On the Road with the Mater Dolorosa: An Exploration of Mother-Son Discourse Performance

On the Road with the Mater Dolorosa: An Exploration of Mother-Son Discourse PerformanceJournal of Early Christian StudiesSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/WMLRAPDN/tei

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2024-08-15-04:00

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Laura SuzanneLieberOn the Road with the Mater Dolorosa: An Exploration of Mother-Son Discourse Performancehttp://syriaca.org/cbss/WMLRAPDNhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/WMLRAPDNhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/WMLRAPDNJournal of Early Christian Studies24:22016265-291In this essay, a collection of six liturgical poems (two anonymous Hebrew poems, an anonymous Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poem, two memre by Pseudo-Ephrem, and a kontakion by Romanos) provide a basis for examining depictions of maternal grief over the immanent or imagined death of a son. The depictions of grief in these poems reveal social ideals around mourning, cultural assumptions about how grieving was gendered, and rhetorical-performative techniques that shaped how the synagogue and church communities would have received and experienced these works. Jochebed, the mother of Moses; Sarah, the mother of Isaac; and Mary, the mother of Jesus model different responses to the loss of a son. The poems also depict the sons’ expectations of and responses to their mothers’ grief. The explicit and implicit dialogues in these poems can be understood as a form of ethopoia—character creation through speech—which, in the liturgical context, functioned to provide a cathartic outlet for the grief of the men and women in attendance. Lieber, Laura Suzanne. “On the Road with the Mater Dolorosa: An Exploration of Mother-Son Discourse Performance.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 24:2 (2016): 265–91. Laura Suzanne Lieber, On the Road with the Mater Dolorosa: An Exploration of Mother-Son Discourse Performance, Journal of Early Christian Studies 24:2 (2016): 265–91.EphremEphremiana [Syriac]IV-VII CEMaryPassionPseudo-Ephremdeathemotionsgenderhymnographymotherpoetrywomen