Customer Reviews

The Enigmatic Narrator (Renaissance and Baroque Studies and Texts)

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Although a bit wild in his youth, John Donne went on to become Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral and the most influential preacher of his time. His sermons are among the most celebrated in the English language. The received image of Donne as a man whose love life involved only women, progressing from lesser to greater respectability, has now been detonated by George Klawitter, who makes a strong case that male love lies at the heart of some of his greatest love poems.

In almost half of Donne's love poems, both narrator and love-object are genderless. To use Klawitter's apt word, the genders of the characters in the poems, and the narrator's own proclivities, are "enigmatic". Once a reader is fully aware of this, he recognises unmistakable passages of all-male love.

Klawitter has rescued some of the greatest love poems in English from the academic dullards, who have persisted in giving heterosexual readings to poems which give not the slightest hint of a female presence. Freed from the previously obligatory heterosexual paradigm, Donne's poems come to life -- warmer, wittier, and even campy.

My long review of _The Enigmatic Narrator_ was published in the _James White Review_ some years ago. This review is now online at: [...]

When reflecting on the burnished metaphores of John Donne, legendary poet, one can easily be inclined to forget the intimate realities of John Donne, the person. It is difficult, if not impossible to understand the one without considering the other. And so it is that George Klawitter, Doctor of Literature and an accomplished poet himself sheds light on the life and times of literary giant who has been for many an enigmatic wraith in the shadows of his own genius. An absolute 'must read' for any serious researcher of Donne.