John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit.

David L. Edwards. John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit.

Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002. Pbk. xiv + 368 pp. + 9 b/w pls. index. bibl. $25. ISBN: 0-8028-0522-1.

Dean of King's College, Cambridge, David L. Edwards has pursued an equally distinguished career in the Anglican Church, serving as Canon of Westminster Abbey, Speaker's Chaplain in the House of Commons, and Provost of Southwark Cathedral, London. Edwards's John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit, has its flaws; still, such a book reflects its author's considerable historical knowledge and unwavering Anglican commitments. The book divides into three sections: "Donne's Life" (chaps. 1-4), which--laying aside the initial, polemical chapter--presents a very readable biography; "About Donne" (chaps. 5-6), which claims to refute much of contemporary Donne scholarship; and "Donne Speaks" (chaps. 7-10), which gathers extensive passages from Donne's poetry and prose, all interpreted biographically. Having intimated that the book has its flaws, let me begin by acknowledging its strengths.

Though a bold claim, Edwards warrants comparison to Izaak Walton, whose celebrated Life of Donne continues to shape readers' images of Donne's life, mind, and art (pace Carey). Ben Jonson has his Drummond and Samuel Johnson his Boswell, but Drummond's and Boswell's reminiscences merely complement their more famous friends' histories; they do not constitute their colleagues' literary personalities, whereas Walton gives us the witty, sinning Jack who converts to the grave Dr. Donne, dean of St. Paul's. And so much the better that his conversion restores him to the Church of England. Walton writes to edify as well as please; above all, he writes as a committed Anglican. So does Edwards, who appeals to a readership of similar faith. (It hardly surprises that the Episcopal Book Club of America has included John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit among its featured selections.) A twenty-first-century Izaak Walton, Edwards writes as Donne's latest, most savvy Anglican-Episcopal champion, though modesty might lead him to refuse the comparison.

Please note that I do not disparage Edwards's book for its theological commitments. Having spent some twenty years charting the scholarly-critical Donnean dialogue, I have come to conclude that Donne's strongest readers inevitably find themselves mirrored in their reading and writing. For "there is no mystery in a looking glass until someone looks into it," as Jungian critic Harold C. Goddard writes; and "though it remains the same glass," it presents a different face to each man who holds it in front of him. The same is true of a work of art. It has no proper existence as art until someone is reflected in it--and no two will ever be reflected in the same way. However much we all see in common in such a work, at the center we behold a fragment of our own soul, and the greater the art the greater the fragment (Meaning of Shakespeare [1951], 331).

Goddard's observations ring true for Donne's readers as for Shakespeare's. I intend no criticism, then, by asserting that Edwards finds himself reflected in Donne's writing. For I have gazed into a similar mirror, as have others within my scholarly purview. Scanning my bookshelf, I note an Anglican author who celebrates an Anglican Donne; a Catholic who discovers a crypto-Catholic Donne; a Catholicturned-Anglican who admits to a guilty, apostate Donne; a Lutheran who enforces Donne's Lutheranism; a Calvinist whose Donne capitulates to the Genevan's lex terribilis; a skeptic for whom Donne doubts; an atheist for whom Donne feigns piety; a feminist whose Donne worships Sophia; and so on. As H. R. Coursen (another Jungian critic of Shakespeare) writes, "any claim to critical objectivity signals an inevitable surrender to unperceived subjectivity. The critic invariably stands and unfolds himself even as he believes that he is illuminating that universe of shadows" constitutive of art (Compensatory Psyche, [1986], 63). Understandably, Edwards "stands and unfolds himself" when writing about Donne, as have others before him.

Edwards rises to his best when writing of Donne's life and times: his learning, wit, and writing style shine through the biographical chapters, making these the most engaging and enjoyable of his work. Edwards does not pretend to supplant R. C. Bald's standard scholarly biography; like Walton, he aims to please. His presentation of Donne's Catholic background (and of the plight of Catholics in Tudor and Stuart England) remains sensitive and fair. Still, being himself an Anglican cleric--as he claims, his "is the first book about Donne the preacher ever to have been written by a man who has preached often in London, as he did" (viii)--Edwards tends to admire more than analyze Donne's religious poetry and prose. Indeed, his careful selection of sermon passages seems to serve several practical, pastoral aims. First, Edwards seeks to establish Donne's Anglican orthodoxy; second, and salutarily, he makes Donne's sermon art accessible to general readers (a daunting task, as Donne's learned, oratorical style hardly accords with modern tastes); third, he seeks the living message in Donne's exemplary life and works. More than make us better readers of Donne, Edwards aims to make his readers better Anglicans.

Of course, Donne emerges as a "man of flesh" as well as "of ... spirit." Unfortunately, Edwards's reading of the Songs and Sonets reveals little more than the limitations inherent in such Romantic approaches to literary biography. Edwards assumes, thus, that Donne writes in his own voice, never masking, never the poseur; that Donne always writes from actual experience, addressing real individuals (typically, his wife) in real settings; and that Donne wears his meaning on his poetic sleeve. Irony, ambiguity, obscurity, and an allusiveness borne of political censorship: these and other such encodings find no room in Edwards's version of the love poetry, which requires little interpretation beyond considering where Donne was when he wrote, what he was thinking and feeling while writing, and whom he was addressing. Reduced to so many tawdry records of the poet's sexual experience, the youthful erotic poems suffer especially, being shorn of their intellectual playfulness, rhetorical pyrotechnics and, above all, the comedy of language that has made these lyrics so engaging, so challenging, so interesting to so many readers and so worthy of careful textual study. Worse, Edwards offers his biographical reading as a cure-all to professional Donne criticism. Launching a tedious and largely ineffectual critique of contemporary theory, the introduction and middle chapters detract from the book's narrative unity. I imagine that his general readership will find these chapters distracting, while serious Donne scholars will treat them as so much cannon fodder--assuming that they take the time to read and respond.

Readers should forgive (better, forego) the book's polemical chapters and enjoy Donne's life, here retold in fine Waltonian fashion.

JAMES S. BAUMLIN

Southwest Missouri State University