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Head Hunting: 'Judith' On the Cutting Edge of Knowledge

University of Amsterdam, Theory of Literature

The story of Judith is one of those biblical stories that Western culture has been eager to adopt. It is an exciting story because Judith is a national heroine, but frightening for men, using her sexual attraction to lure her foe. Owing to the conflict of loyalties the story poses, it was often used in the history of art and literature to project misogyny and gynophobia. In this paper an attempt is made to see the story as intriguing, indeed important, for reasons that are not contingent upon the distribution of loyalties. Instead, the story's ambiguities and questionings concern issues of knowledge: certainty and perception, clarity and objectivity are challenged. Starting from the biblical phrase 'and his head was missing', the implications of the story for modern Western epistemology are explored through close readings of a number of Renaissance paintings on Judith by Caravaggio and Artemesia Gentileschi.

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