Manuscript Matters: Reading John Donne's Poetry and Prose in Early Modern EnglandManuscript Matters illuminates responses to some of John Donne's most elusive texts by his contemporary audiences. Since examples of seventeenth century literary criticism prove somewhat rare and frequently ambiguous, this book emphasizes a critical framework rarely used for exhibiting early readers' exegeses of literary texts: the complete manuscripts containing them. Many literary manuscripts that include poems by Donne and his contemporaries were