Singing the Resurrection: Body, Community, and Belief in Reformation Europe, by Erin Lambert

The evocative cover image of Erin Lambert's nuanced Singing the Resurrection: Body, Community, and Belief in Reformation Europe primes the reader for the author's narrative interventions. A reproduction of Joos van Cleve's majestic Last Judgment, painted in the 1520s, presents a formalized depiction of the saved and the damned. The death shrouds that some figures still trail make it clear that these are people raised from the dead: this is the promise of the Resurrection fulfilled. The book's titling effectively blots out the top third of the image—effacing heaven, as it were. Rather than focusing on the Christ figure, as in the original painting, the eye of the beholder is thus drawn downward to the musical intercession in the scene: the angelic heralds of the Apocalypse, trumpeting the sonic signal of the Resurrection. The human figures responding to this call are either beckoned to heaven or herded to hell....