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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lieber, Laura Suzanne 1972- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press [2016]
In: Journal of early Christian studies
Year: 2016, Volume: 24, Issue: 2, Pages: 265-291
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Ephraem Syrus 306-373 / Romanus, Melodos 485-562 / Hebrew language / Aramaic language / Poetry / Grief / Loss (Motif) / Son
IxTheo Classification:CD Christianity and Culture
KBL Near East and North Africa
NBE Anthropology
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
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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 ethopoia—character creation through speech—which, in the liturgical context, functioned to provide a cathartic outlet for the grief of the men and women in attendance.
ISSN:1086-3184
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of early Christian studies
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1353/earl.2016.0021