Literature and Sacrament: The Sacred and the Secular in John Donne

In this innovative study, Theresa DiPasquale examines John Donne's theological and ideological responses to the Reformation debate over the sacraments, and how this debate greatly influenced his view of the written word as visible sign and of the poet as the quasi-divine maker of that sign, and of the reader as its receiver. This study, then, attempts to reconstruct Donne's own, quite nuanced theology of sacrament to provide a guide to his poetics, and, in particular, to his conception of the exchange between author and reader."