Body of Symbols

The Christian Tradition of the Song of Songs

The Song of Songs is a song of love; it is also a song of the body, masculine and feminine, that praises its members, one by one. Over time, the vigilance of its Christian readers drew from the Song a powerful and differentiated logic and symbolism of the body. This book studies the meaning and constitution of this symbolic logic, from the origins to the thirteenth century, across thirty or so authors (notably Origen, St. Augustine, and St. Bernard), as well as its posterity among certain modern authors (like Luther, St. Francis de Sales, or Paul Claudel).

The body’s meaning is pondered here in the diversity of its gestures and its members—the eyes, the nose, hair, the lips, the arms and legs, the breasts, and more. This symbolic logic of the organs is twofold: it is applied to the collective body of the community as well as to the powers of the inner man. Essential dimensions of Christian thinking about the body, largely unrecognized, are thus explored. They have influenced our language and our relation to the world in many ways.

What are the powers of our body’s members, and how far does the light of the body shine? What does it show? What does it mean to belong to a community? The strength of the Song of Songs’ words gives us endless food for thought about these questions.

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