Introducing the English Bibles, 1526–1611

• In Event: The Language of Reform III: Material Text and Literary Biblical Language in Sixteenth-Century Literature

Abstract

The paper will have two parts. The first shows that the prefaces to the two authorized sixteenth-century English Bibles (Great and Bishops) share similar visions of the reforming work of Scripture, and that the Geneva Bibles of 1557, 1560, and 1576 also share a similar vision, but a wholly different one. The similarities between the prefaces in each group and the differences between the two groups would seem to warrant speaking of clearly defined Anglican and Puritan styles by the mid-sixteenth century. The second part will trouble this claim, since, from 1583 on, the prefaces (and related introductory paratexts) get reversed, modified, replaced, so that the proto-denominational outlines, so clearly visible in their first editions, melt away. Instead of alternative visions of reform (resting on alternative models of biblical interpretation), the later Elizabethan prefaces are up to something quite different.

Author

• Debora Shuger, University of California, Los Angeles