Landscapes of the Song of Songs: Poetry and Place

In this masterful new study of the ancient poetry of the Song of Songs, Elaine T. James explores the Song's underlying interest in the natural world. Engaging with the fields of geography, landscape architecture, and literature, James critiques the tendency of scholars to reify a perceived dichotomy between "nature" and "culture" and instead argues that the poetic attention to landscape indicates an awareness of a viewer. Nature is here a poetic device that informs James's close-readings of agrarianism, gardens, cities, social control, and feminism and the gaze in the Song. With this two-fold emphasis on landscape and lyric, Landscape of the Song of Songs shows how the Song persistently envisions a world in which human lovers are embedded in the natural world, complexly enfolded in relationships of fragility and care.


Author: Elaine T. James
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 07/03/2017
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.41lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780190619015

About the Author

Elaine T. James is Assistant Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University.