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Psalm Culture in the English Renaissance: Readings of Psalm 137 by Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, and Others*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Hannibal Hamlin
Hannibal Hamlin*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University, Mansfield
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Abstract

Psalm 137, “By the Waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, “ one of the most widely known biblical texts in Renaissance England, provided consolation for spiritual and political exiles, as well as giving Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton language in which to express such alienation — language especially powerful for poets, since the psalm troped alienation as the inability to sing. The Psalm's closing cry for vengeance, seen as un-Christian by some, was used as a call to arms by polemicists on both sides of the English Civil War. This study examines a range of translations, paraphrases, commentaries, sermons, and literary allusions that together reconstruct a biblical text as it was interpreted by its Renaissance readers.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , Spring 2002 , pp. 224 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2002

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Footnotes

*

For helpful advice at various stages in the research and writing of this article, I would like to thank John Hollander, Thomas M. Greene, Paula Loscocco, Lawrence Manley, Annabel Patterson, David Quint, John N. King, and my RQreaders, Diane Kelsey McColley, RG. Sranwood, and Paul F. Grendler.

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