The Language of Liturgy: A Ritual Poetics

How language works in the worship of the church has been vigorously debated during the period of liturgical revision in the twentieth century coming at the end of what is known as the Liturgical Movement. Focussing upon the Church of England and the Anglican tradition, this book traces the history of ‘liturgical language’ as it begins in the Early Church, but with particular emphasis upon the English Reformation liturgies, their background in the Medieval Church and literature and their long and varied life in the Church of England after 1662. Inter-disciplinary in scope, yet rooted in a literary approach, the volume provides a rigorous study of the effect of liturgy upon the theological and devotional life of the Church.

David Jasper is Professor of Literature and Theology at Glasgow University and Distinguished Overseas Professor at Renmin University of China, Beijing. He holds degrees from Cambridge, Oxford, Durham and Uppsala, and is Doctor of Divinity at Oxford and holds a doctorate in theology (h.c.) from Uppsala. He has published and lectured widely in the field of literature and theology and his most recent book is Literature and Theology as a Grammar of Assent (Routledge, 2016). He is an ordained Anglican priest.