The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist by Thomas Arentzen (review)

• Autores: Stephen J. Shoemaker
• Localización: Journal of early Christian studies: Journal of the North American Patristic Society, ISSN 1067-6341, Nº. 4, 2018, págs. 677-679
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The resulting study, a revision of the author’s 2014 dissertation at Lund University, offers one of our best windows into the rise of Marian devotion among the learned citizens of the imperial capital in this period. Here the interpretation is guided largely by a tacit Freudianism that reads biblical rods as phalluses and caves as wombs and develops a reading of the hymn centered around erotic tensions in narrative, proposing that it evokes erotic longing for the Virgin among the audience. Other texts and authors occasionally juxtapose Mary with more positive visions of marriage and sexuality, even if they are not, to be sure, so highly eroticized as in this hymn.