John Donne's poetry is provocatively illuminated in this new collection of essays. The recently influential critical methods of historicism, feminism, psychoanalysis and deconstruction are variously employed to explore Donne's ambivalent relationship to language, women, love, self, God and society. New critical approaches do not dominate the volume, however. Older forms of criticism are also represented, so that the old and the new may illuminate and interrogate each other. The introduction explicitly foregrounds some of the key differences and continuities between old and new versions of literary criticism, exploring the ideas and assumptions underlying each and offering insights into Donne in relation to them.