Poets, Prophets, and Texts in Play

Francis Landy is widely known for his literary readings of prophetic and poetic texts in the Hebrew Bible that revolve around sensitivity to the complexity of language, the fragility of meaning, and the interplay of texts, often returning to the themes of love and beauty, in both the human and the natural world. In this volume, Landy's colleagues and students engage with such texts, issues, and themes using a variety of hermeneutical strategies. In Part 1, Poets and Poetry, some essays address the nature of poetic language itself, while others play with themes of love, beauty, and nature in specific poetic texts. The essays in Part 2, Prophets and Prophecy, consider prophets and prophecy from a number of interpretive directions, moving from internal literary analysis to the reception of these texts and their imagery in a range of ancient and modern contexts. Those in Part 3, on the other hand, Texts in Play, take more recent works (from Shakespeare to Tove Jansson's Moomin books for children) as their point of departure, developing conversations between texts across the centuries that enrich the readings of both the ancient and modern pieces of literature.