University of Perugia

The Perugia Unit focuses on the Song of Songs. Simultaneously a passionate love poem and a sacred text traditionally interpreted in allegorical terms as a hymn celebrating the love between God and the Church and /or the human soul, this biblical book offered itself to a great variety of translations, appropriations, and rewritings. The Unit will explore the vast range of different uses that early modern authors – primarily, though not exclusively, English – made of the Song of Songs, highlighting the significant role that the biblical book played in the appropriation and negotiation of a series of literary traditions (Petrarchan sonnet, pastoral tradition, classical epyllion), and in the complex interaction between “sacred” and “secular” languages and horizons of meaning. At the same time, more specifically politico-religious uses of the Song of Songs will be analyzed. Taking into account a variety of traditions and literary genres, including the exegetical, liturgical, and homiletic traditions, prayers, vernacular translations and verse versions, amorous, encomiastic and spiritual poetry, this investigation aims to cast full light on the way in which the use of the Song of Songs contributed both to the development of English poetry and to the shaping of national and individual identities in the age of the Reformations. For what concerns the latter aspect, on the one hand, the Unit will focus on how the identification of the English Church, nation, and monarch with the true Spouse of the Song of Songs, and the interpretation of specific biblical passages in accordance with some essential tenets of the Reformed faith, participated in the construction of the English national identity. On the other hand, the Unit will explore the way in which the reflection on and appropriation of the Song of Songs contributed to the shaping and expression of individual identities, with particular attention to the articulation and vindication of personal religious and philosophical belief, spiritual incertitude, and politico-religious dissent, but also of social, cultural, ethnic, sexual and gender identity.