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.

Acknowledgments; A note on the text; Introduction; Problems and paradoxes; Chapter 2 The problem of women; Chapter 3 Crisis and hypocrisis; Interstice; Therapies and (ir)resolutions; Chapter 6 Donne's praise of folly; Chapter 7 Writing as therapy;