The Song of Songs: Poetry in History

Invited speakers Camilla Caporicci (Perugia) and Miri Rubin (QMUL) will pre-circulate chapters from, respectively, The Song of Songs and Its Tradition in Renaissance Love Lyric (Oxford, 2024) or Europe in the World: A Literary History, 1529-1683 (OUP forthcoming), and the provisionally entitled Black/Beautiful (Song 1-5): The Meaning of a Biblical Verse, a project nearing completion.

Invited respondents will comment briefly on these chapters, followed by a wider discussion, during which experts in other fields who have worked or are working on the Song of Songs will have an opportunity informally to present their contributions.

The workshop is sponsored by members of the ‘London Forum for Premodern Studies’. This is an informal association of London-based scholars from the Warburg Institute, QMUL’s Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, KCL’s Centre for Early Modern Studies, and UCL’s Centre for Early Modern Exchanges. It follows on from Camilla Caporicci’s participation in QMUL’s ERC Project Textuality and Diversity: A Literary History of Europe and its Global Connections, 1529-1683 (TextDiveGlobal). The work of our two invited speakers shares with TextDiveGlobal a preoccupation with the European literary legacy both in its deep forms and its always changing content.

Please write in advance to Warren Boutcher on [email protected] if you wish to obtain copies of the pre-circulated materials.

Camilla Caporicci is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Perugia and Vice-Director of the Department of Humanities, Ancient and Modern Languages, Literature and Cultures. Her main field of research includes Renaissance poetry, the reception of the Bible in the early modern period, and Shakespeare’s output.

Miri Rubin is an historian of European religious cultures between c. 1000-1600. She is interested in interactions between religious groups and in the operation of gender. She is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London and Research Lead in the Department of History.

Image: Illustration for the first verse of the Song of Songs, a minstrel playing before Solomon (15th century Rothschild Mahzor, Manuscript, Italy, 1490., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

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IAS Common Ground, G11, South Wing, Gower Street, London, United Kingdom

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