Reimaging the Magdalene

Regular price €102.99
A01=Dr. Siobhán Jolley
A01=Siobhán Jolley
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
apocrypha
Apostola Ecclesiae
art
Author_Dr. Siobhán Jolley
Author_Siobhán Jolley
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HRC
Category=HRCF
Category=HRCG
Category=HRCV4
Category=HRLC
Category=QRMF
Category=QRMF14
Category=QRVC
Category=QRVP7
COP=United Kingdom
Counter-Reformation
decency
decentring
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_isMigrated=2
extracanonical
forthcoming
hermeneutics
image
Language_English
liberating
liberative
Magdalene
margins
Mary
Mythologising
PA=Not yet available
painting
power
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Forthcoming
reception theory
sexuality
softlaunch

Product details

  • ISBN 9780567714268
  • Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
  • Publication Date: 20 Mar 2025
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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This book offers a new, intersectional feminist approach to utilising and interpreting the visual reception of Mary Magdalene. Through employment of Liberative Reception Criticism, which develops traditional reception theory in line with liberative hermeneutics, via the insights of intersectionality as critical theory, Siobhan Jolley provides a novel means of analysing how women, and particularly the Magdalene, are imaged in Christian tradition.

Knowledge of both the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene and her cultural reception continue to be dominated by long-discredited ideas about her life and sexuality, which bear the hallmarks of their development under patriarchy. Through close study of relevant biblical texts and extracanonical accounts, and a comprehensive survey of the Magdalene’s presentation in the Italian art of the Counter-Reformation, Jolley demonstrates that the patriarchal portrayal of the Magdalene as a sexualised penitent and mournful witness to the resurrection is sustained by its mythic attachment to biblical text. Rather than adopting the same tropes uncritically, we are invited to look again at artworks and related texts in order to explore what happens when the influence of patriarchy is actively and intersectionally resisted. Ultimately, the Magdalene is transformed from a reductive and patriarchally mythologised figure to a multidimensional character, who is relatable and liberative as an exemplar.

Siobhán Jolley is Lecturer in Christian Studies at the University of Manchester, and Visiting Lecturer in Christianity and the Arts at King’s College, London. From 2022-2024, she was the Howard and Roberta Ahmanson Research Fellow in Art and Religion at the National Gallery.