This book offers the first sustained assessment of the ways in which recent contemporary philosophy and cultural theory - including the work of Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Eric Santner, Slavoj Zizek, and Alenka Zupancic - can illuminate Early Modern literature and culture.

PAUL CEFALU is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Lafayette College, Pennysylvania, USA.

The Idolatrous State of Exception in John Donne's Poetry and Prose God's Extimacy: Divine Excess and Baroque Monads in the Poetry of Richard Crashaw Tarrying with Chaos: Radical Evil and John Milton's Paradise Lost God beyond Essence: The Event of Love in the Poetry and Prose of Thomas Traherne