University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 5-1994 Representing the Biblical Judith in Literature and Art: An Intertextual Cultural Critique Peggy L. Curry University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Curry, Peggy L., "Representing the Biblical Judith in Literature and Art: An Intertextual Cultural Critique" (1994). Open Access Dissertations. 725. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/725 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REPRESENTING THE BIBLICAL JUDITH IN LITERATURE AND ART: AN INTERTEXTUAL CULTURAL CRITIQUE A Dissertation Presented by PEGGY~ CURRY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 1994 English Department © Copyright by Peggy Louise Curry 1994 All Rights Reserved REPRESENTING THE BffiLICAL JUDITH IN UTERATURE AND ART: AN INTER1EXTUAL CULTURAL CRITIQUE A Dissertation Presented by PEGGY L. CURRY Peter Elbow, Member £7£ ~ ¥? Vincent DiMarco, Chairman English Department ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many scholars and artists have contributed to this study of Judith and I am indebted to them. I would like to thank Shelley Reed for inspiring me with her art and giving me permission to use her Judith portrait in my work. I am grateful to Princeton University Press for permission to reproduce the photographs found in Mary Garrard's book, Artemisia Gentileschi: The lmqge ofthe Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art. I am also grateful for permissions to reproduce the other works of art found in the Art Index by: The Tate Gallery of London, the Scala/Art Resource of New York, Phaidon Press Limited, London; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Albertina Graphics Collection, Vienna; the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Niirnberg; the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Abbeville Press, New York; Monsieur Poumeyrol and M. Philipe Comte of Pau and Robert Lightbown of Kilkenny. I am indebted to John Morytko of Westfield State College for many long hours of work in reproducing the photos for the Art Index. To / Nicholas Mosley I am grateful for his book and his correspondence with me. Thanks to Charles Kay Smith, whose enthusiasm was essential to sustaining my tenacity; to Peter Elbow for his influence in encouraging my voice, and to Elizabeth Petroff for her outstanding scholarship on medieval women writers. I am also indebted to the excellent staff of the University of Massachusetts library, the Sofia Smith Collection, and the art and music libraries of both the University of Massachusetts and Smith College. To Mary, Patti and John I give my very great affection for understanding my need to lift up the sword. lV ABSTRACT REPRESENTING THE BIBLICAL JUDITH IN LITERATURE AND ART: AN INTERTEXTUAL CULTURAL CRITIQUE MAY 1994 PEGGY L. CURRY, B.A., WESTFIELD STATE COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Charles Kay Smith The Biblical Judith was written over 2,000 years ago and has become elemental material for artists and writers who struggle with male and female identity. Questions about how beauty has been defined, and who has defined it, as well as the subject of violence as gender-specific territory arise out of the intertextual study of the many re­ workings of Judith and Holofemes' "romance." A rich array of Judith characters ar{developed by artists and writers that reveal cultural values about women. Judith as chaste widow is visually presented in the stone archivolt of the Chartres Cathedral and in Alfred Stevens Victorian painting. She is present in the literature by way of the Old English epic; through Christine de Pizan's allusion in The Book ofthe City ofLadies and Guillaume Salluste du Bartas' epic, La Judit (1574). Christina of Markyate's chaste sexuality is due to her reverence for Mary and Judith articulated in her twelfth century autobiography. In some of Chaucer's Canterbury tales, Judith, like Custance is upheld as the essence of virtue and purity, while in other tales, she appears suspect. v In the tradition of the "woman worthy" or femme forte there is Donatello's statue (ca. 1456-60), Giorgione's sixteenth century painting, and a multitude of works by Botticelli, Mantegna and Cranach. But the strength of the artist and her figures are felt in Artemisia Gentileschi's five paintings of Judith and her cohort, A bra. In studying Artemisia I found myself standing with Mary Garrard, Artemisia, Judith and the Handmaid in a newly formed collage of strength. And soon Shelley Reed, a Cambridge artist, joined us with her revision of Hans Baldung's sixteenth century painting in which she again removes the head and leaves the figure of a woman defending her right to bodily integrity. Judith's sexual provocativeness is a favorite image in art as she becomes stereotyped as the femme fatale. Hans Baldung (1525), Saraceni (1615-20), Valentin de Boulogne (ca. 1626), Vouet (1621), Caravaggio (1598-99), Rubens (1630s), Correggio (1512-14), Vemet (1831) and Klimt (1901, 1909) present us with a riveting portfolio on this theme. Contemporary literature is saturated with the sexual nature of power provoked by Judith and Holofemes. Plays by Hebbel, Giraudoux and Barker provide Judith with a far from heroic finish. But Nicholas Mosley's Judith finds a way to survive with Holofemes: heads do not roll, they connect. Such deep and moving dialogs are formed between art and literature in the study of Judith that I hope the annotated bibliography of 480 works of literature, art and music included in the Appendix invites further study. V1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . IV ABSTRACT ......................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES . IX Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ............................................. 1 II. HISTORY OF THE BIBLICAL STORY OF JUDITH ................. 15 III. THE APOCRYPHAL STORY OF WDITH ......................... 20 IV. JUDITH RETOLD IN THE MIDRASHIM ......................... 28 V. THE OLD ENGLISH JUDITH .................................. 33 VI. CHRISTINA OF MARKYATE .................................. 41 VII. CHRISTINE DE PIZAN AND THE QUERELLE DES FEMMES ..................................... 48 A. The Book ofthe City ofLadies ..~ ............................. 48 VIII. CHAUCER'S USES OF JUDITH ................................. 52 A. The Merchants Tale . 52 B. The Tale ofMelibee . 55 C. The Monk's Tale ........................................... 56 D. The Man ofLaws Tale ...................................... 57 IX. JUDITH IN THE RENAISSANCE GUILLAUME SALLUSTE DU BARTAS, LA JUDIT, TRANS. BY THOMAS HUDSON IN 1584 ................ 63 X. JUDITH IN THE ART OF ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI AND THE SCHOLARSHIP OF MARY GARRARD .......................... 73 XI. SHELLEY REED AND HANS BALDUNG, JUDITH & HOLOFERNES .............................................. 90 VII XII. HORACE VERNET'S JUDITH AND HIS INFLUENCE ON FRIEDRICH HEBBEL ........................................ 97 XIII. FEMALE TRESPASS INTO MALE TERRITORY: FRIEDRICH HEBBEL, JEAN GIRAUDOUX AND HOWARD BARKER REWRITEJUDITH .......................................... 101 A. Introduction . 101 B. Hebbel's Judith . 102 C. Jean Giraudoux's Judith . 109 D. Judith, A Partingfrom the Body by Howard Barker ................ 118 XIV. MOSLEY'S JUDITH: REDEMPTION OF THE COUPLE ............ 124 XV. CONCLUSION ............................................. 143 APPENDICES A. ART INDEX ............................................. 145 B. CHRONOLOGICAL ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JUDITH IN LITERATURE, MUSIC AND ART ............. 172 WORKS CITED .................................................... 197 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 Goya, Judith, ca. 1814, (House of the Deaf Man) from Saturn an Essay on Goya by Andre Malraux with permission of Phaidon Press 146 2 Goya (1746-1828), Judith ...................................... 147 3 Alfred Stevens, Judith, ca. 1848, oil, (courtesy of Tate Gallery, London) ................................................... 148 4 Judith Praying/or Divine Guidance, ca. 1220 ...................... 148 5 Gustav Klimt, Judith and Holofernes I, 1901 . 149 6 Klimt, Judith and Holofernes II, 1909, Venice, Gallery of Modern Art, Frodl 77 . 149 7 The Stomach Dance (ca. 1892-3) by Aubrey Beardsley from Salome by Oscar Wilde .............................................. 150 8 Donatello, Judith and Holofernes, ca. 1456-1460 .................... 151 9 Michelangelo, Judith Slaying Holofernes, pendentive, 1509 Vatican, Sistine Ceiling, Garrard 284, with permission of Princeton University Press ...................................................... 152 /~/ 10 Giorgione, Judith, ca. 1500-1504, oil, Hermitage Gallery, Leningrad, Fiocco 22 .................................................. 153 11 Sandro Boticelli, The Return ofJudith to Bethulia, ca. 1470-1472 ....... 154 12 Boticelli, The Discovery ofthe Dead Holofernes, ca. 1470-1472 ........ 155 13 Lucas Cramich, Judith, after 1537 from Friedlander and Rosenberg Fig. 230, with permission of the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart ............... 156 14 Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading