The Bible as Literature

By T.R. Henn

An illuminating study of the literary qualities of the English Bible, with particular emphasis on the Authorised (King James) Version.

ISBN: 9780718830915

Description

Tom Henn’s classic work represents an important and illuminating reading for the student of English literature and religion, the general reader of the Bible and the Bible lover.

Based on the King James (Authorised) Version of the Bible, Dr Henn looks critically at the epic, narrative, lyric and dramatic qualities of the sacred texts. He examines the Bible’s unique “forge of style” and the imagery which so profoundly give the Bible its Biblical character.

The Bible’s immense variety, its capacity to speak to the heart and mind of the reader, its powerful readability and above all its sense of the eternal, are all brought into Henn’s masterly work.

As Henn says: “The Bible has been burned deeply into the fabric of the life and literature of the English-speaking peoples. Its proverbs and its parables, its episodes sacred or profane, have been expounded in drama and poetry from the earliest written English.”

Additional information

Dimensions 234 × 156 mm
Pages 270
Format

Trade Information LPOD

About the Author

Dr Tom R. Henn was a famous authority on Yeats and the Irish poets and for many years a distinguished member of the English School in Cambridge, and President of St Catherine’s College. A Fellow of Trumbull College at Yale University, he was twice Seatonian Prizeman for poetry at Cambridge where his lectures on the Bible as Literature were a popular feature of English studies. His other books include The Lonely Tower, The Harvest of Tragedy, and The Apple and the Spectroscope.

Contents

Foreword by Glen Cavaliero
Acknowledgements

1. Introduction
2. Themes and Kinds
3. The Languages and their Energies
4. The Forge of Style
5. The Imagery
6. Three Songs
7. Some Types of Persuasion
8. A Note om the Psalms
9. The Book of Job
10. Proverbs and Prophecy
11. Character and Action
12. The Bible and Evil
13. The Holy War
14. ‘Imitatio’
15. ‘Towards the Values’

Bibliography
The Main Bibles
Index

Extracts