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The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature

ISBN: 978-1-118-24115-8

February 2012

Wiley-Blackwell

720 pages

Description
This Companion explores the Bible's role and influence on individual writers, whilst tracing the key developments of Biblical themes and literary theory through the ages.
  • An ambitious overview of the Bible's impact on English literature – as arguably the most powerful work of literature in history – from the medieval period through to the twentieth-century
  • Includes introductory sections to each period giving background information about the Bible as a source text in English literature, and placing writers in their historical context
  • Draws on examples from medieval, early-modern, eighteenth-century and Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist literature
  • Includes many 'secular' or 'anti-clerical' writers alongside their 'Christian' contemporaries, revealing how the Bible's text shifts and changes in the writing of each author who reads and studies it
About the Author
Rebecca Lemon is an associate professor of English literature at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare's England (2006), as well as articles on Mary Wroth and Petrarchism, Shakespeare and Agamben, and Hayward and censorship.

Emma Mason is a senior lecturer in English at the University of Warwick. She is the author of Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (2006), Nineteenth Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (with Mark Knight, 2006), and The Cambridge Introduction to Wordsworth (2009).

Jonathan Roberts is a lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of William Blake's Poetry (2007), The Bible for Sinners (with Christopher Rowland, 2008), the forthcoming Blake. Wordsworth. Religion. (2009) and is co-editing the forthcoming Oxford Companion to the Reception History of the Bible (2010).

Christopher Rowland is Dean Ireland's Professor of Holy Exegesis at the University of Oxford. He has written on radical Christian writings including those of Gerrard Winstanley and William Blake and the Bible. He is the author of a number of books, including The Nature of New Testament Theology (2006), Revelation Through the Centuries (with Judith Kovacs, 2003), and Radical Christian Writings: A Reader (with Andrew Bradstock, 2002), all published by Wiley-Blackwell. Together with John Sawyer and Judith Kovacs he also edits the Blackwell Bible Commentary series.

Features
  • An ambitious and interdisciplinary overview of the Bible's role and influence on English literature, from Old English poetry through to T. S. Eliot
  • Brings together a comprehensive collection of newly-commissioned essays to explore the influence of the Bible on individual writers, whilst tracing the key developments of Biblical themes and literary theory through the ages
  • Includes introductory sections to each period giving background information about the Bible as a source text in English literature, and placing writers in their historical context
  • Draws on examples from medieval, early-modern, eighteenth-century and Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist literature
  • Includes many ‘secular’ or ‘anti-clerical’ writers alongside their ‘Christian’ contemporaries, revealing how the Bible’s text shifts and changes in the writing of each author who reads and studies it