“Fiery toungues:” Language, Liturgy, and the Paradox of the English Reformation
This essay examines the conflicted double logic of vernacularization in the English Reformation — specifically in the Book of Common Prayer, and more specifically in its Pentecost service — and argues that the transition to the vernacular in public worship simultaneously served the state's political ends and worked against those very ends by devolving religious authority to individuals. Understanding this dynamic, the author suggests, not only clarifies the role of language and text in the early modern constitution of nation and subject, but may also indicate a synthetic way out of a 400-year-old historiographical stalemate.