Created by Anniina Jokinen
Contact info: anniina@luminarium.org
As part of the Luminarium
Copy righted 1996 – 2004 lasted updated March 22, 2004
No information on the author’s background, experience or credentials is given on the web site. However, she is the author and creator of a multitude of other web pages on authors such as Christopher Marlowe and Sir Thomas More. She is recognized in the electronic academic world for her work on early modern literary studies with focus on the Reformation and Renaissance periods. A list of awards recognizing the academic creditability of the Luminarium is given and includes: a featured site of Best of History Web Sites and Links to Literature. Everything is referenced and acknowledgement is given where it is due.
This site gives an objective view of the material about John Donne. The site is not sponsored by any commercial organization nor are there any advertisements except a link to a place where one can purchase different collections of John Donne’s Poems. All the information on the site can be referenced by other sources and is also free of any spelling, grammar or punctuation errors. The site is without obscurities and everything is referenced properly, including quotations, art, and audio files. The quality of this site is excellent and the reliability more than adequate.
This site is obviously intended for scholars and the general advancement of the academic investigation of John Donne. The site contains John Donne’s complete works, many with audio files, along with pictures and quotes. There are links to a series of biographies (one under the Life link and the rest under the More link) and essays on John Donne and his poetry. This site is not limited to just one perspective and covers a great deal of material concerning Donne. The essays, written by a diverse group of scholars, cover single poems, general themes, and relationships between Donne and his poetry. This site does really well to promote the philosophy and better understanding of Donne’s poetry and character.
The website is Copy righted 1996 – 2004 lasted updated March 22, 2004. It has therefore almost been one year between the sites last update and this evaluation dated February 24, 2005. None of the links on this site are broken and nearly all connect to links that will benefit anyone in trying to gain a better understanding of John Donne and his poetry.
This site should be recommended to anyone who is studying the life or poetry of John Donne. The Luminarium is a recognized source, by most educational institutions, for accurate information and quality research. The link to essays will provide an excellent resource for certain topics related to John Donne while the Life and More links will provide the user with more than a sufficient amount of bibliographical information. The link to works will provide one with all of John Donne’s works including songs and sonnets, elegies, divine poems, holy sonnets, letters, epigrams, satires, sermons and devotions. This is an excellent source for anything concerned with John Donne.
The biography is not given from a wholly objective perspective producing some speculations and ambiguity with statements such as “According to some accounts” and “he seemed destined.” The creators of this site seem more concerned with its advertising than they are with its actual content. There are several links that send the user to sites where they can purchase either essays or books online. There are also several advertisements for a screensaver service. One actually ad actually disrupts that biography as words are forced to conform around it. Even in the menu at the bottom of the page is a link to where someone may inquire about advertising on the site where there is also a sales pitch with the demographics of those who visit Literature Network. The content seems to be some lacking and no references for any material here is presented. The reliability of this site is somewhat questionable and should be avoided for any scholarly work. The site’s one indication that it may be somewhat reliable is that it is fully functional and appears to be without spelling and grammatical errors.
Besides advertising, it appears that this site was built more to appease a general interest in Donne and his poems rather than be used for academic purposes. This site is seems to be aimed at giving its audience a limited education since the site only includes a short biography of John Donne and a large selection of his works. The link to essays only takes users to a page where they can buy scholarly papers online rather than taking the user to other online sources. There are no attempts of interpretation or review of any of the poems, thus showing a lack of content. This web site does not endeavor to cover the material at any depth and seems satisfied with the mere basics.
The site claims that it is under a constant state of being updated but this probably only refers to its advertising. The copy right dates are given as such; Copy righted © 2000 – 2004. All the other links are fully functional but often, besides those for the actual poetry, send users to places they either didn’t expect or find difficult to navigate such as the forum page. The accuracy of the factual evidence presented by this site can not be determined unless cross referenced with other sources that are not referenced here. The sources for what material is presented here are not revealed to the users.
This is an overall poor site for a source for a more in depth look at the life and poetry of John Donne. There is enough research to satisfy the requirements for a short biography while not endeavoring to go much beyond. The Literature Network is a large data base with an excellent variety of author’s but the advertisements and lack of explanatory notes detracts from what quality might have been found here. It is recommended that the Literature Network be used as a tool that can help the user quickly obtain author’s names and lists of those various author’s works. However, the Literature Network should not be used for research purposes extending past very general biographies and lists of works. Unlike the Luminarium, this is not a site that should be readily used, but should be avoided, as a source for any academic work and is better suited for personal interests.