Bøger udgivet af Lutterworth Press

John Wesley's impact on Methodist theology and practice is well established, but there are many other early figures who shaped Methodism just as thoroughly. Quest for Love Divine explores the contributions of Charles Wesley by exploring the impact of his lyrics on methodist worship, and the importance of lyrical theology in the founding of Methodism. Chilcote also examines the contributions of early Methodist women such as Dorothy Fisher, Mary Taft and Sarah Crosby, exploring how the Wesley brothers and their community sought to inhabit 'faith working by love leading to holiness of heart and life'. In his collection of essays, Chilcote explores the salient themes of Wesleyan theology and practice, and reflects on its legacy, in the Wesley's time and in ours. By focussing on the nature of their discipleship and the centrality of 'love divine', Chilcote brings Wesleyan theology into sharp and practical focus.

The use of school life as a closed narrative environment is well documented, and modern examples such as Malory Towers and Harry Potter show the genre's continued appeal. While there have been several histories of the school story, especially in children's literature, almost all of them take as their starting point Tom Brown's Schooldays. Although occasionally acknowledged in passing, there has never been a complete study of earlier school stories, or of other fictional portrayals of school life before the middle of the eighteenth century. In Before Tom Brown, Robert Kirkpatrick traces the roots of the school story back to 2500BC, when school life was a feature of Sumerian, Egyptian and Graeco-Roman texts written as teaching aids for children. From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Shakesperean comedies, he explores for the first time the use of school dialogues in the classroom, in print and on stage, and presents new evidence that the first school novel appeared in 1607. Finally, he examines the role of the school story in the broader development of the novel as the genre became established through the eighteenth century. Readers will be rewarded with a whole new perspective on the history of children's literature.

The story of how the map of New Zealand emerged is a fascinating one. The first full map of the continent was published in London in 1773, which might seem the natural starting point, but over the preceding 150 years, fragments of charts and intelligence about New Zealand ricocheted around various parts of the world. In A Draught of the South Land: Mapping New Zealand from Tasman to Cook, Paul Moon provides the first comprehensive account of this piecemeal process. Moon's investigation covers several continents over more than a century, and reveals the personalities, blunders, strategic miscalculations, scientific brilliance, and imperial power-plays that were involved. Above all, he examines the roles played by explorers and traders, M?ori and European rulers, scientific societies and military groups, as well as specialist cartographers and publishers. At a time when maps as colonial tools, enablers of trade and objects of curiosity are being studied anew, his careful analysis and engaging narrative will be of interest to scholars everywhere.

From its first publication, what is now known as the Immortality Ode has been praised for the magnificence of its verse and disparaged for its paucity of meaning - the 'immortality' of the subtitle unsubstantiated, and the 'recollections' insubstantial. Yet Wordsworth's idea of immortality has clear precedents in the seventeenth century, and recollections of childhood are Traherne's starting point for the recovery of a lost vision comparable to Wordsworth's. Via the power of the imagination, or reason, they believed they could experience a renewed vision that both termed variously Paradise, or infinity, or immortality. Graham Davidson traces the origins of Wordsworth's poetic impetus to his resistance to the Cartesian division between mind and nature, first adumbrated by the Cambridge Platonists. If reunited, Paradise was regained, but this personal trajectory was tempered by a deep sympathy for the woes of mortal life. Davidson explores the consequent dialogue through some of Wordsworth's best-known poems, at the heart of which is the Ode. In the last section, he demonstrates how Wordsworth's publishing history led the Victorians and modernists to misinterpret his work; if one considers Eliot's Four Quartets as odes, facing several of the same problems as did Wordsworth, there is some irony in Eliot's dismissal of the Immortality Ode as 'verbiage'.

Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love grapples with the same fundamental question that has vexed philosophers and theologians since the advent of monotheistic religion, and continues as a barrier to belief for many today. Namely, if God is so good, how can natural disaster, genocide, trauma - and my present suffering - occur? Historically, there have been two apparently very different approaches to the problem: the pastoral, or practical, on the one hand and the systematic on the other. However, Richard Norton suggests that these two lines of thought may not be as separate as they seem, and may indeed be dependent on one another for their cohesion. Drawing on Julian's medieval experience of personal and population-wide suffering, alongside that of more recent theologians such as Dorothy Solle and Jurgen Moltmann, Norton constructs a compassionate model of theodicy that can be of use to both pastoral and systematic theologians. Throughout, he remains sensitive to the raw atrocity of evil, while preserving a vision of God as the one who ensures that all shall be well.

Ephesians speaks to our deepest questions about God: the redemptive plan of God written from ages past now revealed; the work of Christ complete and eff ective now and for eternity; the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives and build a community. Th e clear message of God's unfathomable grace establishes the believer's hope and under-girds the call for faithful living. Down through the centuries, the clarion call to unity that permeates Ephesians has inspired and challenged the faithful to live out thepromises found in Christ. This short letter speaks to the twenty-first century's longing for friendship and wholeness