir George More, and to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper, who was also Donne's employer. The text of a letter provides one part of the story, while its very tangibility -- the ancient folds, the grime and fingerprints deposited by the writer, deliverer, and readers, the broken seals, the ink blots, the idosyncratic spelling, the location of a signature -- tells another. An understanding of a letter's written and unwritten social signals brings into focus a fuller, grittier, and a clearer view of life in 17th century England. M. Thomas Hester is professor of English at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Robert Parker Sorlien is professor emeritus of English at the University of Rhode Island. Dennis Flynn is professor of English at Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts. John Donne's Marriage Letters was recognized in the AIGA "50 books/50 Covers" competition as one of 100 examples of outstanding book and book cover design produced in 2005.

Renaissance Papers is a collection of the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The nine articles in this volume reflect a wide range of approaches to Renaissance literary performance and theory. The first four essays seek reasons for the success of various Renaissance plays: Christopher Cobb examines how Thomas Heywood casts heroic action in a positive light in his romantic dramas, whereas Lucas Erne urges that Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy owes its success to its Christian portrait of Heironimo's unsuccessful attempt to recognize a benevolent deity. Robert Reeder looks at Renaissance educational manuals in order to clarify views on precocity in Richard III, Bartholomew Fair, and Twelfth Night; and Thomas L. Martin and Duke Pesta investigate and refute postmodern claims about a "transvestite stage." Scott Lucas shows how several sonnets of Fulke Greville's Caelica disorient the reader, underscoring the poet's doubts about human reason and perception; and Pamela Macfie illustrates how Marlowe's ghostly allusions to Ovid's Heroides in Hero and Leander darken the portrayal of the tragic lovers' frustration. The final three essays concern the 17th-century literary giants Donne and Milton: Jay Stubblefield shows Donne's 1619 sermon to the Virginia Company to be a uniquely Thomistic commentary on the conflicting motives behind England's exploits in the New World; and John Wall and John T. Shawcross explore the effects of John Milton's poems on Renaissance and modern readers. M. Thomas Hester is professor of English at North Carolina State University.

Renaissance Papers collects the best essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. In the 2007 volume, two essays focus on Shakespeare's Roman plays: one on Lavinia's death and Roman suicide in Titus Andronicus, the other on the rhetorical construction of masculinity in Julius Caesar. Five essays address the literary implications of seventeenth-century religious belief and practice, considering the influence of the timing and delivery of sermons on John Donne, the impact of godly reforms on Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, the effect of Scottish on English Presbyterianism during the 1640s, the critique of reformist utopianism in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, and the implications of Paradise Lost's lack of a frontispiece. Two essays on sixteenth-century poetry look at the literary voices of commoners and of kings: one focuses on the portraits of women and commoners in A Mirror for Magistrates, while the other examines the political implications of King James VI/I's metrical translations of David's Psalms.BR Contributors: Reid Barbour, Nora L. Corrigan, William A. Coulter, Julie Fann, Robert Kilgore, Sonya Freeman Loftis, Christopher Hair, Jim Pearce, and John N. Wall M. Thomas Hester is Professor of English at North Carolina State University, and Christopher Cobb is Assistant Professor of English at Saint Mary's College.