In this title, first published in 1986, Docherty locates Donne's poetry at the crux of the various scientific, legal, domestic and rhetorical discourses that surrounded and informed it. With a broadly post-structuralist approach, this reissue will benefit literature students with an interest in the wider study and context of John Donne's work.

A Note on the Text; Introduction: Undoing Donne; Section I: Problems and Paradoxes 1. Displacement and Eccentricity: The Struggle with History 2. The Problem of Women: Authority, Power, Communication 3. Crisis and Hypocrisis: The Failure of Representation 4. Identity and Difference: Individuality Betrayed; Section II: Therapies and (ir)resolutions 5. Play, Poetry, Prayer: The 'Vocation' of 'Donne' 6. Donne's Praise of Folly 7. Writing as Therapy: A fishy Tale and a Diet of Worms; Index