Conquered Conquerors: Love and War in the Song of Songs by Danilo Verde

Abstract

Reviewed by: Conquered Conquerors: Love and War in the Song of Songs by Danilo Verde J. L. Andruska danilo verde, Conquered Conquerors: Love and War in the Song of Songs (AIL 41; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2020). Pp. xvi + 271. Paper $40. In this book, Danilo Verde examines the metaphors and figurative language displayed in the Song of Songs and argues that "LOVE IS (also) WAR" is one of the Song's main leitmotifs (p. 4). A number of recent works have addressed the Song's metaphors and figurative language: Othmar Keel's Deine Blicke sind Tauben: Zur Metaphorik des Hohen Liedes (SBS 114/115; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1984) and his Das Hohelied (Zürcher Bibelkommentare: Altes Testament 18; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1986); Hans-Peter Müller's Vergleich und Metapher im Hohenlied (OBO 56; Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984); Jill Munro's Spikenard and Saffron: The Imagery of the Song of Songs (JSOTSup 203; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995); and Fiona C. Black's The Artifice of Love: Grotesque Bodies in the Song of Songs (LHBOTS 392; London: T&T Clark, 2009). Yet V.'s unique contribution is to bring recent developments in metaphor studies in contemporary linguistics into [End Page 490] the discussion, offering a theoretical framework and clear methodology for assessing the vast number of metaphors in the Song. The book comprises an introduction, four main chapters and a conclusion. V. begins by giving an overview of where he finds the Song's military imagery, arguing that "LOVE IS WAR" is a main leitmotif, by which he means that the Song "describes the lovers in military terms," which he interprets as showing "their courtship as a war-game" (p. 5). He laments the lack of scholarly research on the Song's military metaphors and warlike imagery, as well as the fact that research on the Song's figurative language has completely overlooked a number of developments in metaphor studies outside biblical studies. V.'s theoretical framework is cognitive linguistics, which has recently shed new light on figurative language in biblical literature and is the main reference point for scholarly discussions of metaphors, according to V. (p. 21). He discusses conceptual metaphor theory, blending theory, and other recent developments, which he uses to explain the Song's metaphor LOVE IS WAR. V. follows George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980]) in arguing that metaphors are a pervasive linguistic phenomenon, universal and cross-cultural, which involve a person's conceptual system, so that concepts in the human mind are structured metaphorically. According to conceptual metaphor theory, the cognitive process that generates metaphors in one's mind involves conceptualizing a segment of experience or "target" "in terms of another segment of experience called the "source" (p. 22). "The mind creates a set of conceptual correspondences, called 'mapping', between conceptual elements of the source and conceptual elements of the target" (p. 23). As V. explains, blending theory, as developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities [New York: Basic Books, 2002]), holds that the metaphorical process involves four elements: (1) input 1 or the "source" domain in conceptual metaphor theory, (2) input 2 or the "target" domain in conceptual metaphor theory, (3) the tertium comparationis or generic space, that is, what the domains have in common, making mapping possible, and (4) the "blended space," a new structure composed of blended elements of the first two domains and which cannot be gathered from the single domains (p. 24). Thus, according to blending theory, metaphor is not just the result of cross-mapping conceptual domains, but an entirely new concept resulting from the blending of source and target. Both theories were intended to explain the cognitive mechanisms underlying metaphor in human thought, yet they were soon also applied to literary metaphors. As V. explains, literary works often display "extended metaphors" (also called "sustained metaphors" or "megametaphors") which function as an "undercurrent" running throughout the text as a whole and underlie a large number and variety of "single" or "surface" metaphors (p. 26). V.'s main thesis is that LOVE...