Lectures du Cantique des Cantiques. De l'enigme du sens aux figures du lecteur

The purpose of the work is to throw light on the various ways in which readers implicated themselves in the song of songs, as well as the historical figures those readers embodied within the readings. The overall aim is to show that it is these figures and the way in which they are implicated in the act of understanding that in reality modulate the contrasting and occasionally contradictory history of the text. From this point of view, the broader ambition is to contribute to the history of exegesis. After clarifying the practical and theoretical limits inherent in modern approaches to the song of songs, a denial of subjectivity is demonstrated whose action is the very principle of the traditional allegorical reading of the text. This thesis is supported by analysis of a sample of texts bearing witness to the functions and usages of the poem in the patristic period (baptismal catechisms, hymnology, epistolary literature, commentaries proper). These texts are examined on the basis of suggestions furnished by a problematic of quotation and paraphrase derived from the theory of enunciation. Their analysis shows that an allegorical reading of the song is not a semantic operation but above all an enunciative act seeking to make it possible to implicate the reader in the text. Subsequently, there is an examination of the meaning of the repetition, consisting of the continuation through the centuries of this traditional manner of reading, by analysing texts by guillaume of s. Thierry, gertrude of helfta and theresa of avila. It is shown how the appearance of sameness cloaks a rich diversity, against the background, nonetheless, of an unchanging attitude inherited from the patristic period. Simultaneously, a comparison of the christian with the jewish reading shows how divergences in interpretation - the only ones perceptible for a semantic approach- play a subordinate role relative to a shared way of conceiving of reading and of being implicated in it

Art · Humanities · French Literature and Poetry · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Medieval European Literature and History · Philosophy