Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.52.1.3
The Poetic Image of Garden and Woman in Marko Marulić’s Biblical Epyllion Susanna
Anica Bilić
orcid.org/0000-0002-6162-7582
; Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, Centar za znanstveni rad u Vinkovcima
Sažetak
Marko Marulić incorporated descriptive ornaments into the biblical narrative Daniel saves Susanna, originating from the Old Testament Book of Daniel (Daniel 13), with the subtitle Historija od Susane, hćerke Helkije i žene Joakinove (Story of Susanna, daughter of Helkias and wife of Joachim), as his author’s contribution to the epyllion Susanna and to the Renaissance ideal of a woman’s and nature’s beauty, harmony and balance. In the interpretation of the biblical epyllion Susanna by Marko Marulić, the point of origin is a poetic image of a woman and a garden, created from the topos of locus amoenus, Eden and hortus conclusus, and a specific Renaissance garden. By implementing theoretical groundwork of the phenomenology of imagination or Gaston Bachelard’s elements or Michel Foucault’s spatial concept of heterotopy, Joachim’s garden is analyzed as a happy and universal heterotopy, a border of the natural and societal, intimate and public space, and water, as a material element within it and as the hormone of imagination, enhances its image and lifts up the suppressed image of the bathing woman as a favorite poetic image, with a link to the symbolism of feminine power and the power of water, inspirational to the male fantasy and stirring up erotic desire and lust, which would ultimately disturb the idyll and deharmonize the state of happiness. The idyllic image, dis-enchanted in this way, activates axiological and ethical reading and critical thinking about the impurity of physical lust from the aspect of Christian moral teaching, as well as Roman and Croatian customary family law. The aim is to analyze Renaissance poetic images of woman and garden, thereby demonstrating their imaginative potential, through which they entice the recipient to creatively participate in the act of imagination and the creation of meaning of the literary work, and to assign imaginable connotations to the denotative aspect of reading. Using the analytical method, it is established that the description of the Renaissance garden and the deified woman is not merely a decorative background, but is also functionally embedded into the narrative flow, in order to emphasize the ugliness of sexual violence and slander, which disturb the idyll of cultivated nature, the family idyll and the dignity of the woman as a passive victim. In conclusion, it is established that the Renaissance images of female beauty, combined with virtue, as well as the idyllic garden as a segment of cultivated nature, provide a contrast to the ugliness of sin, and the meaning of Marulić’s Susanna can be observed in her ‘beautiful and honest face’, i.e. a Neoplatonic vision of beauty and goodness, and the Christian condemnation of violence.
Ključne riječi
poetic image; Renaissance; garden; locus amoenus; hortus conculusus; heterotopy; woman’s beauty
Hrčak ID:
347754
URI
Datum izdavanja:
1.4.2026.
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