The Bible and the Printed Image in Early Modern England: Little Gidding and the Pursuit of Scriptural Harmony by Michael Gaudio

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 97-105
Author(s):  
Paul Dyck
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.


Author(s):  
Judith H. Anderson

In Romans 7:24, Paul utters a cry that has echoed down the centuries: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Paul’s moving outcry attracted the sustained attention of poets in early modern England, among them Spenser, Donne, and Milton, not only because of Paul’s anguish but also because of his unusual phrasing and figuration. The Bible carefully specifies “this death,” which suggests that the death at issue is spiritual and that it results from sin, not simply from the physical constitution of humankind. Yet physical death is implicit in the Adamic sin that human beings inherit and is thus embedded in their fallen nature. Donne’s sermons, Spenser’s Maleger, and Milton’s figures of Sin and Death explore the inextricability of spirit and flesh in the body that is this death.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Clarke ◽  
Simon Jackson

Legitimized by the poetry of the Bible, devotional lyric verse—crossing denominational lines, often combining Reformation spirituality with Renaissance rhetoric—flourished in early modern England. Poets like Mary and Philip Sidney and George Herbert modelled their work on the Book of Psalms, at times imitating the prosodic simplicity of the Sternhold and Hopkins metrical psalms, elsewhere adapting the sophisticated stanzaic variety of the Marot/Beze Psalter. Women like Aemilia Lanyer and Anne Southwell used the Song of Songs to express their devotion to Christ. The ‘mystical marriage’ was often used by women such as Barbara Mackay, who produced a version of the Song of Songs in manuscript, and Elizabeth Melville, who parodied Petrarchan poetry; and it was employed in shocking fashion by John Donne. The religious lyric exists on the borderline of public and private: in conclusion, we present such lyrics as social and occasional, and examine their relationship with music.


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