This book, "a study of popular books and the formation of piety", it the result of a decade of research and revision. What is most compelling is the way in which words, sermons and shall we say other publications, transformed Roman Catholics into Protestants and placed The Word, which is to say The Bible, above all except the ruler of the country/head of the church. Print & Protestantism is not a wholly unusual subject and, in fact, it can be argued that once biblical texts were made widely available there would inevitably develop a number of independent and even conflicting opinions.
This study is literary history if not literary criticism, such evaluation being a bit hard for the popular devotional works to sustain. It is also the history of the book (and The Book), the history of printed matter reshaping the public mind, the history of a religious movement of a sort that some people today say is a sure indicator of the decline of the civilization.
|
