Vol. 1, No. 1, 2005
From Hortulus
Table of Contents
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- "Letter from the Editor
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"'Thanne Have I Gete of Yow Maistrie': Power and the Subversive Body in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath,"
by Laura Alexander
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have long fascinated scholars who explore representations of gender, marriage, and power within this canonical work. This article argues that the Wife represents more than a transversal of power in marriage from men to women based on sexual prowess, but rather the Prologue and the Tale can be read as a proposal for a redefinition of marriage and the power distribution within it.
- "The Music of Dante’s Purgatorio," by Mimi Stillman
Dante's Inferno guides the reader along with Dante the pilgrim and Virgil through hell, purgatory, and heaven through parodies of and numerous analogies to music and musical instruments. This article analyses how the various psalms, hymns and songs in Dante's masterpiece offer a musical sub-structure that reflects and reinforces Dante's moral message.
- "Seeing the World with the Eyes of God: The Vision Implied by the Medieval Icon'" by Clemena Antonova
Icons have the ability to convey a sense of the divine to even the most agnostic of observers. This article sheds light on the transcendental nature of icons by arguing that the spatial construction of iconic images allows the viewer to experience a form of divine vision that transcends the human constraints of time and space. Thus the experience of viewing an icon becomes a transcendental experience in itself.
