Studies in Near Eastern-Western Literary Relations

The Land-as-Woman is one of the most deeply rooted metaphorical systems in both Middle-Eastern and Western cultures, used to support the discourses of colonialism and nationalism throughout history, most notably the conquest of the Americas. The metaphor has its origins in the Hebrew Bible, where the male prophet-poet, ventriloquizing a male God, addresses Zion as his beloved – but more often as his unfaithful – wife. The nation’s monotheism is figured as a woman’s monogamy; its idolatry - as adultery and whoredom (zenut). Similarly, in ancient Greek culture the field is figured as a woman’s sexual organs. Using cognitive metaphor theory, we will explore the overdetermined history of this trope and its various metonymic extensions (land, city, nation in the target domain; wife, widow, mother, daughter in the source domain). We will focus, however, on what happens when modern women poets reclaim the metaphor, upending a tradition that views women always as metaphors, never as literal subjects. Does the work of modern women poets who develop a new homoerotics of address to the feminized land queer patriarchal models of conquest and subjugation or collaborate with them? Hebrew poets will include Esther Raab, Leah Goldberg and Dahlia Ravikovitch. Students will contribute poems and critical works from their own literary traditions. Critical readings will include Page duBois, Annette Kolodny, George Lakoff, Anne Mcclintock, Ilana Pardes, Eve Sweetser, and Wendy Zierler.