| This dissertation explores the profound impact of the biblical psalms on early modern English literature and culture. Following a thematic rather than author-centered or chronological approach allows for broader coverage. Chapters focus on a range of psalm-related topics: the huge and long-lived popularity of the “Sternhold and Hopkins” psalter during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (700 editions in 150 years); a variety of rival psalters (including George Wither's, Henry King's, and George Sandys'); the crucial role of the Psalms in the English quantitative movement and the Renaissance revival of classical culture; the place of the Psalms in the development of English poetic forms, meters, and modes, especially in the Sidney-Pembroke psalter; and the use of the Psalms under conditions of duress by John Dowland, the Dudleys and Lady Jane Grey. The final chapters are devoted to examining works of literature, art, music, and theology created in response to three particularly influential individual psalms. Psalm 137 (“By the waters of Babylon”) provided consolation for political or spiritual exiles, and gave Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton the language in which to express such alienation—language especially powerful for poets since it figures exile in terms of the inability to sing. Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd”) offers an example of the syncretistic approach to culture in the Renaissance, showing how poets and commentators merged the biblical and classical pastoral traditions, assimilating two ancient cultures which were radically different but which nevertheless came together in the minds of those who rediscovered them both in the sixteenth century. Psalm 51 (“Have mercy upon me, O God”) was the seminal text for the Christian conception of sin and repentance, inspiring Luther's influential doctrine of justification by faith. Its verses provided the language of prayer in the liturgy of the Church, in the penitential poems of Anne Locke, Donne and Herbert, which were indebted to the liturgy, and in critical scenes of penitence and devotion in Hamlet and Paradise Lost. This dissertation offers an original perspective on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature, filling a significant gap in the literary and cultural history of early modern England. |