On the Road with the Mater Dolorosa: An Exploration of Mother-Son Discourse Performance
In this essay, a collection of six liturgical poems (two anonymous Hebrew poems, an anonymous Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poem, two memre by Pseudo-Ephrem, and a kontakion by Romanos) provide a basis for examining depictions of maternal grief over the immanent or imagined death of a son. The depictio...
| Published in: | Journal of early Christian studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
[2016]
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| In: |
Journal of early Christian studies
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Ephraem Syrus 306-373
/ Romanus, Melodos 485-562
/ Hebrew language
/ Aramaic language
/ Poetry
/ Grief
/ Loss (Motif)
/ Son
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| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KBL Near East and North Africa NBE Anthropology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In this essay, a collection of six liturgical poems (two anonymous Hebrew poems, an anonymous Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poem, two memre by Pseudo-Ephrem, and a kontakion by Romanos) provide a basis for examining depictions of maternal grief over the immanent or imagined death of a son. The depictions of grief in these poems reveal social ideals around mourning, cultural assumptions about how grieving was gendered, and rhetorical-performative techniques that shaped how the synagogue and church communities would have received and experienced these works. Jochebed, the mother of Moses; Sarah, the mother of Isaac; and Mary, the mother of Jesus model different responses to the loss of a son. The poems also depict the sons' expectations of and responses to their mothers' grief. The explicit and implicit dialogues in these poems can be understood as a form of ethopoiacharacter creation through speechwhich, in the liturgical context, functioned to provide a cathartic outlet for the grief of the men and women in attendance. |
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| ISSN: | 1086-3184 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of early Christian studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/earl.2016.0021 |