Más allá del Lenguaje. La metáfora como recurso expresivo en el Cantar de los Cantares

Abstract

The starting point of this paper is the old debate on which kind of interpretation
is more appropriate for the Song of Songs, namely, literal or allegorical, and to
what extent. Treating the poem as a literary work and letting it speak for itself,
metaphor emerges as the main expressive resource referring to a multi-dimensional
reality. The analysis of metaphor in the Song of Songs, based on selected
samples, reveals highly developed metaphoric speech in the poem, with images
accumulating and interacting inmultiple, concurrent andmutually enriching levels
ofmeaning. Behind this complex intertwining ofmetaphors there emerges the
main referent for the book as a whole. Metaphor, then, appears as a particularly
adequate means of articulating both anthropological and theological discourse.