The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature [Paperback]

• 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

Part I Introduction 1

1 General Introduction
Rebecca Lemon, Emma Mason, and Jonathan Roberts 3

2 The Literature of the Bible
Christopher Rowland 10

3 Biblical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory
David Jasper 22

Part II Medieval 39

4 Introduction
Daniel Anlezark 41

5 Old English Poetry
Catherine A. M. Clarke 61

6 The Medieval Religious Lyric
Douglas Gray 76

7 The Middle English Mystics
Annie Sutherland 85

8 The Pearl-Poet
Helen Barr 100

9 William Langl*