In naming biblical books as literary precedents, Butler did not specify that canonical embarrassment to the pious known as The Song of Solomon or The Canticle of Canticles, but the Old Testament does contain it, nevertheless, and its imagery shows a lover's graphic attention to the neck, breasts, and skin tones of the beloved. To explain the presence of such erotica in the sacred writings, theologians must see it as an image of the love of God for Israel, or the love of Christ for the church. Down through western literary tradition, there have been recurrent connections between the intensity of human-tohuman sexual love and the divine love for the human being. Always, whether in the writings of mystics such as St.

Theresa of Avila, the bawdy of Chaucer's Wife of Bath, the comic portrayals of lovers in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (c.1600), or Butler's They...