Courses

This seminar will center on the formal and contextual analysis of the works of John Donne, a key figure in the English “metaphysical” school of lyric poetry, and virtuoso of the English sermon in the early seventeenth century.  We will read his major poetry and prose, along with works by his major scholarly critics.  In doing so, we will develop a familiarity not only with the themes, tropes, and formal techniques of Donne and his contemporaries, but also with the history of scholarship on the early modern lyric and sermon.