The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity

7 The Genre as Trope: The Song of Songs in the Vernacular

Chapter Seven The Genre as Trope: The Song of Songs in Vernacular Literature In showing how commentary on the Song of Songs developed as a medieval genre, this book has frequently looked backward, to historical precedent and literary tradition. This final chapter will instead suggest some ways in which the genre moved outward from its monastic setting to influenceother, frequentlysecular, trends of European literature. This will involve a shift of focus awayfrom Latin literatureon overtly Christian subjects to vernacular literature which gradually served more secular purposes. As the genre underwent a series of "internal transformations," it gradually became something else, involving an eventual break from the "horizon of expectations" of the literary world which crafted the tradition of commentary on the Song of Songs.1 But the break is neither precipitous nor absolute. As the mariological tradition of interpretation has shown, the Song of Songs played a multifaceted role in medieval Christianity. In general, Latin monastic authors used the genre freely, dipping into it for images which served as tropes, poetic or rhetorical figures which carry meaning according to an established code. In this case, the code of the Song of Songs was so well established by the commentary tradition that the quotation of a single verse could be immediately understood to speak, for example, of the relationship between a bishop and his church, or a nun and herheavenly Bridegroom; or it could be used as a proof-text for the virginity of Mary, or of the sanctity of the monastic life.2 All of these examples have a basis in the commentary genre, as well as the ability to move beyond their literary origins in actual rhetorical function. At least three types of vernacular literature show close connections to Latin exegesis of the Song of Songs while making different kinds of breaks with the tradition. Interpretations based on the recognized ideas of the genre can be seen in: i) vernacular commentaries on the Song of Songs, 2) vernaculardevotional writings, and 3)a broad variety of poetry Genre as Trope /179 in vernacular languages. All three types have formal and spiritual links to the commentary tradition. In fact, it is only in some forms of medieval vernacular poetry that quotations from the Song of Songs lose a sense of divine revelation and modulate into an understanding of the text as a human love story. There is no strict chronological development in this modulation, even though vernacular commentaries used the Song of Songs a century earlier than did witty love poetry in the vernacular.All three forms of reference to the Song of Songs are found throughout the vernacular literary tradition. Vernacular Commentaries on the Song of Songs The Song of Songs genre first passed into vernacular languages in a very conservative form, the translation of an already existing commentary. The earliest vernacular version of the genre, Williram of Eberberg's double reworking of Haimo, comes from a monastic environment, and continues a mode of interpretation centering on Christ and the Church. This mid-elevcnth-century treatise combines a transposition of Haimo in Latin Leonine hexameters with a prose paraphrase in early Middle High German . Most manuscripts are set up in three parallel columns, the Vulgate text in the middle, Latin poetry on the left, and German prose on the right.' Williram clearly intended to use the Song of Songs in support of the Cluniac Reforms. In the preface, he sounds a note of concern for the purity of the Church, praising Lanfranc and calling for the repentance of the institution as a collection of Christian souls. In this, he is like other exegetes of his century (for example, Robert of Tombelaine and John of Mantua), eager to show the Song of Songs as a mystical love story, in which both soul and Church must overcome sin to be worthy of the heavenlyBridegroom.4 Mostly, however, Williram's German commentary is similar to Haimo's Latin one, at least it continues the same interpretation. This vernacular version of Haimo was widely available to the late medieval and early modern German reading audience; the last known manuscript was written in 1523 and is almost contemporary with the first printed edition.' The extent to which Williram was integrated into the German literary tradition can be seen by the liberties taken with his complex text: in the first printing and in one twelfth-century manuscript , the German paraphrase is translated back into Latin, while a [18.221.146.223] Project MUSE (2024-04-18...