This astute and challenging work by David Lyle Jeffrey seeks to characterize illustratively the historic commitment of Christianity to the literacy and literature of Western culture.

Against postmodernist tendencies to divide the historical commitment to meaning in Western art and literature as a regressive "logocentrism," Jeffrey argues that the biblical tradition — the cultural and literary identity forged among Western Christians by virtue of being a "People of the Book" — has in fact given rise to Western literacy. Jeffrey here offers a fresh and generous look at the Christian "grand narrative" as it is reflected in Western literature, making apt use of the visual arts by incorporating a series of twenty-eight black-and-white illustrations that serves to enrich and fortify the story it tells.