Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

by John Donne, Anthony Raspa

Overview

One of Donne's most important and haunting works in prose, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions was composed in less than a month, during an illness that nearly cost the writer his life. Donne divided the book into twenty-three sections, each corresponding to a stage of his illness and each consisting of a meditation, an expostulation, and a prayer. Filled with powerful images of mortality and immortality that have moved readers throughout the centuries, it provides a coherent spiritual message relevant not only to Donne's life but to the lives of all people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195041736
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/16/1987
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.46(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

John Donne

Table of Contents

	Preface	v
	Preface to the Oxford Edition	vii
	Abbreviations	xi
	Introduction	xiii
I	The Illness and the Occasion	xiii
II	Meditation and Metaphysics	xix
III	Seventeenth-Century Copies	xl
IV	The Editions	xliv
V	The Text	lii
	Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions	1
	Commentary	129
	Selective Bibliography	188

Editorial Reviews

"The editing is an exemplary piece of scholarship."—Jim Kerbaugh, Illinois College

"[This edition] adds something to our real wealth. The text that Raspa has established must be as close to finality as anything can be, the bibliographical history of the work is minute and exhaustive, the notes packed with scholarly information, the erudition of the introduction scarcely to be surpassed."—Times Literary Supplement

"[This edition] adds something to our real wealth. The text that Raspa has established must be as close to finality as anything can be, the bibliographical history of the work is minute and exhaustive, the notes packed with scholarly information, the erudition of the introduction scarcely to be surpassed."—Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher