Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature

Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature examines the 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. The book focuses on literature from major writers like Shakespeare and Milton to less prominent ones like George Gascoigne, Mary Sidney Herbert, and George Wither, but it also explores the adaptations of the Psalms in musical settings, emblems, works of theology and political polemic.