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ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516). In real life he was quite an ordinary fellow I’m told, a city father who enjoyed taking care of the costumes of the yearly carnival. Of course everything was religious then. —Dutch novelist Janwillem van de Wetering

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ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

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  1. Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516) In real life he was quite an ordinary fellow I’m told, a city father who enjoyed taking care of the costumes of the yearly carnival. Of course everything was religious then. —Dutch novelist Janwillem van de Wetering Bosch seemed to me to be drawing his monstrously beautiful creatures from life, matter-of-factly lining up all hell to sit for him, as brisk a realist as my uncles. There is no such place, but this is how it must be. How did he know . . .? —Peter Beagle ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  2. Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516) Bosch, Hieronyrnus. His family name was van Aken, suggesting origins in the German town of Aachen; the name by which he is known refers to the Dutch town of 's-Hertogenbosch, where he was born (presumably c1450), lived and worked. Bosch is celebrated for panel pictures, both large and small, fantastically peopled with a nightmare world of shifting forms and inconsistent scale, elegantly painted with sometimes lurid colour effects. The effects of metamorphosis—beings changing from one order of existence to another—recall those of Gothic manuscript decorations or Italian grotesques, but are far more gruesome and threatening. The meticulous techniques of oil painting in translucent layers or glazes . . . evolved by Jan van Eyck are utilized by Bosch to give a semblance of reality to his creations, deployed within landscapes that stretch as far as the eye can see, or across night scenes fitfully illuminated by the fires of Hell or Armaggedon. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  3. Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516) Fanciful theories have grown up around these paintings in the 20th century, from psychoanalytical explanations to hypotheses of Bosch's allegiance to magic, alchemy or a secret heretical sect. But it can be demonstrated that these pictures were designed to impart quite orthodox moral and spiritual truths, and that their monstrous visual imagery often simply translates into pictorial form verbal puns and metaphors, the linguistic imagery of proverbs, sermons and popular devotional literature. It is probable that Bosch's most dreamlike allegories (such as the large triptychs of the Garden of Earthly Delights and the Haywain) were painted for lay patrons—Burgundian nobles at the courts of Brussels and Malines—who delighted in intricately crafted and refined works of art and craft, but required also a moralizing message. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  4. Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516) His equally nightmarish, but more conventional Last Judgement triptych, may have been an actual altarpiece, or intended for an institution such as a hospital . . . . Bosch's pictorial inventions spawned innumerable successors, among them Pieter *Bruegel's painted allegories and the prints after them; his influence can be traced through the 17th century. We should be aware, however, that these paintings do not represent Bosch,s entire oeuvre, which included striking but less enigmatic representations of human folly (e.g. the early Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins . . .) and, in well over half of his extant pictures, traditional Christian subjects, especially episodes of the Passion of Christ ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  5. Se7en (David Fincher, 1995) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Seven Deadly Sins

  6. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath

  7. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed (Avarice)

  8. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy

  9. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride

  10. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony

  11. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth

  12. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust

  13. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque Christ Carrying the Cross

  14. The Ship of Fools ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  15. Death and the Miser ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  16. The House of Ill Fame ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  17. The House of Ill Fame (detail) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  18. The Haywain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  19. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Haywain—Left “Paradise”

  20. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Haywain: Center

  21. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Haywain—Right: “Hell”

  22. The Temptation of Saint Anthony ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  23. The Temptation of Saint Anthony (left panel) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  24. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Temptation of Saint Anthony (center panel)

  25. The Temptation of Saint Anthony (right panel) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  26. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  27. The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  28. The Garden of Earthly Delights (left panel) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  29. The Garden of Earthly Delights (Central Panel) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  30. The Garden of Earthly Delights (right panel) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  31. The Creation of the World (from The Garden of Earthly Delights) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  32. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  33. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  34. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  35. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  36. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  37. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  38. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  39. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  40. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  41. Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  42. The Last Judgment ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  43. The Last Judgment (left panel) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  44. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Last Judgment (center panel)

  45. The Last Judgment (right panel) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

  46. Paradise and Hell ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

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