"This ground-breaking study explores the structure and literary figures in the biblical Hebrew poetry of the Song of Songs. These figures include simile, metaphor, paronomasia, parallelism, sensory cluster, fertility language - flowers, spices, and plants as well as animals and images of wealth - and many other literary devices, delineated but not limited to how they also appear in classical literature as defined by Aristotle, Quintilian, and others. This biblical poetry is also compared to the Greek poetry of Sappho and Egyptian love poetry as well as to the Ramayana and the Kamasutra. The Song of Songs is discreetly yet firmly interpreted as erotic literature."--BOOK JACKET.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [349]-360) and index.