Beyond Language: Metaphor as an Expressive Resource in the Song of Songs

Abstract

The starting point of this paper is the old debate on which kind of interpretation is more appropriate for the Song of Songs, namely, literal or allegorical, and to what extent. Treating the poem as a literary work and letting it speak for itself, metaphor emerges as the main expressive resource referring to a multi-dimensional reality. The analysis of metaphor in the Song of Songs, based on selected samples, reveals highly developed metaphoric speech in the poem, with images accumulating and interacting in multiple, concurrent and mutually enriching levels of meaning. Behind this complex intertwining of metaphors there emerges the main referent for the book as a whole. Metaphor, then, appears as a particularly adequate means of articulating both anthropological and theological discourse.
Key words: Song of Songs, Metaphor, Love.