Upon reading the Song of Solomon again, it is the above song performed by Roberta Flack (written by Ewan MacColl, for Peggy Seeger in 1957), that comes to mind. Perhaps the song is not as dense as the original Solomon text, but it contains some of the same rich imagery and poetry that the biblical scripture does. Not to mention, the song is soothingly and stunningly performed by the wonderful, Roberta Flack.
I consider the Song of Solomon as something similar to an allegory of God’s love for humankind. But it also is an undeniable melody that celebrates not only human love, but also the sensuous and mystical quality of erotic desire.
As we read about sensuality and God in my Spiritual Formation class, the importance of texts like these provide the evidence that God and sensuality and/or our
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It is only through prayer and supplication that we can be Godly. What also intrigued me, is I could read this text as being queer text. Much of the metaphors are fluid. In other words, it is something universal without the limitations of labels.
“I am black and beautiful” (SOS 1: 5), is one of the verses that stuck out for me on my first read. Yet, in reading the Harper Collins foot notes, it is implied that the real translation infers that the daughter may be black, BUT she is beautiful. Meaning, there is a questioning of her beauty because she is black or sunburned.
As the mother of a mixed daughter, this saddens me. As she has grown, I have wanted to expose her to readings that show diverse, strong women of color. Yet, during her years in Sunday school, women of color were not acknowledged. When she would question the Sunday school teacher if there were any women who looked like her in the Bible, she was hushed and told it didn’t
In “Lovely Stones” by Christopher Hitchens, the author uses rhetorical devices such as parallelism, ethos, and pathos to convince the audience to help conserve and protect ancient Athens’ statues. One of the rhetorical devices the author used was parallelism, he used it to give the article flow and more of a rhythm to follow through. The second rhetorical device the author used was ethos in the article to intrigue the readers ethics and rightness. The last rhetorical device the author used was pathos, he used pathos to pique the interest of the audience with emotional context. These rhetorical devices were used strategically to convince the readers to help support the cause.
After King Lear’s two oldest daughters, Goneril and Regan express their love for their father in a flattering speech they were granted their share of the kingdom, and Cordelia his youngest daughter and favorite daughter refused to play along, Lear felts she was disrespectful and she was banished from his sight. Cordelia bids farewell to her sisters, and tells them that she knows they don’t love him, “I know you what you are, and like a sister am most loath to call your faults as they are named.” (1.2.273-275). “Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides; who covers faults, at last shame them derides. Well may you prosper!” (1.2.284-286). Once Cordelia left, Goneril and Regan revealed to the audience that they had no love for their father.
Rhetoric refers to the study of the ways speakers and writers utilizes words in influencing the audience. Therefore, a rhetorical analysis refers to the essay where a non-fiction work is broken down into parts and it is used in the creation of a specific effect. A rhetorical analysis must assess the goals of the rhetorician, the tools used and the effectiveness of those tools. In writing a rhetorical analysis, one does not argue on the tools used but instead discusses the ways the rhetorician makes an argument and whether he or she uses a successful approach. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a fiction novel for children which was written by C.S. Lewis and was published by Geoffrey Bles in 1950. It is regarded as one of the renowned and first published novels of The Chronicles of Narnia and it is held in libraries. Most parts of the novel are set in Narnia, which is believed to be a land with talking animals and mythical creatures ruling into the deep winter. This paper seeks to compare the novel and movie adaptation of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Kelly Brown Douglas begins by posing a series of questions, including, “Who is the Black Christ?” and “Is the Black Christ Enough?” (6-7) For Douglas, the Black Christ, “…represents God’s urgent movement in human history to set Black captives free from the demons of White racism” (3). The question of “Who is the Black Christ?” is addressed in Chapter 3. The question of “Is the Black Christ enough?” is addressed in Chapters 4 and 5, as Douglas critically examines the relationship of the Black Christ to the Black community and ends with addressing what womanist theology is and why there is a need for it in understanding the Black Christ.
This poem is not strictly about a man who is trying to get a woman to have premarital sex with him. I think this work was more about the use of religious imagery in regards to a sexual act. Starting in the second stanza, we see our first religious imagery and diction. The first line,
The song of songs it is a well-known but not so well understood book of the Bible, it’s 8 chapters of love poetry and while there are an introduction and a conclusion, the book doesn’t have any kind of rigid literary design and that’s because it is a collection of poems. They are not meant to be dissected or taken apart. They are meant to be read as a flowing whole and simply enjoyed. The first line of the book tells us that it is “the song of songs” which is a Hebrew idiom like, “the holy of holies” or “the king of kings” it is a Hebrew way of saying, “the greatest thing,” this is the greatest song of all songs. We are told in the first line that this “song of songs” is of Solomon, which could mean that he is the author, his name does begin the book after all. But as I read the poems, I discover that the main voice of a woman, called “the beloved.” And while there is also a male voice, it does not seem to be Solomon. Solomon is mentioned a couple times in the poem, but he’s never a speaker, and you do have to admit Solomon is a very strange candidate as the author of this book, given the facts that he seven hundred wines. The “of Solomon” likely means “in the wisdom tradition of Solomon,” he was known for his wisdom, his poetry, his love of learning about every part of life. Also, Solomon became the father of wisdom literature in Israel, his legacy is here carried on, through a collection of love poems that explore the human experience of love and sexual desire. The opening
The painting that Smith portrays through her mother’s experiences are relatable for those who have or know peers that have religious black grandmothers. She connects us to her mother’s origins and views through flashbacks and what we presume to be her mother's thoughts at the time, “And within walking distance of wherever she lived, there had to be a Baptist Church where she could pull on the pure white gloves of service and wail to the rafters when she felt the hot icy hand of the Holy Ghost pressing insistently at the small of her back. Yes, Jesus had to be there after all. He had blessed her journey so far…. She was his child, building herself anew here in the North” (p 276). Smith’s says her mother has simple but big dreams which consisted of taking her religion she grew up with in the South and bringing them up to the North but better. Her dresses are better to show that she is better than the South. Her mother wants to fit into the North and appearances matter to her, society’s rules are what is ‘right’ according to Smith’s mother. The author shows us a snippet of her mother’s journey to before giving us a view of her thoughts on why she shouldn’t learn to ‘talk
that of an African woman, who is considered superlatively beautiful to the queen in the passage. Ligon
Rhetorical devices are devices that are used to convey a meaning to the reader and create emotions through different types of language. Elie Wiesel uses rhetorical devices such as personification, metaphors, and rhetorical questions to emphasize and establish the theme of losing faith.
Gerald Early, the author of the essay Life with Daughters, describes the hardships of being African American especially when trying to raise two daughters who don’t believe they are beautiful . Early’s purpose is to inform the reader of all the difficulties that black girls face growing up in a society who has defined beauty with the image of a white, skinny blonde. He adopts a bitter tone in order to point out all of the difficulties these girls face in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences of other African American girls their parents.
“The Golden Speech” was given by Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1601 to the Members of the Commons and the Speaker in the Palace Council Chamber. It was initially supposed to be addressing economic concerns. Queen Elizabeth I converted England back to Protestant after she gained the throne from her half-sister, Mary I. This caused hostility between Spain, which was a Roman Catholic country and England. Queen Elizabeth started to put most of her efforts into raising funds which would prepare England for when the Spanish Army came. One of her efforts was to revoke monopolies from forming in order to save money to be able to defeat the Spanish. This was supposed to be the point of “The Golden Speech” but it turned into her farewell speech
Antigone is a play based on a Greek tragedy, that takes place in the city of Thebes. Antigone is one of four siblings, her two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, and her sister, Ismene, and soon to be married to Haimon. Her two brothers Eteocles and Polyneices do not live to the end of this drama, but die fighting one another for the throne of the kingdom. Creon, a ruthless leader, takes the heir of the throne. He demands Polyneices not have a burial for he was a traitor, and anyone who attempts to disobey his ruling would be punished. Antigone violated the ruling and attempted to bury Polyneices. Creon showed no pity for the fact that she was his only son’s fiancee and instead gave Antigone a death punishment. Antigone states multiple times that she believes she did nothing wrong, as well as others in the city think that. Haimon uses rhetorical devices throughout the drama in attempts to keep his father from killing Antigone and to show his father how he is affecting the city.
These three perceptions are distinctly different, but ultimately speak to the contextual nature of Black theology—rooting worship, adoration, and discipleship within the notion a (conscious) living G-d. The first perception explored is the image G-d adored through the lens of Sister Sweet and Mother Darling. At first glance, these women appear different in life style and theology—different churches, different abilities, and different approaches to discipleship. But upon further examination, one discovers the same paradigm at work. Both have lost children to AIDS. Both have committed themselves to a praxis centered theology to process their loss. Mother Darling is street missionary and Sister Sweet is a disabled woman confined to a wheel that feeds the birds and attends to the needs of the Little piece of Heaven Church. Both have found peace in their personalized work for the Lord. Their G-d is a “shelter in a time of storm.” The second perception is the image of G-d as seen through Deacon Zee. This G-d is one of salvation and complacence for Deacon Zee. The “White Jesus” he prayed to for his assistance in finding his copy of the Wall Street Journal—a nuanced symbol for prosperity. This G-d speaks to the corporate nature and element of
In Song of Songs, we see another lyrical, poetic book. This book is only one of two in the Bible that do not mention God directly. It gives us an insight on how love, marriage and even sex are to be viewed and practiced in a loving Christian home. Some people view this book as an allegorical view of Christ's love for his
The memoir of Old Elizabeth presents a rare and important slave narrative in which the stories of African American women intersect with the experiences of African American people in roles of religious leadership. Elizabeth broke many of societies conventions at the time by preaching and holding religious meeting despite being woman. Her religious work was met with backlash from the church and from many other people who did not accept the idea of a woman leading religious services, yet she continued to practice until her health would no longer allow for it. This is unusual as it spends most of the narrative on the time after she was free rather than focusing on the time that she was enslaved the way that many slave narratives do.