Introduction

Donne’s poetry is quite the opaque literary landscape – his many editors cannot seem to agree on what he wrote, how much he wrote, when he wrote, why he wrote, and the titles of what we think we know he authored. Much of this is due to his presence in manuscript circulation over print. Only a handful of authored texts were printed during his lifetime, and they all had very little to do with poetry – this is quite unfortunate, for after his literary revival in the early 20th century, Donne has mostly become known as a canonical poet. So, what is the difference between now and the literary landscape of the 17th century – why have we arrived at a time in which literary critics are obsessed with tracing origins of texts? Granted, we live in an intellectually possessive society, but concepts of complete authorship and creative ownership is a relatively recent phenomenon. Contrastingly, it is widely believed that although Donne wrote for a niche group of intelligentsia characters, the circulation of his poems in manuscript from removed any control Donne had over his readership. Therefore identifying his complete audience and authorial intention is a daunting (if not impossible) task, simply because there is very little straightforward source material available. Additionally, the documents that do exist are mostly sourced or read in contradicting ways, and current culture of authorial ownership is commonly applied to materials produced in an arguably less possessive culture.

 

A Short History of Donne Disputes

Donne as a literary figure was eclectic in content, and was always selective with his audience. Presumably he preferred to (and chose to) keep the majority of his poetry out of print, perhaps due to content crudeness or controversy, or from a lack of interest in a strictly poetic career. Only nine works attributed to Donne were published in his lifetime (Keynes). In addition to six of his sermons, three religious works were published, including the controversial Pseudo-Martyr, a religious pamphlet produced after his religious shift of allegiance away from Catholicism and subsequent reunion with the Church of England, and a volume of meditations reflecting on religion and death named Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, published in 1624, after a very serious bout of illness that very nearly killed him. Very little of the content of these nine published texts is related to his impressive oeuvre of metaphysical poetry. In fact, even though Satyres and Songs and Sonnets have been credited to his earlier years (1590s) and were circulated during his lifetime, they never appeared in print until two years after his death. Curiously enough, a handful of poems he wrote for The Anniversaries were published during his lifetime, but not accredited to him. Keynes argues that although his “name did not appear in any of these editions … their authorship was doubtless well known” (134) shaping Donne into a literary character predominantly known by reputation, and less by authorial ownership.

Whether or not his poetry was circulated in a small crowd or was widely known is also indeterminable. Whereas Sullivan argues that Donne’s poetry seeped through local culture and that “however much Donne may have thought of himself as a coterie poet, he was an extraordinarily popular poet not only among the intelligentsia, but also among the functionally illiterate” (2), the first truism of Donne poetry traditionally tends to be that “his poems were not, and could not have been, widely known in his own day … his contemporaries could have read most of his work only in manuscript” (Smith 2). Sullivan’s argument stems from the more recent discovery of many poems attributed to Donne that never existed as a part of any collection. Furthermore most of these poems have been paid very little attention in textual criticism, although the sheer amount of uncollected verse would contribute much to the understanding of Donne in a contextual and critical way. Of these uncollected titles, we currently believe there are 83, which can be found in over 200 editions or issues. Based on this Sullivan further argues that we in fact know very little about the social context of Donne’s poetry, and contends that his “poems were printed more frequently during his lifetime than has been previously noted” (4). In any case, critics cannot agree on Donne’s status in manuscript circulation.

Hence, the assumption that our knowledge of seventeenth century manuscript circulation culture is extremely fragmented seems indisputable. Many of the manuscripts that have survived are rendered without author or without any contextual information, and these select manuscripts are only a small portion of the manuscripts that at one point were circulated in the literary world of 17th century England. Semmatology, a style of textual criticism which concerns itself with tracing the history of a manuscript by considering it’s ‘family tree’, is a modern method which attempts to combat this lack of contextual knowledge. Multiple 17th century poem manuscripts have been attributed to Donne via this method. One looks at the paper, the script, the binding, as well as the different versions of texts that exist, and determine how ‘far removed’ each of these texts are from the original, or the ‘archetype’. By using this method, a researcher essentially maps out the journey of the text from now back to it’s origin. In essence, any manuscript (through a painstakingly slow process) can be dated in relation to each other, and thereby a pattern of manuscript circulation appears.

However, there is a downside to attributing authorship via semmatology, for how can someone many centuries later accurately place any given poem into the oeuvre of an author, based on style or fragmented historical context? The poetry of Donne has suffered for this too, even recently. A 20th century collection of Donne’s poetry called The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, has been accused of crediting “The Expostulation” to Donne which in reality may be better credited to Ben Jonson. This is due to just such a fragmented historical context that does not positively identify Donne as the author, but rather negatively identifies Jonson as related to “The Expostulation”, by using arguably insubstantial evidence. Furthermore, Johnson “was often confused with Donne by compilers of verse miscellanies … [Donne] was close to Jonson and died in his arms; and he shared with Jonson a more stoical set of references, as well as the explosive openings and vigorous tone we associate with Donne” (Bland). Taking this recent example into account, it seems that relying on manuscript circulation as concrete evidence is very tricky, and when studying Donne’s poetry, this should be taken into account.

It may be hard to determine exactly how and when “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” became what it is today (word for word), but that is kind of the thing with authorial intent and sanctioned or unsanctioned editing – the texts we have in front of us today have all likely been at the mercy of oral culture, scribal culture, manuscript circulation, and/or the ups-and-downs of the author, and so what we have in front of us must in some ways be good enough. Perhaps the journey of a first edition (or any edition) is an inevitably integral part of what the reader sees, reads, and understands a text to be.