This course takes off from the collaborative project The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, which has been in progress since the 1980s. Completion is planned for 2010-2015. The uniqueness of the edition is that when completed it will be the first manuscript-based edition of the work of this poet, and the most substantial of that of any of his contemporaries. Donne’s total poetical output comprises about 225-230 poems, ranging in length from two-line epigrams to satires and divine verse up to 250 and more lines in length. The project’s website http://donnevariorum@tamu.edu is an invaluable source of information.
It tells us that:
Volumes 6 (The Anniversaries and the Epicedes and Obsequies) and 8 (The Epigrams,
Epithalamions, Epitaphs, Inscriptions, and Miscellaneous Poems) were published in 1995,
Volume 2 (The Elegies) in September of 2000, and Volume 7, part 1 (The Holy Sonnets)
became available in November of 2005.
The next volume to appear will be the Satires (probably 2009) and this will be followed by the best-known lyrics, the Songs and Sonnets (2010-2011) which, when completed, will appear in three parts, two parts consisting of the texts of these 55 or so poems with individual commentary and one consisting of commentary on the poems as a whole.
In order to allow participants to come to terms with a concept recently (1993) described by the late Harold Love as “scribal publication”, we will be surveying the scope of the 5,000 or so manuscript copies of Donne’s poems. In some cases there are only a handful of manuscript exemplars; other popular poems are to be found in 50-60 surviving manuscript copies, a real phenomenon when one considers what must once have existed. Most of the important manuscript copies have now been scanned to disk, and one aim of the course is to familiarize participants with the two major “hands” extant in the period: “secretary” and “italic” (participants should consult this link, which is an online course in paleography designed by the University of Cambridge: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/datdescr.html.) Donne’s poems were first printed (with a few exceptions) posthumously, in a disorganized edition in 1633 and then (with some additions) in a more carefully organized one in 1635, on the basis of which the remaining seventeneth-century editions (seven in all) were printed (an exception is the last of these, a Restoration edition from 1669, which adds others now believed to be non-canonic).
We will select one or possibly two of the Songs and Sonnets, or possibly one of the Divine poems that has not been edited yet. At the time of writing, the material needed to produce a manuscript-based edition has been assembled for about 35 of the 55 extent Songs and Sonnets. The title “Songs and Sonnets” itself is not Donne’s but appears first in John Marriott’s 1635 printing, and the titles of individual poems likewise vary in many of the manuscript copies. For instance the poem know as “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” also appears in some manuscript versions as “Upon the Parting [from his Mistress”]. Donne’s first translator, Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) must have had a version with this or a similar title, as his draft manuscript version made in August 1630 is entitled “Vertreck”. Editing a given poem involves organizing the manuscript corpus into groups and clusters (this process is called “collation”), and having done this to construct a family tree or stemma. From this, the version, or in certain cases revised version(s), can be arrived at that most closely approximate to what Donne wrote or rewrote (the “Lost Original [or Revised] Holograph”: a holograph is a poem written down in the author’s hand, but only one of Donne’s (discovered in 1970) is known to survive, and this is a fair copy. There is an hypothesis that Donne either lost control over his archive or maybe even destroyed it (or at least the secular and erotic parts of it) shortly before becoming Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Still, holograph copies of literary works (consider Shakespeare) are often extremely unusual or even non-existent.
All this wil be explained further in the first few weeks of the course, and with the help of computer software available on the website, we will set down to the process of creating our own edition. This will be cutting-edge research. Intending participants are encouraged to explore the website and links before attending the first class. Other secondary material will be made available: as most of it is very expensive I propose that we construct a library from which participants can borrow material. We will have to face up to the disturbing fact that the kind of culture in which Donne’s poems circulated in manuscript is hostile to monolithic print culture: thus the Holy Sonnets volume (7.1), which appeared in 2005, presents three different sequences of poems, all equally authoritative, and one never before seen in print.
Rooster
The timetable will be available from June 1st on the Internet.
Onderwijsvorm
Two-hour seminar per week.
A la carte- en contractonderwijs
Not available as modular course or a la carte.
Leerdoelen
A “mini-edition” of one poem, as complete as we can make one in the duration of the course, consisting of a Textual Introduction, Text, Textual Apparatus, and Historical Collation. This will be submitted to the project Textual Editors in partial or complete form and will serve as the basis for the form of the poem to be included in the Volume concerned. Active participants will be acknowledged in print in the relevant Volume.
Literatuur
Will be made available from the instructor. In addition, scanned manuscripts and proof-read computer files (see website) will be made available.
If requested the computer files will be made available by the instructor. NB: the required software is at present only useable on the instructor’s WiFi laptop. This will be what hardware we will be using during the course.
Toetsing
None. The grade will be determined on the basis of individual participation.
Informatie
English Department, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 102c, tel: 071 5272144. English@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Blackboard/webpagina
No blackboard available.