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.

Table of Contents:
Part I: The Poetics of Liturgy 1. Poetry and the Language of Prayer and Worship 2. The Poetics of Liturgy 3. A Ritual Poetics and the Demands of Liturgical Language Part II: Language and Performance in the Liturgy of the Early Church 4. Liturgy and Performance 5. Hippolytus and The Apostolic Tradition Part III: Medieval and Reformation England 6. Liturgical Language and the Vernacular in Late Medieval England 7. Literature and the Prayer Books of the English Reformation Part IV: The Alternative Service Book and Common Worship 8. Language and Liturgical Revision in the Church of England 9. The Background to The Alternative Service Book 10. From 1980 to Common Worship 11. Reflections on the Eucharistic Body Conclusion

About the Author :
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.

Review :
"In worship that which we make may re-make us in unpredictable ways if we agree that theology, rooted as it is in the strange activity of liturgy, should engage a full range of human emotion and hopeful imagining, with moments both of fidelity and freedom in liturgical re-enactment. David Jasper is seeking both in the past and in the present for the sensitivity to language to be found in our cultures (if not as yet by 'liturgists') to make possible intercession, thanksgiving and delight in the glorification of God. A book both informative, challenging and to be taken very seriously.