The centrique part : John Donne's Elegies

"An extended study of the Elegies of John Donne is long overdue. Beyond such notable exceptions as "Going to Bed," "The Perfume," and "The Bracelet," the Elegies, overall, constitute a neglected area of Donne's canon. In particular, Donne's Elegies have suffered critically not only because they have so often been considered as poetic exercises that prepared Donne for his more highly acclaimed love poetry in the Songs and Sonets, but also because so much of the criticism concerning the Elegies focuses upon uncovering the specific sources of and the direct allusions to the particular Latin elegies from which Donne may have borrowed. As a result, the purpose of this study is to define the erotic elegy, in general, and to describe the literary tradition within which Donne's Elegies were written in order to discover both their adherence to and their departure from that tradition."--Preface.