Returning to John Donne by Achsah Guibbory collects Guibbory’s essays on Donne written over the past thirty years. The book also includes three new essays: one on Donne’s Devotions considers the way in which, for Donne, the transcendental inheres in the physical and the body; an essay on Donne’s erotic poems discusses Donne’s strategies of detachment and his sense of disappointment over sexual experience; and an essay on Donne’s poetry, Pseudo-Martyr, and his Devotions explores Donne’s contribution to religious toleration, especially in his concerns with persecution, conscience, and conformity as part of the history of religious toleration. Most provocatively, Guibbory places Donne in conversation with Milton and Spinoza, showing how all three struggled with the need for religious liberty and peaceful society.
Graham Hammill, SEL Renaissance review, (Winter 2016), p. 193-241
Achsah Guibbory’s Returning to John Donne is the gathered fruit of over four decades of reading, thinking, and writing about Donne.
Russell M. Hillier, Renaissance Quarterly, VOLUME LXIX, NO. 2, 2016
This book usefully pulls Guibbory’s work on Donne together into one volume, making essential reading for anyone interested in Donne, or more generally in the study of literature and religion in the early modern period.
Jennifer Clement, Parergon, Volume 33, Number 3, 2016, p. 236
Achsah Guibbory can without hesitation be identified as one of the most influential voices in Donne studies today, with an admirable record of reaching scholarly, student, and generalist audiences.
Daniel Starza Smith, Cercles, 2016