David Myth in Western Literature

By Jan Wojcik

This collection of eleven original essays each by a different scholar outlines the rich body of imaginative and devotional literature which has the biblical poet-warrior-king as its subject or primary focus, showing David to have as strong an imaginative appeal for Western writers as such better-known mythic heroes as Orpheus, Oedipus, Samson, and Ulysses. The introduction to the volume surveys the development of the David myth particularly in British and American literature. The essays represent a variety of critical approaches to the myth as literature, treating in detail such works as Shakespeare's Hamlet, Cowley's Davideis, Christopher Smart's A Song to David, and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom and examining the complex uses made of David in the Midrash, Talmud, and Patristic writings; medieval sermons and Reformation devotional treatises; and American Puritan sermons.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0911198555
• ISBN13: 9780911198553
• Release Date: June 1979
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.0" x 10.0"