ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way in which elements of the Daughter Zion narrative become embedded within two new and self-standing nuptial allegories which take a rather different approach to the value of fear and pain within the spiritual life. It focuses on two texts that are predicated on the notion of Christ and the human soul being united in marriage, and that both invoke the image of the bridegroom being wounded with the arrow of love. The chapter also examines the ways in which motifs from the earlier Daughter Zion allegories have been redeployed in the fifteenth century in new and more overtly didactic literary contexts. Konrads Büchlein von der geistlichen Gemahelschaft (KBG) and Christus und die minnende Seele (CMS) both emphasize discipline, ascetic practices, and the risks of damnation in a way that is largely alien to the Daughter Zion allegory as originally conceived, or even as adapted into German in the fourteenth century.
