 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ] Next Last |
The King James Version has proved to have been an influence on writers and poets, whether in their literary style, or matters of content such as the images they depicted, until the advent of modernism. Although influenced by the Bible in general, they likely could not have helped being influenced by the style of writing the King James Version used, prevalent as it was during their time. John Hayes Gardiner of Harvard University once stated that "in all study of English literature, if there be any one axiom which may be accepted without question, it is that the ultimate standard of English prose style is set by the King James version of the Bible". Compton's Encyclopedia once said that the King James Version ". . . has been a model of writing for generations of English-speaking people." [2]
A general effect of the King James Version was to influence writers in their model of writing; beforehand, authors generally wrote as scholars addressing an audience of other scholars, as few ordinary peasants were literate at the time. The King James Version, as it was meant for dissemination among the ordinary man and to be read by preachers to their congregations, could not afford the luxury of using such a technique. The simpler, more direct style used by the translators of the King James Version so influenced authors that their prose began to address the reader as if he or she was an ordinary person instead of a scholar, thus helping create the idea of the general reader.
19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon once declared of author John Bunyan, "Read anything of his, and you will see that it is almost like reading the Bible itself." Bunyan's allegorical novel, The Pilgrim's Progress, was a cornerstone of early Protestant doctrine; frequently, it would be the second piece of literature translated into the vernacular by missionaries, the first being the King James Version itself (though it is noteworthy that The Pilgrim's Progress mostly quoted from the Geneva Bible). According to Thomas Macaulay, "he knew no language but the English as it was spoken by the common people; he had studied no great model of composition, with the exception of our noble translation of the Bible. But of that his knowledge was such that he might have been called a living concordance".John Milton, author of the blank verse epic poem Paradise Lost was heavily influenced by the King James Version, beginning his day with a reading from that version of the bible; in his later life, he would then spend an hour meditating in silence. Milton, who cast two Psalms into meter at the age of 15 while an undergraduate in Cambridge University, filled his works with images obviously taken from the Bible. The poem Lycidas, for example, depicted the Apostle Peter and the keys he was given by Jesus according to a literal reading of the Bible:
Last came and last did go
The pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
The allusions made to the Bible by John Dryden were inescapable for those who had studied it well; as an example, in the poem Mac Flecknoe , he wrote:
Sinking, he left his drugget robe behind,
Borne upward by a subterranean wind,
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,
With double portion of his father's art.
Several more famous writers and poets have taken inspiration from the King James Version. William Wordsworth's poems such as Intimations of Immortality and Ode to Duty contained obvious references to the Bible. Poet George Byron even composed poems which required prior understanding of the Bible before one could fully comprehend them, such as Jephtha's Daughter and The Song of Saul Before his Last Battle . John Keats described "the sad heart of Ruth, / when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an American poet, once wrote "There are times when the grasshopper is a burden, and thirsty with the heat of labor the spirit longs for the waters of Shiloah, that go softly", a clear reference to the King James Version, both in its content and in its style. Herman Melville, too, could not avoid being influenced by the King James Version; his book Moby Dick is clearly related to the Bible, with characters going by names such as Ishmael and Ahab. Walt Whitman was deeply influenced by the King James Version, and especially by the Biblical poetry of the prophets and psalms. Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass:I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate . . .
The language of Emily Dickinson was informed by the bible. Mark Twain used the book of Genesis as the basis for From Adam's Diary and From Eve's Diary. The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells uses the image of Jacob wrestling with the angel as an important metaphor. Many poems by T.S. Eliot employ images drawn from the bible. Ernest Hemingway titled his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, after a quote from Eccliesiastes , and Flannery O'Conner drew on the gospels for the title and theme of The Violent Bear it Away .
The Book of Mormon, a central piece of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' theology, borrows heavily from the King James Version in its phrasing.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|