Review: The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist, by Thomas Arentzen

Thomas Arentzen's new book, revised from his 2014 Lund University dissertation, investigates the portrayal of the Virgin Mary in the poetry of Romanos, the sixth-century Christian who wrote several dozen metered works on various topics. It joins an expanding scholarly conversation about the poet that has emerged in force in the last decade. Georgia Frank, Leena M. Peltomaa, and Sarah Gador-Whyte have contextualized and interpreted the corpus of Romanos, particularly its treatment of Mary, as has Derek Krueger, who has co-authored work with Arentzen and edits the series in which this book appears. Arentzen frames his contribution as a corrective to two other approaches he discerns among prior studies of Mary's...