The David Myth in Western Literature

Volume, measuring approximately 7.25" x 10.25", is bound in blue cloth, with stamped white lettering to spine. Book displays shelfwear, with discoloration along top edge of covers. Binding is firm. Interior is clean and bright. Review copy letter is laid in. Dust jacket exhibits sunned top edges and spine panel and minor wear at edges. xi/212 pages.

"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, particulary 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", Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" and the lyrics of Christopher Smart, Theodore Roethke, and Yehuda Amichai, and examining the complex uses made of David in the Midrash, Talmud, and Patristic writings, medieval sermons and Reformation devotional writings, and American Puritan sermons."