Words and The Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation

First published in 1986, Stephen Prickett’s Words and the Word has had a major impact among scholars of literature and literary theory as well as among theologians and biblical critics. In this highly-acclaimed book Prickett pursues the question of the relationship between religion and poetics, and in particular the nature of religious language, investigating the hermeneutic, epistemological and linguistic reverberations of eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth-century theories of biblical interpretation.

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Ways of reading the Bible; 2. ‘The peculiar language of heaven …’: the religious and the poetic ‘primal consciousness’ and linguistic change; 3. Poetry and prophecy; 4. The paradoxes of disconfirmation; 5. Metaphor and reality; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

‘This is a magnificent book, full of subtle yet important arguements. Biblical scholars will need to come to terms with it, those who praise the Good News Bible for its ‘clarity and simplicity’ will be given food for thought. It is in short, a major contribution from a respected literary scholar on a crucial area of theological debate.’ Michael Townsend, The Expository Times

‘Prickett’s study is an attempt to ‘tease out certain problems’ related to the long-developing separation between biblical and literary studies … Readers will need to give every sentence their full attention. The reward, however, will be a heightened understanding not only of where our present critical crisis comes from but of what it actually is and what we must do to make any advance toward solving it.’ G. B. Tennyson, Victorian Studies

‘A distinguished and original book.’ Owen Barfield, Nineteenth-Century Literature

‘These pages are alive with interest … rush out and buy this book immediately.’ New Blackfriars