Paratexts of the English Bible, 1525-1611
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Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780192843579
Number of Pages: 362
Published: 21/04/2022
Width: 16.5 cm
Height: 24 cm
English bibles, from Tyndale's 1525 New Testament to the 1611 King James, feature calendars, woodcuts, maps, chronologies, prayers, philological glosses, inset historical essays, elaborate multi-page diagrams, single-leaf summaries of scripture, prefaces by eminent churchmen, doctrinal notes by leading theologians, a dialogue on predestination, a twelfth-century genealogy of Christ, a ninth-century Jewish chronicle--most widely available, given the hundreds of editions printed between those dates. This book explores this archive, but it also tracks its changes, because while biblical translations remain relatively stable over time, the paratexts cocooning a bible's first printing sometimes mutate or vanish in succeeding editions--and indeed sometimes they migrate to a competing bible. These paratexts, together with their revelatory print histories, disclose a picture of the English Reformation that differs in striking ways from the authorized version.
Over the long term, this complex mass of commentary became the foundation of what has been called the great Anglican compromise * Anthony Grafton, Chronicles of Higher Education *