Journeys in the Songscape
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Journeys in the Songscape Reading Space in the Song of Songs Christopher Meredith Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Biblical Studies, The University of Sheffield August 2012 Abstract This thesis employs a range of contemporary critical and theoretical tools to examine the spatiality of the biblical Song of Songs. Ch. 1 examines the limitations of existing modes of biblical spatial analysis, critiquing biblical scholars’ uses of the work of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja. The thesis then develops new ways of engaging with literary space, using the writings of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida as its starting point. Ch. 2 looks at the broad poetic world conjured up by the Song. The trope of the phantasmagoria provides a framework in this chapter for thinking through the relationship between the spatialities of sex and of text in the poem. Ch. 3 takes a detailed look at the Song’s most iconic settings, the garden and the city, with the observations of ch. 2 in mind. It uses specialist work on the politics of garden space and on urban space to re-read these settings; is the garden necessarily a ‘good’ space, is the city really all that bad? Ch. 4 looks at threshold space in the text, using the lines and limens of the poetic world to think about the Song’s attitude towards gender, and how spatiality, gendered performativity and textual meaning are connected in the poem. Ch. 5 looks at the Song’s approach to bodily space, paying particular attention to the ways in which landscaped space and bodily space work as a self-sustaining milieu in the text. The chapter thus circles around to think about the ways in which the Song’s bodily spaces are symptomatic of the nature of the Song as a whole. Throughout, the thesis argues that the Song fuses the spatiality of sex with the spatiality of reading, and suggests that the poem’s idiosyncratic world speaks to the structures of textual signification itself. To Rebecca Jamieson For the careful pouring of lavender tea Space is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, to designate it. It’s never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it. My spaces are fragile. —Georges Perec, Species of Spaces Contents Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations ix Introduction: Notes in the Margins of Maps, 1 Or, Some Advice for the Traveller 1. Towards a Cartography of Reading 11 Mapping Lefebvre: The Festive Lefebvre, Who Dances 15 The ‘Soja(-Lefebvre)’, Who has Problems Cohering 22 The Literary Lefebvre, Who Objects to his Own Existence 32 Alternative Routes and Strange Countries Made from Paper 35 Exploring Text along with Derrida 36 Redrawing Some Ground Rules 41 Worlds of Meaning in Benjamin’s Labyrinth 43 Mapping the Present Work 48 2. Undreaming the Song’s World: On Inhabiting a 54 Phantasmagorical Text Holey Ground 56 Rude Awakenings, or, The D-Wor(l)d 60 Sharing the ‘Bath of Madness’ 65 Benjamin’s Critical Phantoscope 69 On the Scrim: Fluid Continuity in the Song? 73 Behind the Scrim: The Song’s ‘Space of Two’ 83 Conjuring Tricks: Turning Sex into Discourse 91 Turning Lovers into Poets 92 Turning Readers into Phantasmagorians 94 Turning the Page, Making the Bed 98 3. Locked Gardens and the City as Labyrinth 103 The Green Green Grass of Biblical Academe 104 Painting the Roses Red: Gardens as Power 108 ‘One Man’s Woman’s Dominion is…’ 113 The Song’s Garden Revisited 116 Gardening as Vajazzling: The Horticulture of ‘Her’ 125 The City as Labyrinth: On Not-Reading the City 131 PhantasCity 134 Sex and the City 138 Opacity and Transparenc(it)y 144 DistURBing, duplicAtiNg 146 Freud and the Labyrinthine City 149 The City in the Garden in the City 153 v CONTENTS 4. Gender, Space and Threshold Magic 156 The Line that is not One 157 Gendered Space and Irigaray 162 Rose and Paradoxical Geography 165 The Woman and the Window 168 The Man in the Mirror 174 Doorstep Sex 181 Doors/Scrims 188 Derrida’s Hymen 190 Threshold/Scrim 195 5. The Corpus without Organs 201 (Can be Used as a Surrealist Kingdom) Well-sung Bodies 205 Some Assembly Required 210 Positing a Prior Body 217 The Lover in the Song is Mae West 224 Becoming Body 227 Sediment as Syntax: The Body without Organs 231 Flashes of Tellurian Flesh 238 ‘The Patient Labyrinth of Lines Traces….’ 254 Conclusion: The Songscape, A Task of Reading 261 Bibliography 267 ! vi Acknowledgements In penning this thesis I have been more sorcerer’s apprentice than doctoral candidate. As it turns out, summoning texts is easier than making them do your bidding and I am indebted to those who have so willingly helped me over the years to pin down my thoughts and wrestle these infernal pages in the general direction of the bindery. First, there are a number of financial benefactors to whom I owe a great deal. Without the generous award of a fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council this project simply would never have been completed. Private funds also came (at particularly daunting times) from the Browns, the Clarkes, the Carlisles, and the Morrises. I am also extremely grateful to the AHRC and to the University of Sheffield’s Learned Societies Fund for releasing the resources that let me test out much of this material at various conferences and gatherings. Those trips have been a crucial part of the process. True to form, the Department of Biblical Studies in Sheffield has proved to be a rich and stimulating environment to work in. Without its quirks this project would have ended up in a very different shape, and, without its personnel, so would I. Thanks go to Cynthia Shafer-Elliott for keeping me sane in the early days, to James Crossley for playing poker on my behalf with the powers that be (let the reader understand), and to Alison Bygrave, for both her saint-like patience in the face of my administrative torpor and for her unflagging personal support— as well as the hockey tickets. My thanks also go to numerous scholars who I have encountered on my travels, and who continue to take an interest in what I'm typing. David Gunn and Claudia Camp made some extremely helpful suggestions during the very early stages of my work, and, most memorably, welcomed a young postgraduate to the table without flinching. At the other end of the process, Yvonne Thöne, whose research topic coincides with mine, has been so helpful (and gracious) in contributing to my thinking on the project as a whole. I am also especially grateful to James Harding and John Lyons for their ongoing encouragement (and their refreshing blend of whimsy and cynicism), to Miriam Bier (for the cyber cheerleading), and to Emma England (for the frank and graphic advice on how to ‘finish up’ properly). vii Since writing a PhD seems not nearly so bothersome as living with me while I complete one, I also need to express my appreciation to all those with whom I have shared a roof during my research. This valiant band have put up with vacant stares, malaises, grumps, and general shortness of shrift with great sympathy and kindness: Jon and Lydia Haines, Beci Jamieson, Owen McCarthy, Jamie Fletcher, Kay Morrison, Rich Newman, and, most recently, the Dormands: Claire, Stu and young Master Jacob. Your support during what has been, on reflection, quite a tumultuous time has been more important to me than you know. Also, it is quite possible that I would have starved without some of you. Significant recognition goes to Val Bruce, who not only paid a considerable sum for the oh-so-shiny laptop on which this thesis was written, but has been a constant source of comfort, wisdom and hard liquor during the years of writing. Thanks too to Linda Harding for her guidance, encouragement and indefatigable optimism, and for donating her Northumbrian homestead for a time so I could finish off ch. 5. I would be so much poorer without the love and care you both offer so freely. Three final names warrant special mention. Katie Edwards, whose folksy northern charm and wayward sense of propriety keeps me (pointing and) laughing. Hugh Pyper, long-time friend and Jedi Master, who has fed me invaluable comments and suggestions throughout the process of writing this; Hugh, your unique manner and mind continue to inspire me to sit back down at my keyboard. And Cheryl Exum, my long-suffering supervisor; without your time, passion, unparalleled expertise, rigorous questioning and heartfelt support, this project would have been impossible. Thank you all for the advice, the investment, and for your unfailing belief in this project. It is not taken for granted. viii Abbreviations BDB Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (7th edn.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000 [1907]). BibInt Biblical Interpretation DCH David J. A. Clines (ed.), Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (8 vols.; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1993-2011). IB Interpreter’s Bible JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JHS Journal of Hebrew Scriptures JPS Jewish Publication Society Bible JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JTS Journal of Theological Studies NGC New German Critique NJB New Jerusalem Bible VT Vetus Testamentum ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ix INTRODUCTION Notes in the Margins of Maps, Or, Some Advice for the Traveller This thesis is a response to an afternoon’s failed doodling.