Biblical Readings and Literary Writings in Early Modern England, 1558-1625

Abstract

This book provides an account of the how the Bible was read and applied in early modern England, and maps the connection between these readings and various forms of writing. The Bible had a profound impact on early modern culture, and Bible-reading shaped the period’s drama, poetry, and life writings, as well as sermons and biblical commentaries. This book argues that literary writings bear the hallmarks of the period’s dominant exegetical practices, and do interpretative work. Tracing the impact of biblical reading across a range of genres and writers, the discussion demonstrates that literary reimaginings of, and allusions to, the Bible were common, varied, and ideologically evocative. The book explores how a series of popularly interpreted biblical narratives were recapitulated in the work of a diverse selection of writers, some of whom remain relatively unknown. In early modern England, the figures of Solomon, Job, and Christ’s mother, Mary, and the books of Song of Songs and Revelation, are enmeshed in different ways with contemporary concerns, and their usage illustrates how the Bible’s narratives could be turned to a fascinating array of debates. Showing the multifarious contexts in which biblical narratives were deployed, this book argues that Protestant interpretative practices both contribute to, and problematize, literary constructions of a range of theological, political, and social debates.

Hester Pulter's Psalmic Poems

“…As Victoria Brownlee has shown for Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, biblical typology provided a neat framework through which to understand but also write about 'national, local, domestic, and personal circumstances'. 31 The conflicts of the mid-century merely strengthened these impulses. Christopher Hill's comment that 'all parties' involved in the Civil War 'appealed to the Bible for support', is now largely commonplace but no less important.…”