The Song of Songs in European Poetry (Twelfth to Seventeenth Centuries)

Traditionally attributed to King Solomon and defined by Rabbi Aqiva as the Holy of Holies among the sacred Scriptures, the Song of Songs is one of the most fascinating and controversial biblical books. Celebrated as a key to the supreme mystery of the union between God and the faithful, this ambivalent book, which combined a sensual celebration of love with a well-established tradition of allegorical interpretation, was a text crucial to both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and held a particular appeal for poets. Indeed, the Song of Songs played a significant role in the development of European poetry from its very beginning, creating an exceptional convergence of sacred and secular languages and horizons of meaning.

Written by a group of distinguished international scholars, this volume explores the complex and multifaceted processes through which the Song of Songs entered, influenced, and interacted with medieval and Renaissance European poetry (twelfth to seventeenth centuries). Focusing on both individual authors – including Peter Riga, Dante Alighieri, Richard Rolle, and George Herbert – and particularly relevant poetic traditions – including Hebrew liturgical poetry and the Tristan and Ysolt tradition, Middle English and Petrarchan lyric, Renaissance verse versions and seventeenth-century musical compositions, dissident and prophetic texts – the volume unveils the relevant role played by the biblical book in the development of European poetry, thought and spirituality, highlighting its ability to contribute to different poetic genres and give voice to a variety of religious, political, philosophical, and artistic intentions.

Introduction
Camilla Caporicci

Part I. A Many-Faced Influence: Medieval Voices

Chapter 1. ‘The Song of Songs, gaze upon her’: Antique Hebrew Liturgical Poetry from the Medieval Mainz Rite
Leor Jacobi

Chapter 2. Versifying the Cantica canticorum in the Context of Peter Riga’s Aurora
Greti Dinkova-Bruun

Chapter 3. ‘Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men’: Revisiting the Song of Songs with Tristan and Ysolt
Brindusa Grigoriu

Chapter 4. The Song of Songs’ Lyricism in Late Medieval England
Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead

Part II. Poetry and Music: The Italian Tradition

Chapter 5. The Good Sorrow: The Song of Songs in Dante’s Comedy and Contemporary Popular Piety
Lino Pertile

Chapter 6. The Song of Songs in Sixteenth-Century Italian Lyric Poetry
Matteo Navone

Chapter 7. Laetitia et solatio: Singing the Canticles and Female Spirituality in the Early Seventeenth Century
Marina Toffetti

Chapter 8. Motets on the Song of Songs in the Collection Symbolae diversorum musicorum (Venice, 1621) edited by Lorenzo Calvi
Gabriele Taschetti

Part III. Rewriting and Appropriating the Song of Songs in the British Isles (16^th‒17^th Centuries)

Chapter 9. A Corpus-Based Analysis of the Song of Songs’ Early Modern Translations (1535‒1611)
Fabio Ciambella

Chapter 10. William Baldwin’s Canticles or Balades of Solomon and the Beginnings of English Petrarchism
Rachel Stenner

Chapter 11. A Reading of Joseph Hall’s Paraphrase of the Song of Songs (1609)
Tibor Fabiny

Chapter 12. From the ‘broken Altar’ to ‘The Banquet’ of Love: The Song of Songs in George Herbert’s The Temple (1633)
Carmen Gallo

Chapter 13. The Allure of Canonical Fleshliness: The Song of Songs as Hermeneutic intermédiaire for Ranter Libertarianism and Counter-Ethics
Simone Turco

Chapter 14. Women Prophets, Dissent, and the Song of Songs in Seventeenth-Century England
Adrian Streete

***

Index of Names