Darwinism, Genre Theory, and City Laments.

• Author: DOBBS-ALLSOPP, F. W.

Drawing on more sophisticated understandings of Darwinism characteristic of contemporary biology, I address questions about the origins, evolution, and interrelations of literary genres, with specific attention given to Israelite and Mesopotamian city laments.

My approach to genre study and theory is essentially pragmatic and rhetorical in nature. That is, I regard genre as a tool of criticism. In positing a particular literary genre for a given text I assert that the posited genre most fully and precisely captures the tenor of that text, that it results in a more compelling and interesting reading than the genres used in previous critical discussions of the text. [1] Such a commitment to pragmatism also entails, as A. Rosmarin notes, the possibility that the genre analysis of some texts may require a potentially endless process of refinement, correcting, and further deducing of particulars. [2] In the present contribution I return to the general topic of my Weep, O Daughter of Zion--a genre analysis of the city-lament genre in the Hebrew Bible--with the specific aim of enhancing and refining the analysis of genre enacted there. [3] In that study I employed a concept of genre that foregrounded the analogy of family relations. [4] Such an analogy is especially well suited for getting at questions of definition, [5] and it was precisely at the definitional or criterial level that I sought to establish the presence of a city-lament genre in the Bible. The analogy proved helpful in allowing me to show that the Hebrew Bible contains texts (e.g., Lamentations, the "Oracles Against the Nations" in the prophetic literature, and certain of the psalms) which exhibit identifiable and coherent complexes of imagery, themes, motifs, and even poetic devices and structures that are used in compositions about destroyed cities and their sanctuaries and that bear certain strong resemblances to the Mesopotamian genre of city laments. But as with all analogies, the analogy of "family resemblance" does not illuminate everything equally well. In fact, a theory of genre in which the concept of "family resemblance" plays a formative role is not so well suited to address specific questions about the origins, evolution, and interrelations of genres. For such questions, as D. Fishelov compelling ly argues, we must have recourse to a different analogy. Fishelov takes up issues related to "questions of generic evolution and interrelationship" in light of the more sophisticated understandings of Darwinism characteristic of contemporary biology, [6] and it is my intent to utilize this general line of investigation to explore the same issues with respect to the city-lament genre.

The need to attend more intentionally and with more sophistication to questions about the origins and evolution of the Israelite city-lament genre and the nature of its interrelations with the Mesopotamian city laments becomes most apparent in the comments of some of the reviewers of my earlier study. Both W. C. Bouzard, Jr. [7] and A. Berlin, [8] for example, in mostly sympathetic reviews understand me to be making a strong case for the independence and even the "indigenous" nature of an Israelite genre. Bouzard at one point writes of my attempts "to maintain the idea that Israel's city laments represent a separate indigenous generic phenomenon." [9] And Berlin summarizes the central thrust of my thesis as positing "the existence of an Israelite genre of city laments which, although probably influenced by the Mesopotamian genre, stood independent from it." [10] While it was most definitely my intention to show that the Israelite genre had an integrity of its own, especially as it thrived on Israelite soil, I did not mean to stress the Israelite genre's independence to the degree that these scholars (especially Bouzard) suggest. At least part of the confusion results from what, in hindsight, was a poor choice of terminology. I used the adjective "native" several times to describe the city-lament genre in Israel and Judah. Etymologically, it is quite obvious why some might take this to mean "indigenous" (a term I did not use), especially in light of my interest in accentuating those themes, motifs, and imagery I took to be characteristically Israelite and in light of my having raised (but only raised [11]) the possibility of the genre's polygenesis in two different literary traditions. I took the term "native" from D. R. Hillers, [12] who argues that one of the "other currents of native Israelite literature" on which Lamentations draws is "a city-lament tradition within Israel." Neither Hillers nor I, of course, meant to deny a specific and real connection to the Mesopotamian genre. To the contrary, the fact of s uch a relationship provides for both of us a point of departure. Hillers writes very specifically that he supposes "that the resemblances between the Mesopotamian laments and the biblical book of Lamentations are evidence of some kind of connection." [13] And one of my principal conclusions, though stated perhaps too cautiously, was "that the two genres had some type of closer contact." [14] In fact, I listed a whole set of features, chief among which is the personified city motif, which makes it hard to deny the fact of some kind of connection. And though I stressed the difficulty of determining the precise nature of this connection, I did allow for the likelihood "that the direction of the influence is from Mesopotamia to Israel." [15] That is, as I put it, "the Mesopotamian laments are clearly the oldest and best attested city laments," and therefore "it is likely that some generic influence may have radiated out from Mesopotamia." [16]

Let me put this unequivocally and most emphatically: based on current knowledge (which can always change in light of new archaeological discoveries), the city-lament genre appears to have originated in Mesopotamia. And though I was perhaps overcautious and far too equivocating on the issue of origins in my earlier study, nothing I said there is finally incompatible with this position. What I meant by the term "native" (and what I take Hillers to mean by it as well) was nothing less and nothing more than that we have evidence for knowledge of city laments in Israel for a period of at least two hundred years and that as encountered...