It has long been noted that the book of Lamentations shares, at least in part, a theological outlook with the prophetic literature that the destruction of Jerusalem was the result of Yahwehs decisive action against the sins of the nation. Too often, however, this relationship has simply been presupposed, or assumed to be a relationship of shared perspective. To date there has been no systematic exploration of how it is that Lamentations accepts and/or modifies the theological outlook of the prophetic literature. In addition, when the theology of the prophets has been discussed in relation to Lamentations, there has been a tendency to group all the prophetic books together as if they existed as a homogeneous whole, and shared amongst themselves a singular outlook. This tendency to simplify the theological complexity of the prophetic literature coincides with a similar tendency to reduce the theology of Lamentations to simple, monolithic assertions. Drawing on the literary insights of Mikhail Bakhtin, this study aims to explore in detail the nature of the relationship between Lamentations and the pre-exilic/exilic prophetic literature. Drawing on notions of dialogism, Polyphony and double voicing, the study argues that Lamentations enters i8nto a dialogic relationship with the prophetic literature, a relationship that both affirms and subverts that literature. Central to the acknowledgement of the dialogic interaction between Lamentations and the prophetic literature is the recognition of Lamentations as a multivalent, polyphonic text in which unmerged viewpoints exist in a tension filled relationship.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221613 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | eboase@nd.edu.au, Elizabeth Boase |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Elizabeth Boase |
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