Politics, Metaphor and the Song of Songs in the 1670s
Abstract
The last chapter has charted extensively the influence of the Reformed interpretation of the Song of Songs on women’s writing. However, the main story of this book, to which the last chapter serves as somewhat of a subplot, is one with a broader historical import: the implications of a Reformed reading of the Song of Songs for English religious politics of the seventeenth century. This chapter shows the reaction of Anglican clergymen committed to the Restoration settlement of the Church of England to the reading of the Song of Songs that was dominant in the seventeenth century and that has been charted in this book, and describes some of their preferred alternatives. The political implications of such a reading were well recognised by many Anglican controversialists, and suspected of being one of the causes of the theological daring that inspired the Puritan Revolution. The error in Biblical interpretation, as many Anglicans saw it, that led to a personal reading of the mystical marriage trope as a love affair between Christ and the individual believer, was seen as a mistake in the reading of metaphor as well as a theological misreading of the beneficial effects of redemption and justification for the individual Christian. This Anglican revisionism, inspired by Royalist politics, involved a profound rewriting of many of the most prized theological insights of the Reformation, and this chapter charts attempts to do just that.
Keywords
Royal Society Seventeenth Century Anglican Controversialist Biblical Text Protestant ChurchPreview
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Notes
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