The Art of Hearing English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590}}}1640 [Hardcover]

This book assesses the effectiveness of the sermon as a key means of transmitting religious ideas.Throughout Christian history, the sermon has been a key means of transmitting religious ideas. This book was the first to assess the effectiveness of the sermon as a means of spreading Protestant ideas in early modern England by focusing on how sermons were interpreted by their audience.Throughout Christian history, the sermon has been a key means of transmitting religious ideas. This book was the first to assess the effectiveness of the sermon as a means of spreading Protestant ideas in early modern England by focusing on how sermons were interpreted by their audience.This ground-breaking study of early modern English preaching is the first to take full account of the sermon as heard by the listener as well as uttered by the preacher. It draws on a wide range of printed and manuscript sources, but also seeks to read behind the texts in order to reconstruct what was actually delivered from the pulpit, with due attention to the differences between oral, written and printed versions. In showing how sermons were interpreted and appropriated by their hearers, often in ways that their authors never intended, it poses wider questions about the transmission of religious and political ideas in the post-Reformation period. Offering a richer understanding of sermons as complex and ambiguous texts, and opening up new avenues for their interpretation, it will be essential reading for all students of the religious and cultural history of early modern England.Introduction; 1. The theory of preaching; 2. The art of hearing; 3. From pulpit to print; 4. Reconstructing the audience; 5. Preaching and the people; 6. Reading sermons politically: criticism and controversy; 7. Reading sermons theologically: predestination and the pulpit; Conclusion. & offers a fresh and richly textured account of sermon culture, considering the contributions and attitudes of the audience as well as the preló'