English Metrical Psalms

During the sixteenth century the Book of Psalms was considered to be a uniquely authoritative and universally applicable collection of religious poems. Whereas the Bible in general taught what God said to man, the Psalms, it was felt, taught man how to speak to God. From the 1530s people of many different religious and intellectual persuasions discovered that the poetry of the Psalms lent itself to memorable English translation, and a substantial and varied range of imitations of the Psalms began to appear. Dr Zim's 1987 book was the first full-scale study of this important genre to be published in the twentieth century. In challenging a number of critical orthodoxies and illuminating the expressive qualities of these poems, Dr Zim has produced a major contribution to our understanding of Tudor literary culture.