TY - JOUR
AU - Karlin, Daniel
AB - Book Reviews A wful Excellence John Donne: Life, Mind and Art. BY JOHN CAREY. Faber. £9.50. John Carey is no formalist. The title of this book announces his belief that Donne's mind is a central topic of investigation, the median term between life and art. In a sense this is a psychological study to which biography and literary criticism contribute, although Carey un- doubtedly feels that its main interest lies in the readings it yields of Donne's work. The book's reception was predictable: the newspapers praised it to the skies as a proof of the effectiveness of un-pretentious, jargon-free popular criticism; Carey is equally at home in Fleet Street and Portland Place as well as Oxford, and there was an undisguised satisfaction at his having so plainly got to grips with his subject. The journals, on the other hand (I recall Dame Helen Gardner in Encounter, Christopher Ricks in the London Review of Books and William Empson in the New York Review of Books), were noticeably less keen. They variously attacked the book's methodology, critical premises and scholarship. The first two were exasperated, but polite; Empson's polished fury, though a delight to read, was grossly unfair to the range 
TI - Book Reviews-Awful Excellence
JF - English
DO - 10.1093/english/31.140.142
DA - 1982-07-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/book-reviews-awful-excellence-jDvXzE1Lhk
SP - 142
EP - 146
VL - 31
IS - 140
DP - DeepDyve
ER -