This book brings together ten essays on John Donne and George Herbert composed by an international group of scholars. The volume represents the first collection of its kind to draw close connections between these two distinguished early modern thinkers and poets who are justly coupled because of their personal and artistic association. The contributors' distinctive new approaches and insights illuminate a variety of topics and fields while suggesting new directions that future study of Don...

Bible Readers and Lay Writers in Early Modern England studies how immersion in the Bible among layfolk gave rise to a non-professional writing culture, one of the first instances of ordinary people taking up the pen as part of their daily lives. Kate Narveson examines the development of the culture, looking at the close connection between reading and writing practices, the influence of gender, and the habit of applying Scripture to personal experience. She explores too the tensions that ar...

Discover great truths from C. S. Lewis’s mentorsC. S. Lewis was perhaps the greatest Christian thinker of the twentieth century. He delighted us in The Chronicles of Narnia, intrigued us in The Screwtape Letters, mystified us in The Space Trilogy, and convinced us in Mere Christianity. His influence on generations of Christians has been immeasurable.But who influenced C. S. Lewis? What were the sources of his inspiration? Who were his spiritual me...

'Abide in me as I abide in you... As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.'Abiding is not a word we have much use for in everyday conversation. Yet Ben Quash shows that this one concept is central to the Christian life.Abiding, as Quash demonstrates, has the sense of full personal commitment, a quality of solidarity that 'waiting' just cannot convey. It speaks of the centrality of order, consistency and continuity in the C...

The King James Bible was a landmark in the history of the English language, and an inspiration to poets, dramatists, artists and politicians. Without the King James Bible there would have been no Paradise Lost, no Pilgrim's Progress, no Handel's Messiah. Yet more than a literary, even more than a religious influence, it was seen as a social, economic and political text. Those seeking to overthrow the English monarchy and those wanting to retain it, both sought support from the same Bible.

The Devil was a commanding figure in Tudor and Stuart England. He played a leading role in the religious and political conflicts of the age, and inspired great works of poetry and drama. During the turmoil of the English Civil War, fears of a secret conspiracy of Devil-worshippers fuelled a witch-hunt that claimed at least a hundred lives. This book traces the idea of the Devel from the English Reformation to the scientific revolution of the late seventeenth centu...

The King James Bible was the result of an extraordinary effort over nearly a century to make many good English translations and turn them into what the translators called 'one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against'. David Norton traces the work of Tyndale and his successors, analysing the translation and revisions of two representative passages. His fascinating new account follows in detail the creation of the KJB, including attention to the translators' manuscript work. He...

An accessible, helpful guide for any student of Milton, whether undergraduate or graduate, introducing readers to the scope of Milton's work, the richness of its historical relations, and the range of current approaches to it. This second edition contains several new and revised essays, reflecting increasing emphasis on Milton's politics, the social conditions of his authorship and the climate in which his works were published and received, a fresh sense of the importance of his early poem...

The medieval period was one of extraordinary literary achievement sustained over centuries of great change, anchored by the Norman invasion and its aftermath, the re-emergence of English as the nation's leading literary language in the fourteenth century and the advent of print in the fifteenth. This Companion spans four full centuries to survey this most formative and turbulent era in the history of literature in English. Exploring the period's key authors - Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain-...

Christians in post-Reformation England inhabited a culture of conversion. Required to choose among rival forms of worship, many would cross - and often recross - the boundary between Protestantism and Catholicism. This 2009 study considers the poetry written by such converts, from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of James II, concentrating on four figures: John Donne, William Alabaster, Richard Crashaw, and John Dryden. Murray offers a context for each poet's conversion within the era's po...

Societies and entire nations draw their identities from certain founding documents, whether charters, declarations, or manifestos. The Book of Common Prayer figures as one of the most crucial in the history of the English-speaking peoples. First published in 1549 to make accessible the devotional language of the late Henry the VIII's new church, the prayer book was a work of monumental religious, political, and cultural importance. Within its rituals, prescriptions, proscriptions,...

Explores the genesis of the Quaker movement and its underlying foundation: its intimate vision of the Kingdom of God, in the midst of the turmoil of 17th century Britain.