Overview

Shakespeare and the Bible are titans of English-speaking culture: their images are endlessly cited and recycled, and their language permeates everything from our public ceremonies to our private jokes. In Words of Power, Jem Bloomfield explores the cultural reverberations of these two collections of books, and how each era finds new meanings as they encounter works such as Hamlet or the Gospel of Mark. Beginning with a shrewd examination of how we have codified and standardised their canons, deciding which books and which words are included in the official collections and which are excluded, Bloomfield charts the ways in which every generation grapples with these enigmatic and complex texts. He explores the way they are read and performed in public, the institutions that use their names to legitimise their own activities, and how the texts are quoted by politicians, lords and rappers. Words of Power throws modern ideas about Shakespeare and the Bible into sharp relief by contrasting them with those of our ancestors, showing how our engagements with these texts reveal as much about ourselves as their actual meanings.

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Reviews

This excellent study provides a fresh and intriguing approach to the cultural status of what Jem Bloomfield calls 'Shakespeare and the Bible'. Engagingly written and full of surprising insights, Words of Power argues for the overlap between how these texts are approached in both popular and scholarly culture. Bloomfield takes concepts from biblical scholarship and fruitfully explores how they can be used to challenge preconceptions about the way that both Shakespeare and the Bible should be read. Beatrice Groves, Research Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, University of Oxford Jem Bloomfield's lively study asks what it means to put faith in a book. It unpicks the historical contingency of both the Bible and Shakespeare's works, and demonstrates that the more interesting question is not what these books are, but what they are needed to be. By highlighting the role played by tradition, assumption and worldview in shaping reading practices, Bloomfield makes an important call for critical awareness of how words, both sacred and secular, gain their power. Peter Kirwan, Assistant Professor in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, University of Nottingham Packed with material that has made me think in new ways, not only about the Bible and Shakespeare, but also more widely about the nature of a canon , what makes a text sacred , different ways of reading familiar texts, the nature of performance and proclamation, how texts form communities and identities, and the complex ways in which texts are appropriated and quoted. -John Halton, Curlew River (blog), March 2016 There is much fascinating information offered in this book. I was not aware, for example, that there was a movement in the nineteenth century away from the performing of Shakespeare's plays towards the private contemplation of their literary value. Readers from disciplines of biblical studies and Shakespeare scholarship will discover much of interest in the sections dealing with the texts that are not their area of expertise. -Alison Jack, The Expository Times, Vol. 128 No. 3, December 2016

This excellent study provides a fresh and intriguing approach to the cultural status of what Jem Bloomfield calls 'Shakespeare and the Bible'. Engagingly written and full of surprising insights, Words of Power argues for the overlap between how these texts are approached in both popular and scholarly culture. Bloomfield takes concepts from biblical scholarship and fruitfully explores how they can be used to challenge preconceptions about the way that both Shakespeare and the Bible should be read. - Beatrice Groves, Research Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, University of Oxford Jem Bloomfield's lively study asks what it means to put faith in a book. It unpicks the historical contingency of both the Bible and Shakespeare's works, and demonstrates that the more interesting question is not what these books are, but what they are needed to be. By highlighting the role played by tradition, assumption and worldview in shaping reading practices, Bloomfield makes an important call for critical awareness of how words, both sacred and secular, gain their power. - Peter Kirwan, Assistant Professor in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, University of Nottingham Packed with material that has made me think in new ways, not only about the Bible and Shakespeare, but also more widely about the nature of a canon , what makes a text sacred , different ways of reading familiar texts, the nature of performance and proclamation, how texts form communities and identities, and the complex ways in which texts are appropriated and quoted. - John Halton, Curlew River (blog), March 2016 There is much fascinating information offered in this book. I was not aware, for example, that there was a movement in the nineteenth century away from the performing of Shakespeare's plays towards the private contemplation of their literary value. Readers from disciplines of biblical studies and Shakespeare scholarship will discover much of interest in the sections dealing with the texts that are not their area of expertise. - Alison Jack, The Expository Times, Vol. 128 No. 3, December 2016 Bloomfield is an enthusiastic author whose exploratory spirit is infectious. With a watchful eye for similarities, he traces the disagreements over which biblical and play texts should be included in the canon, the ways in which the final texts have been variously interpreted and how performance has been used to enhance their resonance... I'm grateful to Jem Bloomfield... and I hope more books from him are on the way. - Mark Oakley, Theology, Volume 120, Issue 5, September to October [I] found much of the book's material intriguing, and the breadth of research it represents commendable. .... [W]ords of Power is writt en for a general readership; it might also especially appeal to undergraduate humanities students. While the latt er may fi nd the book's tenor familiar, much of the information presented will be new and interesting for many. - Roberta Kwan, The Glass, Number 30, Spring 2018

This excellent study provides a fresh and intriguing approach to the cultural status of what Jem Bloomfield calls 'Shakespeare and the Bible'. Engagingly written and full of surprising insights, Words of Power argues for the overlap between how these texts are approached in both popular and scholarly culture. Bloomfield takes concepts from biblical scholarship and fruitfully explores how they can be used to challenge preconceptions about the way that both Shakespeare and the Bible should be read. Beatrice Groves, Research Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, University of Oxford Jem Bloomfield's lively study asks what it means to put faith in a book. It unpicks the historical contingency of both the Bible and Shakespeare's works, and demonstrates that the more interesting question is not what these books are, but what they are needed to be. By highlighting the role played by tradition, assumption and worldview in shaping reading practices, Bloomfield makes an important call for critical awareness of how words, both sacred and secular, gain their power. Peter Kirwan, Assistant Professor in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, University of Nottingham Packed with material that has made me think in new ways, not only about the Bible and Shakespeare, but also more widely about the nature of a canon , what makes a text sacred , different ways of reading familiar texts, the nature of performance and proclamation, how texts form communities and identities, and the complex ways in which texts are appropriated and quoted. -John Halton, Curlew River (blog), March 2016

This excellent study provides a fresh and intriguing approach to the cultural status of what Jem Bloomfield calls 'Shakespeare and the Bible'. Engagingly written and full of surprising insights, Words of Power argues for the overlap between how these texts are approached in both popular and scholarly culture. Bloomfield takes concepts from biblical scholarship and fruitfully explores how they can be used to challenge preconceptions about the way that both Shakespeare and the Bible should be read. Beatrice Groves, Research Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, University of Oxford Jem Bloomfield's lively study asks what it means to put faith in a book. It unpicks the historical contingency of both the Bible and Shakespeare's works, and demonstrates that the more interesting question is not what these books are, but what they are needed to be. By highlighting the role played by tradition, assumption and worldview in shaping reading practices, Bloomfield makes an important call for critical awareness of how words, both sacred and secular, gain their power. Peter Kirwan, Assistant Professor in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, University of Nottingham Packed with material that has made me think in new ways, not only about the Bible and Shakespeare, but also more widely about the nature of a canon , what makes a text sacred , different ways of reading familiar texts, the nature of performance and proclamation, how texts form communities and identities, and the complex ways in which texts are appropriated and quoted. -John Halton, Curlew River (blog), March 2016 There is much fascinating information offered in this book. I was not aware, for example, that there was a movement in the nineteenth century away from the performing of Shakespeare's plays towards the private contemplation of their literary value. Readers from disciplines of biblical studies and Shakespeare scholarship will discover much of interest in the sections dealing with the texts that are not their area of expertise. -Alison Jack, The Expository Times, Vol. 128 No. 3, December 2016

This excellent study provides a fresh and intriguing approach to the cultural status of what Jem Bloomfield calls 'Shakespeare and the Bible'. Engagingly written and full of surprising insights, Words of Power argues for the overlap between how these texts are approached in both popular and scholarly culture. Bloomfield takes concepts from biblical scholarship and fruitfully explores how they can be used to challenge preconceptions about the way that both Shakespeare and the Bible should be read. Beatrice Groves, Research Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, University of Oxford Jem Bloomfield's lively study asks what it means to put faith in a book. It unpicks the historical contingency of both the Bible and Shakespeare's works, and demonstrates that the more interesting question is not what these books are, but what they are needed to be. By highlighting the role played by tradition, assumption and worldview in shaping reading practices, Bloomfield makes an important call for critical awareness of how words, both sacred and secular, gain their power. Peter Kirwan, Assistant Professor in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, University of Nottingham

Author Information

Jem Bloomfield is an Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Nottingham. A scholar of Renaissance literature, he studied at Oxford before earning his PhD from the University of Exeter. In his free time, he blogs about Shakespeare, Christianity, and feminism - and occasionally detective fiction - at quiteirregular.wordpress.com.

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