A Sacred Meter for the Song of Songs? Vernacular biblical paraphrasing in the 16th Century
My doctoral project aims to study Romance poetic paraphrases of the Song of Songs produced in the later sixteenth century. During this period, rewritings of the Song of Songs became increasingly numerous and formally diverse, raising a series of research questions that this project seeks to address: who were the authors, editors, and readers of these paraphrases? How widely did they circulate, and what ideological frameworks supported them? How did this book’s allegorical and highly figurative language serve as a catalyst for polemical writing? Is there a preferred poetic style in Protestant or Catholic (Iberian) contexts?
In Wolfenbüttel, I will be able to deepen my research on Calvinist and Protestant sources, with particular attention to debates on the most appropriate metre for adapting this biblical book into the vernacular.
