I just finished This is My Body by Thomas J. Davis. It is an “academic” book; the author has taken a series of prior essays, presentations, and articles and redrafted and compiled them for publication in a single volume. The book does not, however, feel regurgitated. As I read each of the chapters got better and better.

The last chapter, Hardened Hearts, Hardened Words: Calvin, Beza, and the Trajectory of Signification, is absolutely fantastic. Davis’ aim is to “undercut stereotypes” of Reformers (Calvin, Beza, & al.) by arguing that “a basic change in the orientation of signification occurred . . . as early as the thirteenth century . . . which did not begin the process of gaining cultural hegemony until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.” Which means that “[s]ignification made a shift toward the literal, where direct lines were drawn between sign and thing signified, and both were drawn into closest relationship until one observes almost a collapse of distances between sign and thing signified” (172). Interestingly, Davis appeals to and comments at length on the woodcuts and paintings of Albrecht Durer, Leon Battista Alberti, and Leonardo da Vinci as evidence of his thesis.

This chapter alone is worth the cost of the book.