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The distinctive ancient culture of the Seto (south-eastern Estonia) is of special interest, among other things, for its rich lament tradition which survived until the recent past. Unlike the laments of other Balto-Finnic peoples, which are an exclusively solo genre, some Seto laments – all the bridal laments and the funeral laments for a deceased maiden – are performed by a group of lamenters as a kind of polyphonic lamenting song. The unusual practice of choral lamentation raises important questions about the functions and meanings of laments in traditional culture, the specificity of the lament genre as a form of expressive behaviour, and the relationship between the genres of lament and song in Seto culture. This article explores these and some other questions by means of musical analysis of Seto lament tunes and attempts to place the Seto lament tradition in the context of the laments of linguistically and geographically related peoples.

This study shows how the language of lament liberates a woman from a socially constructed murderous identity. By using stylistic analysis and mainly focusing on the method of singing lament, this article shows the possibility of undermining the socially constructed identity of the ancient Greek heroine Medea. As the 19th-century thoughts in England about women acquired the most exacerbated misogynist overtones, the problem for the women artists was a desperate search for a new identity and, thus, for language. Two crucial Victorian poets, Amy Levy and Augusta Webster, turned to Greek mythology to explore the collective cultural constructions, recognized the power of lament as a literary device and used it to provide a new perspective to ancient Greek playwright Euripides’ Medea. They formulated their poem using the linguistic and contextual rules of lamentation, such as interrogative questions, alliteration, assonance, phonetic structuring, highly metaphorical language, wordplay, parallelism and antithesis. Due to the figurative devices and deviant use of language, they made the reader witness the melancholy and mourning of heroin. They got the reader to think that they should reconsider Medea. Thus, this study focuses on the poetic language of Levy and Webster to provide a different angle to the concept of identity and give the reader a better sense of what Medea is all about. This article provides critical insight into the power of the language of lament in the deconstruction of rigid and stable identity. Moreover, it shows the critical role that language and the performance of lament play in the construction of the self-perception of the speaking subject.

This article surveys the imprecatory words in the book of Psalms and examines and questions their place in the faith life of the third decade of the 21st-century world, one that is fraught with the impact of a global pandemic, political uncertainties, and racial injustices. The first section of the article examines the vitriolic words and sentiments found in the Psalter and in other places in the Old and New Testaments. It then suggests that we, as readers of these texts, in the words of Phyllis Trible, wrestle with such words and demand a blessing from them, much as Jacob did at the Jabbok with his mysterious wrestler. The second section of the article discusses various 20th- and 21st-century scholarly and ecclesial understandings of the Psalter’s imprecatory words. Next, the article discusses the form and scriptural status of the Psalter’s imprecatory words, emphasising the poetic and metaphoric characteristics of the Psalter’s words. Finally, the article addresses the ethics and appropriation of the Psalter’s imprecatory words in the 21st century. It concludes that, without the languages of absolute lament against injustice and violence that these biblical words provide, our dialogue with and our cries to God are empty and lifeless.

This article surveys the imprecatory words in the book of Psalms and examines and questions their place in the faith life of the third decade of the 21st-century world, one that is fraught with the impact of a global pandemic, political uncertainties, and racial injustices. The first section of the article examines the vitriolic words and sentiments found in the Psalter and in other places in the Old and New Testaments. It then suggests that we, as readers of these texts, in the words of Phyllis Trible, wrestle with such words and demand a blessing from them, much as Jacob did at the Jabbok with his mysterious wrestler. The second section of the article discusses various 20th- and 21st-century scholarly and ecclesial understandings of the Psalter’s imprecatory words. Next, the article discusses the form and scriptural status of the Psalter’s imprecatory words, emphasising the poetic and metaphoric characteristics of the Psalter’s words. Finally, the article addresses the ethics and appropriation of the Psalter’s imprecatory words in the 21st century. It concludes that, without the languages of absolute lament against injustice and violence that these biblical words provide, our dialogue with and our cries to God are empty and lifeless.

Lament seems to have been universal in the ancient world. As such, it is an excellent touchstone for the comparative study of attitudes towards death and the afterlife, human relations to the divine, views of the cosmos, and the constitution of the fabric of society in different times and places. This collection of essays offers the first ever comparative approach to ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions of lament. Beginning with the Sumerian and Hittite traditions, the volume moves on to examine Bronze Age iconographic representations of lamentation, Homeric lament, depictions of lament in Greek tragedy and parodic comedy, and finally lament in ancient Rome. The list of contributors includes such noted scholars as Richard Martin, Ian Rutherford, and Alison Keith. Lament comes at a time when the conclusions of the first wave of the study of lament-especially Greek lament-have received widespread acceptance, including the notions that lament is a female genre; that men risked feminization if they lamented; that there were efforts to control female lamentation; and that a lamenting woman was a powerful figure and a threat to the orderly functioning of the male public sphere. Lament revisits these issues by reexamining what kinds of functions the term lament can include, and by expanding the study of lament to other genres of literature, cultures, and periods in the ancient world. The studies included here reflect the variety of critical issues raised over the past 25 years, and as such, provide an overview of the history of critical thinking on the subject.

An unusual ancient Greek lament form, hitherto overlooked by students of the subject, displays the following syntax: parallel sentences with verb in initial position (Vi) expressing the loss, followed by the grammatical subject (S). Sometimes the same verb was used in each of the parallel lines. ViS parallelism is a subliterary syntax reflecting a very old style. A number of Greek authors adopted this syntax to represent or allusively echo the form. Examples, although relatively scarce, are spread through a diverse range of ancient literature spanning at least six centuries, from the second century BC to the fourth century AD, with earlier echoes as far back as Homer.

The relationship between popular vernacular Catholicism and the more official liturgical variety has varied over centuries. Following the subjugation of Ireland by the late 17th century, and the institution of anti-Catholic proscriptions, the number of priests available became more restricted. Religious observation subsequently centered on holy days and local sacred sites including healing wells, many of them dedicated to saints. Always central figures in death rituals, women who mourned the dead—“keening women”—were so called because they lamented the dead through a combination of voice and song. We will show how the songs relate to a deep liminal spirituality that existed semi-independently of official Church norms, and how the voice served to establish their position. In the Catholic revival of the late nineteenth century, such forms were ousted by European modes of worship, but persisted at the margins, allowing us insight into their previous vigor.

On the subject of tears Virgil shares the attitude of the intellectuals, who criticize the exasperated and public manifestations of pain, but on the other hand he gives dignity to the suffering of his characters. In the Aeneid, in which this topic finds a great space, crying is the expression of the impotence of men and gods in front of the inexorable fulfillment of Fate, and above all Aeneas appears divided between the need to remain insensitive to tears and the desire to express his human feelings.

Abstract Psalm 120 does not follow the usual form-critical view of the lament. Instead of moving from lament to praise, this psalm begins with thanksgiving and ends with lament. To make sense of Psalm 120, some scholars emphasize the thanksgiving part (v. 1) while viewing the lament (vv. 2-7) as a past recollection of the situation before the thanksgiving. Others opt to highlight the lament, interpreting the thanksgiving as a recollection of a past answer to prayer. This paper demonstrates that Psalm 120 represents in miniature form what we find in Psalms 9/10 and Psalm 40 where the lament is preceded by thanksgiving. It argues that Psalm 120 is a literary composition in which the thanksgiving and lament are deliberately juxtaposed, and in this sequence, to express a sense of the tragic.

The CCLI charts may not reflect it, yet one thing many Christian churches discovered as the pandemic raged across the world (and violence at home and abroad) was the need for songs of sacred lament. Unfortunately, many churchgoers, especially those who identify as practitioners of contemporary Christian worship, have cultivated a gap between the biblical give and take of praise and lament revealed most poignantly in the book of Psalms. This chasm between praise and lament is a problem, as a liturgical discourse about disastrous events is weakened. Churches sing congregational songs of praise in the church, the chorus of ‘what ought to be’. Meanwhile, outside the church, artists in genres as diverse as folk and rap sing the chorus of what frankly ‘is’. For the church to be transformative, it must be grounded in what is (lament) and aiming toward what ought to be (praise). This is the value of the cycle of praise and lament in the church’s liturgy. This article explores the impact of CCM (contemporary Christian music) and praise and worship culture as it laments the loss of lament in Christian worship. The essay articulates the missing sense of ‘Truth’ in contemporary congregational music, as defined by Don Saliers’ Worship Come to Its Senses. The article closes by amplifying emerging Christian songwriters reintroducing lament to contemporary worship.