The Poetics of Suffering in Lamentations and the Crafting of Moral Response (Paper Presented at the SBL Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX) (original) (raw)
The imagery of war and suffering in Lamentations presents many issues for contemporary readers. Though interpreters may commend the book for its honest testimony, its vivid descriptions of suffering children (2:11–12, 20–22; 4:10; 5:11) and troubling choice of metaphors (e.g., 1:8–10; cf. 2:4; 5:11) often disturb its interpreters, and the book has been criticized for such features. Many have claimed that these images foster compassion and just action within its readership, but in these assessments, the connection between viewing (or imagining) images of suffering and responding ethically is often assumed more than demonstrated. This paper seeks to explore that relationship more closely. It will ask what the book of Lamentations wants the reader to “do” or the kind of person its discourse seeks to produce with special consideration of the book’s imagery: What violent content does the book “show” the reader? How do the poetics of this imagery—how the poet frames these scenes—impinge upon the reader and form certain ethical responses rather than others? This paper will address these and related questions in a comparative manner, by drawing upon the fields of photography ethics and visual culture theory, specifically as it pertains to the complicated moral response elicited by images of human suffering. Many in these fields describe the distance generated between the viewer and the sufferer when the former “sees” the latter in image media. They also problematize the assumed connection between viewing images of suffering, feeling compassion for the depicted sufferer, and responding with ethical action. In light of these findings, this paper will thus examine how violence imagery figures in Lamentations, how this imagery may elicit complex (moral) responses from readers, and how the poetry might guide the reader beyond mere viewing into critical examination conducive of moral disposition and action.
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