Book Description
Examining the influence of the biblical Psalms on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, this study explores the imaginative, beautiful and ingenious as well as sometimes ludicrous and improbable ways in which the Psalms were 'translated'. Spanning ancient Israel to Renaissance and Reformation England, the book focuses on literature of major writers that ranges from Shakespeare and Milton to less prominent ones: George Gascoigne, Mary Sidney Herbert, and George Wither.
Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature FROM THE PUBLISHER
Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature examines the powerful influence of the biblical Psalms on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. It explores the imaginative, beautiful, ingenious and sometimes ludicrous and improbable ways in which the Psalms were "translated" from ancient Israel to Renaissance and Reformation England. No biblical book was more often or more diversely translated than the Psalms during the period. In church psalters, sophisticated metrical paraphrases, poetic adaptations, meditations, sermons, commentaries, and through biblical allusions in secular poems, plays, and prose fiction, English men and women interpreted the Psalms, refashioning them according to their own personal, religious, political, or aesthetic agendas.