US TARIFFS UPDATE | August 2025 | No impact expected on your Presto orders | Read full details
Psalms in the Early Modern World
- Author: Austern, Linda Phyllis
- Author: McBride, Kari Boyd
- Author: Orvis, David
Psalms in the Early Modern World begins with the Algonquins and ends in New Spain. The intervening 300 pages explore more familiar terrain in Europe and England, with an eye to the modulations...
Psalms in the Early Modern World
- Author: Austern, Linda Phyllis
- Author: McBride, Kari Boyd
- Author: Orvis, David
Purchase product
Other available formats
Psalms in the Early Modern World begins with the Algonquins and ends in New Spain. The intervening 300 pages explore more familiar terrain in Europe and England, with an eye to the modulations...
About
Psalms in the Early Modern World is the first book to explore the use, interpretation, development, translation, and influence of the Psalms in the Atlantic world, 1400-1800. In the age of Reformation, when religious concerns drove political, social, cultural, economic, and scientific discourse, the Bible was the supreme document, and the Psalms were arguably its most important book.The Psalms played a central role in arbitrating the salient debates of the day, including but scarcely limited to the nature of power and the legitimacy of rule; the proper role and purpose of nations; the justification for holy war and the godliness of peace; and the relationship of individual and community to God. Contributors to the collection follow these debates around the Atlantic world, to pre- and post-Hispanic translators in Latin America, colonists in New England, mystics in Spain, the French court during the religious wars, and both Protestants and Catholics in England. Psalms in the Early Modern World showcases essays by scholars from literature, history, music, and religious studies, all of whom have expertise in the use and influence of Psalms in the early modern world. The collection reaches beyond national and confessional boundaries and to look at the ways in which Psalms touched nearly every person living in early modern Europe and any place in the world that Europeans took their cultural practices.
Contents
- Contents: Prefatory note
- Introduction, Linda Phyllis Austern, Kari Boyd McBride and David L. Orvis
- Introduction
- Part 1 Communities of Worship: Listening to the Psalms among the Huguenots: Simon Goulart as music editor, Richard Freedman
- William Byrd's English psalms, Roger Bray
- 'For musick is the handmaid of the Lord': women, Psalms, and domestic music-making in early modern England, Linda Phyllis Austern
- 'How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?': a transatlantic study of the Bay Psalm Book, Joanne van der Woude. Part 2 Contested Grounds of Authority: Miles Coverdale and the claims of paraphrase, Jamie H. Ferguson
- Rightful penitence and the publication of Wyatt's Certayne Psalmes, Clare Costley King'oo
- Psalm 44 (45) and nuptial spirituality in Juan de Avila's Audi, filia, James F. Melvin
- Spenser's equations of his queen with Christ: royal supremacy and royal Psalms, Carol V. Kaske. Part 3 Psalmic Voice(s): Re-revealing the Psalms: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, and her early modern readers, Margaret P. Hannay
- Sibling harps: the Sidneys and the ChA(c)rons translate the Psalms, Anne Lake Prescott
- David's lyre, kabbalah, and the power of music, Don HarrA!n. Part 4 Generic Innovation: Reading her psalter: the Virgin Mary in the n-town play, Penny Granger
- The pre-Hispanic poetics of SahagA * n's Psalmodia christiana, John F. Schwaller
- Bibliography
- Index.
Awards and reviews
Renaissance Quarterly
Psalms in the Early Modern World begins with the Algonquins and ends in New Spain. The intervening 300 pages explore more familiar terrain in Europe and England, with an eye to the modulations that biblical psalms undergo as regards texts, tunes, translations, and historical transitions. Indeed, the strength of this collection lies in its transdisciplinary and transnational approach to the psalms, themselves an enduring staple of liturgical, household, and private devotions
