CEU faculty member Carsten Wilke (CRS Director 2016-2020) published a new interpretation on the central textual source of the Western discourse on divine love, a staple of Jewish liturgy, and the Old Testament book most commented upon in medieval Christian exegesis after the Psalms.
Carsten Wilke, Farewell to Shulamit: Spatial and Social Diversity in the Song of Songs, Berlin, W. de Gruyter (series Jewish Thought, Philosophy and Religion, 2), 2017.
The Song of Songs, a lyric cycle of love scenes without a narrative plot, has often been considered as the Bible’s most beautiful and enigmatic book. The present study questions the still dominant exegetical convention that merges all of the Song’s voices into the dialogue of a single couple, its composite heroine Shulamit being a projection screen for norms of womanhood. An alternative socio-spatial reading, starting with the Hebrew text’s strophic patterns and its references to historical realia, explores the poem’s artful alternation between courtly, urban, rural, and pastoral scenes with their distinct characters.
See the publisher's page and open access here.
Book launch at CEU on 8 May 2017.