The Problem of Protestant Culture

Abstract

Protestant culture, Patrick Collinson wrote, is often seen as a problem, or even a “nonentity.” The difficulty centres on the cultural value of the post-Reformation Bible. Charles Taylor has written eloquently of the gulf between scriptural truth and secular truth, and the slow death of literalism that this has entailed. James Simpson has endorsed this thesis in reverse, by decrying the literalism of Protestant readings as a curse on modern liberal values. This article offers to restructure the relationship between “literary” and “literal,” both by questioning the secularization thesis which equates modernity with the defeat of literalism, and also by asking how far early modern literary culture was “literalist.” It examines ideas of the figurative in Protestant culture to re-evaluate biblical culture and its relation to literary culture, especially Shakespeare.

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