The Collaborative International Dictionary
Literalist \Lit"er*al*ist\, n. One who adheres to the letter or exact word; an interpreter according to the letter.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1640s, from literal + -ist. Related: Literalistic.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A person who adheres to the literal representation of a statement or law. 2 A person who translates text literally.
Usage examples of "literalist".
Like a literalist from a liturgy, or coed from a cathartic feature film: nothing more important, easier than being a little kinder.
Narrow left-brain thinkers see the Constitution in a static, literalist way, ascribing the force of law to its actual contents.
Shooting a glare at Rebecca the literalist, daring her to contradict him.
The infallible literalist, and the no less dogmatic sceptic, are equally presumptuous in forecast of the third.
Scripture, which any but the most narrow literalist would feel at once to be untenable.
Botanists have plants whose passionate emotional lives can be monitored with He detectors, anthropologists have surviving ape-men, zoologists have extant dinosaurs, and evolutionary biologists have Biblical literalists snapping at their flanks.
Faithful translation may be the professed goal, but when the result would have Jeremiah accusing the Deity of having raped him, the literalists back down.
Anyone thinking of translating history, poetry, foreign tales or works of classical rhetoric, taking their cue from Cicero and a couple of words of Horace, would despise the literalist as a plodding, and scarcely civilised pedant.
Also, I thought the creationists had some good evidence to present for the notion of the Earth being a lot younger than conventionally taught—although not the 6,000 years that Biblical literalists insist on.