Landscapes of the Song of Songs: Poetry and Place by Elaine T. James

Abstract

Reviewed by: Landscapes of the Song of Songs: Poetry and Place by Elaine T. James Kelli A. Gardner Elaine T. James. Landscapes of the Song of Songs: Poetry and Place. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 233 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000084 The Song of Songs has never lacked for conversation partners. As metaphorically lush poetry, it has been fertile ground for allegorical readings as well as for comparative work with love poetry broadly, ancient and modern. Its uniquely prominent female figure has attracted feminist critics, both those who wish to uphold it as the salvific text for an otherwise androcentric canon and those who accuse it of many of the same gender troubles that plague the rest of the Bible. In short, it is rare to come across a new perspective on the Song of Songs. And yet, Elaine James's monograph, Landscapes of the Song of Songs, is just that. Through a thoughtful blend of critical theory and careful readings, James provides refreshing new insight into the Song of Songs, focused on the treatment and representation of landscape. [End Page 193] Despite the poem's detailed attention to the lovers' world, from lush garden to nighttime city streets, James establishes that in the interpretive history of the Song of Songs scholarly attention is too often diverted elsewhere (3–6). Whether readers are focused on discovering the allegorical or erotic meaning behind an image, landscapes seem to serve only as "vehicles" for these readings and are rarely "the object of interest" (6). James's work aims to fill this lacuna through a landscape approach to the Song. This approach, carefully constructed in conversation with theory on landscape (in various media and forms), space and place, agrarianism, urbanism, gender and the gaze, and poetry, begins from the understanding that "landscape fundamentally forms human experience" (2). This formation, however, works both ways: while people have an impact on their landscape, landscape shapes its inhabitants' culture, values, and imagination. As a result, a text's conceptualization of landscape is an important cultural artifact and should not be ignored as mere backdrop. James insists, therefore, that the Song's "landscapes are ethically charged poetic creations that draw the reader into its meditation on the human place in the natural world" (2). Equipped with this landscape approach introduced in the first chapter (but further developed and honed throughout the book) James divides her work on the Song according to its different landscapes. She focuses on the agrarian landscape of Song 1:5–8 and 7:11–14 (MT; 10–13 Eng) in chapter 2; the garden of Song 4:12–5:1 in chapter 3; the cityscape of Song 3:1–5 and 5:2–8, as well as the citification of the woman's body in Song 4:4, 6:4, 7:4, and 8:8–10 in chapter 4; and lastly the descriptive poems of the young woman, which James identifies as maps, in Song 4:1–7, 6:4–7, and 7:1–7 in chapter 5. Each chapter offers close and careful readings of the landscapes as described by the Song. She bolsters her analysis not only by engagement with modern critical theory, but also by drawing on archaeological data and comparison with the art and poetry of the ancient Near East. The real strength of this work lies in this detailed textual analysis. As a result of careful attention to lyric features (e.g., repetition, soundplay, structure, etc.), imagery, and perspective in the Song, James's readings are as insightful and poetic as the texts under examination. James demonstrates throughout the book that a landscape approach brings to the Song a fresh perspective that is still grounded in historical critical methods. For example, James pushes back against the notion that the Song represents a sharp dichotomy between nature and culture (an assumption for many and an assertion by some who have worked on the Song) by demonstrating how a garden is "a cultural form that serves as a microcosm for ideals about the natural world" (59). In other words, the garden is an art form that relies on both nature and culture for its existence. This is apparent in...