Literature and Sacrament

This elegant and scholarly study places Donne's secular and religious poetry in the context of theories of representation and reception brought into 17th-century popular culture by the Reformation debate on the Christian sacraments. DiPasquale sheds new light on the poetics of the period, as well as giving fresh and detailed readings of some of Donne's poems. The author considers the body of scholarship on Donne and on English Protestantism, as well as primary sources, in her extensive examination of how Donne's definition of the reading process affected his practice. The poet, deeply engaged in the theological debates of his time, saw the written word as visible sign, the poet as minister of that sign, and the reader as receiver of it. Praised in scholarly review as the best single-author study of Donne's poetry for a decade, Literature and Sacrament will be required reading for all students and scholars of Donne, of religion and literature, and of the English Reformation.