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jamesvw's review against another edition
4.0
A great escape and exceptionally well written - it is no doubt a work of academic literature and since I was much more familiar with Donne's poetry than his prose, I was grabbed more by Targoff's exploration of the earlier poetry (with the exception of Death's Duell, which is a fascinating section at the end of the book). One piece that I found missing was more of a study of how Donne's conversion fit into his theological musings and his intense ambivalence about love and the body and soul. After all, commitment issues seem to run throughout his career - in terms of what kind of a writer he was, what kind of lover he was, what kind of believer he was and ultimately what kind of persona he presented to the public. Though I do have to remind myself that with academic texts, I can't ask for too generalized of a text - and deeper digging into the specifics of his conversion may have taken Targoff too far off course - or into subject matter that has already been tilled to exhaustion.
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