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“Hac ex consilio meo via progredieris”: Courtly Reading and Secretarial Mediation in Donne's The Courtier's Library*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Piers Brown
Piers Brown*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

John Donne's The Courtier's Library (ca. 1603–11) is a catalogue of imaginary books that derives its inspiration from Rabelais's satirical description of the Library of St. Victor. Donne's depiction of courtly knowledge parodies the humanist work that secretaries performed for their masters by offering a path to ignorance and mockery rather than a path to learning and advancement. This essay investigates The Courtier's Library, published here in a new translation (see Appendix), in the context of Donne's habits of reading, marginal annotation, and note-taking, examining both the complicated negotiation involved in producing knowledge for courtly display, and Donne's own attempts to reconcile the roles of secretary, scholar, and gentleman.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , Fall 2008 , pp. 833 - 866
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2008

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Footnotes

*

Versions of this essay were presented at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto, 7 October 2005, and at the Annual Meeting of The Renaissance Society of America in Miami, 22–24 March 2007. I wish to thank Mark Bland, David Galbraith, Elizabeth Harvey, Katie Larson, Arthur Marotti, Philip Oldfield, Jess Paehlke, Anne Lake Prescott, Renae Satterley, Flora Ward, and the anonymous reader for Renaissance Quarterly for their commentary, criticism, and aid.

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