Voices and Visages: Mary Magdalene's Afterlives in Text and Art
Open Access
- Author:
- Geraths, Cory Paul
- Graduate Program:
- Communication Arts and Sciences
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 09, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Michele Kennerly, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Michele Kennerly, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Rosa Eberly, Committee Member
Jeremy Engels, Committee Member
Cheryl Glenn, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Mary Magdalene
Rhetoric
Historiography
Feminism
Art
Afterlives
Christianity
Communication
Graphic
Apocryphal
Gnostic - Abstract:
- This dissertation is a feminist rhetorical recovery of Mary Magdalene’s diffuse and divergent histories of reception in early Christian texts and the fine arts. I map Mary’s vibrant afterlives through careful readings of New Testament and the apocryphal Gospel of Mary, as well as through the rhetorical viewing of Renaissance, Baroque, and Contemporary painting. Turning to both text and art, this project shows, reveals a plethora of Magdalenian rhetorics. Mary, I argue, is deserving of a place within the pantheon of early Christian rhetors. This project unfolds over an introduction and four content chapters. The former offers a survey of Mary Magdalene’s treatment in the New Testament gospels, and argues for the necessity of a diachronic and multimodal recovery of her rhetorical histories of reception. Building from the work of feminist historians of rhetoric, chapter one details a new method and methodology for rhetorical recovery—“graphic historiography.” Graphic historiography embraces the etymological expansiveness of “historiography,” and calls upon historians to engage with painted manifestations of rhetoric and their ekphrastic descriptions in art museums. This chapter charts four specific methods of graphic rhetorical recovery: archaeological dwelling, field work, archival research, and digital curation. Chapter two offers an apocryphal (that is, non-canonical or marginal) rereading of Mary Magdalene’s depictions in both the New Testament gospels and in Renaissance and Baroque art. This analysis reveals five primary expressions of Mary’s rhetoric: mourning, revelation, conversion, penitence, and hermeneut. Chapter three offers a similar treatment of Mary’s diverse rhetorics, albeit through an analysis of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary and twentieth- and twenty-first-century art. Looking to these sources reveals three additional strands of Mary’s rhetorical afterlife: reflection, reclamation, and (re)invention. The dissertation concludes with a fourth content chapter, which explores the pedagogical potential of art in rhetoric’s classrooms. This chapter contributes to ongoing discussions of Quintilian and the Institutio Oratoria, the progymnasmata, and archival research. After engaging with these conversations, the project closes with the outlining of a six-part, semester-long assignment called “Curating Rhetoric’s Artistic Archives.” Taken together, these chapters reveal the robust and diverse expressions of Mary Magdalene’s rhetoric over the centuries, and encourage rhetoricians to engage with the power of archaeology, apocryphal texts, and art as sources for rhetorical recovery.