The Idea of the Idyll: Why it May Not Work for the Song of Songs

Abstract

This article picks up on the socially problematic characterization of the female protagonist of the Song of Songs. The incongruence with eastern social norms provokes the proposal that she may be a male construct, a fantasy of an uninhibited, expressive ideal. This construct lives and moves in a male world, one in which the gender stereotypes still operate. This renders suspect the reading of the Song as an idyll (at least, for the 21^stcent. reader), although the position is largely adopted by both allegorical and literal interpretations. Such readings miss the Song’s mooring to (unpleasant) social realities. An alternative might be to read the Song as an analogy which derives from the faith community’s corporate experience of God.