Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries on the Song of Songs (review)

Denis Renevey's rigorous study of the writings of the Yorkshire hermit Richard Rolle within the commentary tradition of the Song of Songs is a stimulating contribution to what is to date a sparse amount of discussion of the writings of Rolle and medieval concepts of interiority and subjectivity. As Renevey firmly asserts in the introduction to his book, there has been limited attention paid to the late medieval with regard to its contribution towards a language of interiority and his book seeks to fill certain gaps in scholarship associated with medieval concepts of selfhood, the language of inwardness and the commentary tradition itself. On the whole, his exploration of the development of the language of interiority in the medieval literature inspired by the Song of Songs and its commentaries certainly provides a comprehensive review of self-awareness and consciousness in mystical writing before the early modern period.

The first part of the book offers an introduction to the twelfth-century tradition of commentaries on the Song of Songs. The discussion focuses on mechanics of twelfth-century language theory and the didactic role of metaphorical language in shaping medieval authors to adopt the persona of the Bride of Christ. This is most clearly presented in the chapter outlining Richard of St Victor's theory of the role of imagination in the ascent to spiritual perfection and discusses the activity of translatio, which stands for the making of metaphorical language. The role of the metaphorical discourse of love is further explored in the final chapter of this section which focuses on the writings of William of St Thierry. In particular, Renevey explores how William's contextualization of the beatific vision, the 'face to face', within the erotic language of the Song of Songs broadens the semantic meaning of the term. William's writing of his own commentary, Renevey suggests, takes place as he lives out the role of the bride of the Song, bringing a new performative dimension to the commentary tradition.

In the second part of the book Renevey focuses on Rolle's corpus, in particular Super canticum canticorum, Melos Amoris, Contra Amatores Mundi and Emendatio Viate and the English writings. Rolle's construction of both his actual and authorial self comes under close examination, particularly in relation to his textual relationships with women and the perceived misogyny that has long been associated with them. Throughout this exploration of Rolle's 'selfhood' Renevey draws somewhat heavily on Rolle's scattered misogynistic references and perhaps overstates the significance of his narrative encounters with women and his own sexual anxiety to his development of a discourse of love. The discussion of how the success of Rolle's self-referential statements, in terms of utilising his own experience as a template for that of his audience, lose their force by the later Latin works (Renevey, in opposition to Watson, names Contra Amatores Mundi as a later work) certainly offers the interesting proposal that Rolle, in recognising the need to modify the self-referential metaphorical discourse of love for a general audience, apparently found a way to do so in the vernacular.

Indeed, in the final chapter Renevey applies all his carefully considered theories of interiority and selfhood to Rolle's English writings, most specifically to the treatises he wrote in the vernacular: Ego Dormio, The Commandment and The Form of Living. The premise of this chapter appears to be that Rolle, through what is described as 'hermeneutics of the ineffable', offers up his own experiences as a guide for readers. Renevey further suggests that 'the decoding of the metaphorical discourse of love consists of recognizing (and enjoying) the traces, links and connections which each terms of love carries from one context to another' (p. 145). This new hermeneutics 'is fashioned with traditional material of the commentary tradition, with love replacing the Bible...