{"product_id":"burning-to-read-english-fundamentalism-and-its-reformation-opponents-9780674046122","title":"Burning to Read  English Fundamentalism and its","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book details the sources—and profound consequences—of 16th-century Christian fundamentalism. Simpson focuses on the cultural transformation in England that allowed common people to read the Bible for the first time. The last wave of reading provoked 150 years of violent upheaval; as we approach a second wave, this book alerts us to our peril.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBurning to Read\u003c\/i\u003e is a landmark in the study of fundamentalism. In James Simpson's radical reassessment, the Protestant Reformation appears not as a parent of the Enlightenment, but rather as a progenitor of the extreme and intolerant literalism that has seized every major world religion today. Written with passion as well as scholarly authority, this is a compellingly readable and utterly persuasive study of a critical moment in world history. -- Amitav Ghosh\u003cbr\u003eHow do we read religious books, what meanings do we take from them, and how did we come by these meanings? The history of reading scriptural texts has a renewed public importance. No period is more in need of fresh appraisal and insight than the Reformation. The way people read then informs how we read now. James Simpson's book could not be more timely: passionate, controversial, uncompromisingly frank, it partakes of the same energies as the sixteenth-century debates at the same time as it illuminates them. It is a book that demands to be read, and ruminated upon, as religious belief once again rages around us. -- Brian Cummings, Professor of English, University of Sussex\u003cbr\u003eDrawing deeply on the history of biblical translation and of English literature from Tyndale through Thomas More to Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Simpson's story often challenges conventional readings of the history of biblical interpretation. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eA polemic of incandescent force. -- Boyd Tonkin * The Independent *\u003cbr\u003eJames Simpson's unremittingly clever new book suggests we re-examine the early 16th century in order to make sense of contemporary culture. His aim, however, is to disabuse us of the assumption that modern liberalism can lay claim to unproblematic origins in the Protestant Reformation. -- Marcus Nevitt * Daily Telegraph *\u003cbr\u003eThe English Reformation is commonly held to have provided the intellectual basis for modern liberalism. James Simpson's fascinating revisionist account turns that traditional picture on its head. Here, the Lutherans appear as the forerunners of a dangerous fundamentalism, and the traditionalists display far more intellectual sophistication than is usually supposed. * London Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eWhat makes this study distinctive is its alertness to connections between past and present, and its sympathetic re-evaluation of church traditions as a force that moderates the divisive effects of uncontrolled scriptural interpretation, drawing on such classic studies as George Tavard's \u003ci\u003eHoly Writ or Holy Church?\u003c\/i\u003e...One hopes its message will be heard well beyond Reformation studies. -- Alison Shell * Church Times *\u003cbr\u003eSimpson explores a familiar subject--the early-16th-century debate over vernacular scripture--from a surprising angle. -- E. D. Hill * Choice *\u003cbr\u003eJames Simpson has dug up a large, complicated truffle, which he examines in precise, revealing detail. In \u003ci\u003eBurning to Read\u003c\/i\u003e, this erudite and original student of later medieval and Renaissance literature focuses on a single, well-defined episode: the role of books, and more particularly the reading of the Bible, in the English Reformation...His subtle, intense, beautifully written essay helps the reader to understand, historically and existentially, why seemingly reasonable people end up burning books and executing readers. \u003ci\u003eBurning to Read\u003c\/i\u003e is a book that matters, not only for specialists in the Renaissance and Reformation, but also for the general reader. All of us, after all, now inhabit a world that uses some of Sir Basil Blackwell's beloved, beneficent books as weapons, and punishes others as if they were rebels and heretics. -- Anthony Grafton * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction    1. Two Hundred Years of Biblical Violence   2. Good Bible News   3. Salvation, Reading, and Textual Hatred   4. The Literal Sense and Predestination   5. Bible Reading, Persecution, and Paranoia   6. History as Error   7. Thomas More and Textual Trust   8. The Tragic Scene of Early Modern Reading    Abbreviations   Notes   Index","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51359090934103,"sku":"9780674046122","price":24.26,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780674046122.jpg?v=1754123545","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/burning-to-read-english-fundamentalism-and-its-reformation-opponents-9780674046122","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}