English Metrical Psalms
English Metrical Psalms

Author: Rivkah Zim

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-02-17

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780521172219

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This 1987 book was the first full-scale study of English metrical Psalms to be published in the twentieth century.

Psalms in the Early Modern World
Psalms in the Early Modern World

Author: Linda Phyllis Austern

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 1317073983

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Psalms in the Early Modern World is the first book to explore the use, interpretation, development, translation, and influence of the Psalms in the Atlantic world, 1400-1800. In the age of Reformation, when religious concerns drove political, social, cultural, economic, and scientific discourse, the Bible was the supreme document, and the Psalms were arguably its most important book.The Psalms played a central role in arbitrating the salient debates of the day, including but scarcely limited to the nature of power and the legitimacy of rule; the proper role and purpose of nations; the justification for holy war and the godliness of peace; and the relationship of individual and community to God. Contributors to the collection follow these debates around the Atlantic world, to pre- and post-Hispanic translators in Latin America, colonists in New England, mystics in Spain, the French court during the religious wars, and both Protestants and Catholics in England. Psalms in the Early Modern World showcases essays by scholars from literature, history, music, and religious studies, all of whom have expertise in the use and influence of Psalms in the early modern world. The collection reaches beyond national and confessional boundaries and to look at the ways in which Psalms touched nearly every person living in early modern Europe and any place in the world that Europeans took their cultural practices.

Collected Critical Writings
Collected Critical Writings

Author: Geoffrey Hill

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 827

ISBN-13: 0199234485

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The Collected Critical Writings gathers more than forty years of Hill's published criticism, in a revised final form, and also adds much new work. It will serve as the canonical volume of criticism by Hill, the pre-eminent poet-critic whom A. N. Wilson has called "probably the best writer alive, in verse or in prose." In his criticism Hill ranges widely, investigating both poets (including Jonson, Dryden, Hopkins, Whitman, Eliot, and Yeats ) and prose writers (such as Tyndale, Clarendon, Hobbes, Burton, Emerson, and F. H. Bradley). He is also steeped in the historical context - political, poetic, and religious - of the writers he studies. Most importantly, he brings texts and contexts into new and telling relations, neither reducing texts to the circumstances of their utterance nor imagining that they can float free of them. A number of the essays have already established themselves as essential reading on particular subjects, such as his analysis of Vaughan's "The Night", his discussion of Gurney's poetry, and his critical account of The Oxford English Dictionary. Others confront the problems of language and the nature of value directly, as in "Our Word is Our Bond", "Language, Suffering, and Value", and "Poetry and Value". In all his criticism, Hill reveals literature to be an essential arena of civic intelligence.

Devil Theatre
Devil Theatre

Author: Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9781843841142

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The so-called "Devil Theatre" is here set against its context of non-dramatic texts on possession and exorcism, providing many new insights. Representations of demonic possession and exorcism rituals abound in English Renaissance drama, an area which this book seeks to illuminate by comparison with non-dramatic works. The author investigates stage images of possessionin relation to a range of early modern demonological, theological and medical prose texts on the subject, looking specifically at how the theatre responded to these texts. He argues that the stage appropriated debates over demonicpossession to explore the competing roles of the inner life and the body in early modern definitions of selfhood. The theatre also employed the contemporary controversy over possession and exorcism to investigate the politics ofreligion, and to consider the nature of monarchic power. Moreover, because demonic possession cases and exorcism rituals were frequently dismissed by conformist writers as a piece of theatre, they offered an opportunity to reflecton the nature of drama and role-playing. JAN FRANS VAN DIJKHUIZEN is lecturer and research fellow at the University of Leiden.

The Improbability of Othello
The Improbability of Othello

Author: Joel B. Altman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-02-15

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 0226016129

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Shakespeare’s dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare’s theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare’s representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman’s account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences’ probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America’s most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare’s conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.

Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England
Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England

Author: Christopher W. Brooks

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-01-08

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 1139475290

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Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages through to the outbreak of the English civil war, and explores the ways in which law mediated and constituted social and economic relationships within the household, the community, and the state at all levels. By arguing that English common law was essentially the creation of the wider community, it challenges many current assumptions and opens new perspectives about how early-modern society should be understood. Its magisterial scope and lucid exposition will make it essential reading for those interested in subjects ranging from high politics and constitutional theory to the history of the family, as well as the history of law.