Reading Piers Plowman and The Pilgrim's Progress

Reading Piers Plowman and The Pilgrim's Progress PDF Author: Barbara A. Johnson
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809316533
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Centering her discussion on two historical "ways of reading"--Which she calls the Protestant and the lettered - Barbara A. Johnson traces the development of a Protestant readership as it is reflected in the reception of Langland's Piers Plowman and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Informed by reader-response and reception theory and literacy and cultural studies, Johnson's ambitious examination of these two ostensibly literary texts charts the cultural roles they played in the centuries following their composition, roles far more important than their modern critical reputations can explain. The reception of these two works, revealing as it does changing ideas concerning the nature and status of books as well as the stature of authors, documents the means by which a culture shapes and is shaped by texts. Johnson argues that much more evidence exists about how earlier readers read than has hitherto been acknowledged. The reception of Piers Plowman, for example, can be inferred from references to the work, the apparatus its Renaissance printer inserted in his editions, the marginal comments readers inscribed both in printed editions and in manuscripts, and the apocryphal "plowman" texts that constitute interpretations of Langland's poem. Conditioned more by religious, historical, and economic forces than literary concerns, Langland's poem became a part of the reformist tradition that culminated in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. By understanding this tradition, Bunyan's place in it, and the way the reception of The Pilgrim's Progress illustrates the beginning of a new more realistic fictional tradition, Johnson concludes, we can begin to delineate a more accurate history of the ways literature and society intersect, a history of readers reading.

Reading Piers Plowman and The Pilgrim's Progress

Reading Piers Plowman and The Pilgrim's Progress PDF Author: Barbara A. Johnson
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809316533
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
Centering her discussion on two historical "ways of reading"--Which she calls the Protestant and the lettered - Barbara A. Johnson traces the development of a Protestant readership as it is reflected in the reception of Langland's Piers Plowman and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Informed by reader-response and reception theory and literacy and cultural studies, Johnson's ambitious examination of these two ostensibly literary texts charts the cultural roles they played in the centuries following their composition, roles far more important than their modern critical reputations can explain. The reception of these two works, revealing as it does changing ideas concerning the nature and status of books as well as the stature of authors, documents the means by which a culture shapes and is shaped by texts. Johnson argues that much more evidence exists about how earlier readers read than has hitherto been acknowledged. The reception of Piers Plowman, for example, can be inferred from references to the work, the apparatus its Renaissance printer inserted in his editions, the marginal comments readers inscribed both in printed editions and in manuscripts, and the apocryphal "plowman" texts that constitute interpretations of Langland's poem. Conditioned more by religious, historical, and economic forces than literary concerns, Langland's poem became a part of the reformist tradition that culminated in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. By understanding this tradition, Bunyan's place in it, and the way the reception of The Pilgrim's Progress illustrates the beginning of a new more realistic fictional tradition, Johnson concludes, we can begin to delineate a more accurate history of the ways literature and society intersect, a history of readers reading.

Graceful Reading

Graceful Reading PDF Author: Michael Davies
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191529338
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Graceful Reading offers a new way of understanding Bunyan's theology and his narrative art, examining and reassessing the complex and interdependent relationship between them. Michael Davies begins by proposing that Bunyan's theology is far from obsessed with the forbidding Calvinist doctrine of predestination and its corollary tendency towards painful introspection. Bunyan's is, rather, a comfortable doctrine, in which the believer is encouraged to accept salvation through the far more assuring terms of Bunyan's covenant theology - those of faith and grace. The book then reassesses how Bunyan's narrative style is informed by this theology. Works such as Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim's Progress reveal a profound sensitivity to narrative forms and reading practices, as they aim to inculcate in their readers a self-consciousness about reading itself which is instrumental in the very process of spiritual instruction, in seeing 'things unseen'. This is a study, therefore, which asserts a radically different way of reading of Bunyan's writings, both through the terms of seventeenth-century covenant theology, and through some distinctly 'postmodernist' ideas about narrative practice.

William Langland's "Piers Plowman"

William Langland's Author: William Langland
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812215618
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"A gifted poet has given us an astute, adroit, vigorous, inviting, eminently readable translation. . . . The challenging gamut of Langland's language . . . has here been rendered with blessed energy and precision. Economou has indeed Done-Best."—Allen Mandelbaum

John Bunyan

John Bunyan PDF Author: Tamsin Spargo
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 0746309821
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
John Bunyan (1628-88) lived and wrote through some of the most turbulent years of political, social, and religious change in British history from civil war, through Commonwealth and Protectorate to the Restoration. Imprisoned for unlicensed preaching as a Nonconformist, Bunyan turned to writing to sustain his pastoral mission and composed some of the best-known, and most critically acclaimed, seventeenth-century texts, from his intensely moving spiritual autobiography, Grace bounding to the Chief of Sinners, to the world famous allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan's style fused vivid depiction of the everyday world of ordinary men and women with powerful narratives to dramatise his religious convictions. This accessible study of his life, times, and writing introduces all his key works within the contexts of their original moment and later international impact and argues that Bunyan is a writer whose work continues to reward readers of all ages, beliefs, and nationalities.

The Pilgrim and the Book

The Pilgrim and the Book PDF Author: Julia Bolton Holloway
Publisher: Julia Bolton Holloway
ISBN: 9780820420905
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Julia Bolton Holloway's The Pilgrim and the Book: A Study of Dante, Langland and Chaucer investigates major fourteenth-century texts, the Commedia, Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales, in the light of the medieval theory and practice of pilgrimage, especially concentrating on Emmaus and Exodus paradigms. Holloway's analysis draws extensively on iconography, musicology, typology and anthropology. The concluding chapter explains why each poet places himself within his poem - in his own image - as a pilgrim.

Moffatt's history readers

Moffatt's history readers PDF Author: Moffatt and Paige
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description


The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers

The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers PDF Author: Howard Clarke
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253216001
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers is a biblical commentary with a difference. Howard Clarke first establishes contemporary scholarship's mainstream view of Matthew's Gospel, and then presents a sampling of the ways this text has been read, understood, and applied through two millennia. By referring forward to Matthew's readers (rather than back to the text's composers), the book exploits the tensions between what contemporary scholars understand to be the intent of the author of Matthew and the quite different, indeed often eccentric and bizarre ways this text has been understood, assimilated, and applied over the years. The commentary is a testament to the ambiguities and elasticity of the text and a cogent reminder that interpretations are not fixed, nor texts immutably relevant. And unlike other commentaries, this one gives space to those who have questioned, rejected, or even ridiculed Matthew's messages, since Bible-bashing, like Bible-thumping, is a historically significant part of the experience of reading the Bible.

Walking, Literature, and English Culture

Walking, Literature, and English Culture PDF Author: Anne D. Wallace
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This is a cultural history of walking in nineteenth-century England, assessing its importance in literature and in culture. Re-reading Wordsworth in the context of contemporary changes in transportation, agriculture, and aesthetics, Anne Wallace articulates a previously unrecognized literary mode--peripatetic. Her discussions of eighteenth-century approaches to peripatetic and of John Clare's representations of walking as pastoral trace an itinerary through its varied uses in Victorian literature, notably in the work of Barrett Browning, Dickens, and Hardy. Increasingly frequent disappointment of peripatetic expectations reflects growing doubt about the writer's and the reader's ability to counter the disconnective tendencies of technology. The book represents a major contribution to the ongoing debates regarding rural English literature in which the author demonstrates how a proper understanding of peripatetic significantly enriches our assessment of a text's standpoint on key issues, including industrialization, class, and mobility.

The Persecuted

The Persecuted PDF Author: Casey Chalk
Publisher: Sophia
ISBN: 9781644135501
Category : Christians
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
For 2,000 years, the persecution of Christians has taken place wherever the Church has been present -- essentially, in every corner of the world. More than 260 million Christians around the globe are facing some form of persecution right now, and that number continues to climb each year. The Persecuted is an astonishing book that tells the real-life stories of brave Christians who are suffering intimidation, oppression, and violence right now as they resolutely live out their Faith in Muslim lands. The author, Casey Chalk, shocked by what he saw as a journalist living overseas, presents with skill and sensitivity these riveting stories that he witnessed firsthand. This global tour of Christian persecution will take you from the slums of Karachi, where Islamic extremists harass and kill beleaguered Christians, to the bustling, exotic streets of Bangkok, where Christians hide in fear while awaiting adjudication of their refugee applications. You'll meet brave Christians who escaped Muslim persecution to make a new life in the Netherlands, and others who slipped away only to become trapped in Russia. Casey tells the stories of Christians who were tortured and, in some instances, killed in Muslim nations -- and then lays out a strategic plan for rescuing as many as possible from their plight. Chalk also addresses other fundamental issues, explaining why Islam's radicals feel they must declare war on Christianity and why they persist in enslaving the Christians in their midst. He also explains how they have managed to get away with this appalling conduct in the face of powerful international organizations--and the Catholic Church herself--spotlighting the persecution and calling for its end. These harrowing stories bring you face-to-face with fellow Christians enduring the ultimate test in distant lands. They will strengthen your faith and also prepare you for what may lie ahead here in the West if we fail to heed the advice given in this timely and important book.

English Spirituality

English Spirituality PDF Author: Gordon Mursell
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664225049
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
This wide-ranging historical survey provides an indispensable resource for those interested in exploring, teaching, or studying English spirituality. In two stand-alone volumes, it traces history from Roman times until the year 2000. The main Christian traditions and a vast range of writers and spiritual themes, from Anglo-Saxon poems to late-modern feminist spirituality, are included. These volumes present the astonishing richness and variety of responses made by English Christians to the call of the divine during the past two thousand years.