tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21432259.post4383947108671237313..comments2023-09-07T18:57:41.344+01:00Comments on Early Modern Whale: Robert Crofts cites Donne as he gives up on love, 1641DrRoyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01351695058512676554noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21432259.post-39107511998306671282008-11-22T18:26:00.000+00:002008-11-22T18:26:00.000+00:00That's an interesting thought, and a challenge I w...That's an interesting thought, and a challenge I will save up for lifetime 37# (after my mastery of the accordion, scheduled for existence 36#). I don't know whether the Variorum Donne goes this far, but if they have a mania for completeness, they ought. My own line is that Donne needs to be edited with the poems written in dialogue with him by his Inns of Court friends (as, in a sense, Donne also writes those poems by proxy).DrRoyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01351695058512676554noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21432259.post-73368831424497397212008-11-22T09:51:00.000+00:002008-11-22T09:51:00.000+00:00'D.I.Donne.' I had no idea Donne was a Detective ...'D.I.Donne.' I had no idea Donne was a Detective Inspector. (That said, 'D.J.Donne' would be even better, in da house and so on).<BR/><BR/>This (v. interesting) post touches on a much larger question, I think, the outsides of which I've encountered in Classics, viz.: what do you do when your entire knowledge of a writer, or in some cases an entire literary culture, boils down to a selection of nuggets quoted by other later writers? Maybe Phrynichus's tragedies were indeed better than Aeschylus; but since we only have the classical equivalents of Robert Crofts quoting a few bits and bobs it's hard to tell ... because as you say here, its likely he's being misquoted, misremembered, improved upon, or else the bits quoted just aren't very representative of his writing. What if we'd lost all Donne's poetry, and had to try and reconstruct his canon from the bits and pieces quoted in sources like this?<BR/><BR/>I wonder (I don't know) if anybody has done a comparative survey of the 'fragmentary' survival of eg Donne as compared to his actual poetic corpus: it would make a fascinating point of comparison with what classicists do with their fragmentary authors.Adam Roberts Projecthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10001572970456425902noreply@blogger.com