Pamphleteering and Colloquial prose formalised, Bible translations, Prose in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Literary History, Background to English Literature, Allied Paper 1st Year, 1st Semester

 Unit 4: Literary History

4.5 Prose in the 16th and 17th Centuries

PAMPHLETEERING AND COLLOQUIAL PROSE FORMALIZATION

       The 17th century marked a shift from an age of faith to an age of reason or age of transition. Literature represents the turbulence in society, religion, and the monarchy of this period.

Pamphleteering of all kinds, polemical religious argument, political, educational, and literary theorizing, flourish now as never before, with the result that the literary historian has to deal with a mass of miscellaneous prose most of which can hardly be called strictly "literature.“ The miscellaneous prose writing are devotional works, sermons, translations of 'many different kinds, histories, biographies, accounts of contemporary events, and prose fiction (both translation of Italian novelle and original work).

The 17th century was an age of prose. Interest in scientific detail and leisurely observation marked the prose of the time. This new writing style emphasized clarity, directness, and economy of expression. It first appeared just before 1600 in the Essays of Bacon.

       Two forces are seen at work in most of this varied prose writing: first, the breakthrough of colloquial speech, with its vigor and raciness, into the written word, and secondly, the attempt to mould a consciously artistic English prose style. The two forces are, surprisingly enough, often found in conjunction, with colloquial vigor and over elaborate parallels or antitheses alternating in the same work.

An impersonal devotional prose developed, descending from tile devotional prose of Rolle and Hilton in the fourteenth century, and a biblical prose was wrought by the English translators of the Bible from Tyndale to the translators of the Authorized Version of 1611.

Colloquial prose disciplining itself into effective written speech in such documents as the fifteenth-century Paston Letters, family letters which, while wholly informal and unliterary, nevertheless have style-the style of fluent, educated speech, only slightly less discursive than actual speech would be. It is, however, a naïve prose, unsuited for any heavier burden than that of exchange of family news.

Similarly, naïve is the narrative prose of the English translation of the Gesta Romanorum, a collection of tales compiled in Latin in the late thirteenth century and translated into English in the middle and later fifteenth century.

These popular stories of adventure and magic were put into an English whose style suggests that of the oral teller of tales. The same can be said of the very popular collection of saints lives known as the Golden Legend, originally compiled in Latin by Jacobus de Voragine and translated into English in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, and of the English versions of the Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

THE KING JAMES BIBLE (The Authorized Version)

When James I came to the throne in 1603, he agreed to a request from churchmen to produce a new version of the Bible in English. The outcome was the great King James Bible of 1611.

The work was immediately prescribed for use in all Anglican churches and services, which is why it is also known as the Authorised Version. This translation was ordered by James I and made by 47 scholars working in cooperation. It was published in 1611 and is known as the Authorized Version. It is rightly regarded as the most influential book in the history of English civilization. The influence of the King James Bible - Its influence has been more profound on the linguistic habits of English-speakers than any other book.

There had been translations of the Bible before 1611. William Tyndale first translated the New Testament from the Greek into English (1525). Miles Coverdale made the first complete translation of the Bible into English using Tyndale’s version (1535). There had also been other translations, but the King James Version combined homely, dignified phrases into a style of great richness and loveliness. It has been a model of writing for generations of English-speaking people.

First, in 1450, the Printing Press was invented. Whereas John Wycliffe and his followers had to produce hand-written manuscripts of his Bible translation. Wyclif's followers, known as ‘Lollards’. So the translation is called as Lollard Bible. The Wyclif translation was however in use throughout the 15th century.

WILLIAM TYNDALE’S BIBLE

Sir Thomas More, whose Latin Utopia, published in 1516, marks his chief literary contribution as a Humanist, made his contribution to English prose mainly in his religious works.

William Tyndale lived from c. 1492-1536, More's opponent in his religious controversies, is more distinguished as the great pioneer of English Bible translation than as a religious pamphleteer and theological writer. Although he had a great influence on the movement towards translation if the Bible into the languages spoken by ordinary people.

Tyndale's translation was published in 1526, in Worms in Germany, where he was then living. He had spent much time with Martin Luther, whose German version of the Bible had been published in 1522 Erasmus’ Exhortation to the Diligent Study of Scripture

Tyndale revised his English translation twice, in 1534 and 1536, working from the Greek.

COVERDALE'S BIBLE

Miles Coverdale (1488-1568) produced his translation in 1535.

In 1534 Henry VIII had broken with the Catholic Church, and an English version of the Bible was timely. The new Protestantism needed a Bible, but in 1537 Coverdale's first translation was superseded by a new version consisting of some of Tyndale's version and much of Coverdale’s.

 A revision of this by Coverdale was published in 1539, and became known as the Great Bible because it was so large. There were six more revisions published within a year, each with a preface by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer; for this reason, it has become known as the Cranmer Bible. Its real significance is that it was licensed by Henry VIII, who ruled that a copy of it should be placed in every church in the country.

THE GENEVA BIBLE

In 1557 William Whittingham translated the New Testament in Geneva, The Geneva Bible where he was living. Geneva was the centre of much lively reforming Protestantism at this time. In 1560 he was one of a small group who collaborated to produce the Geneva Bible, much handier in size than the Great Bible and very popular with the Puritans of the next 80 or 90 years, during which 140 editions were produced. It was introduced into Scotland in 1579 and adopted as the standard translation there.

Shakespeare makes many references to the Bible in his works, often to the Geneva Bible, although he also refers to the Rheims Bible, a Catholic translation published in 1582. The Geneva Bible was finally banned by Archbishop Laud in 1644.

THE BISHOPS' BIBLE

In 1568 the Bishops' Bible appeared, a revision of the Great Bible by a committee of bishops led by Archbishop Parker, who was determined that the learned clergy of the Anglican Church should produce an authorised translation more sympathetic to the Catholic position than the Geneva Bible.