About the Author

Francis X. Clooney, S.J. is Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at the Harvard Divinity School, where he also directs the Center for the Study of World Religions. A Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Society of Jesus, he is the author of numerous books, including Beyond Compare: St. Francis de Sales and Sri Vedanta Desika on Loving Surrender to God (2008) and Comparative Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Borders (2010). In 2010, Clooney was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

Reviews

"Clooney's engaging style draws readers into two culturally, temporally, and linguistically different ancient poetic worlds. This humane and beautiful book is a work of great scholarship." - Gavin Flood, University of Oxford "An unquenchable longing and passion of the lover in God's absence is observed, even intensely felt by the reader, when Clooney juxtaposes passages of the Song of Solomon with parallel passages of the Tiruvaymoli, or the Holy Word. The effect of this is as powerful as it is poignant: the reader not only observes lovers within these two traditions desperately seeking their divine beloved, but the reader is drawn ever more into this new community of divine mystery and secretiveness that Clooney so eloquently creates in his work. The reader is drawn into the theopoetics and theodrama that brings out a desperate and intense longing that lovers of God from both traditions share. Clooney's work contributes to a religious 'pluralism' that reveals something of a newer theological moment, a spark of revelational power that enters into fresh understandings of the intimate depths of divinity." - Graham M. Schweig, Christopher Newport University