Domestic Disputations at the Dung Heap: A Reception History of Job and His Wife in Christianity of the West

• Main Author: Low, Katie
• Other Authors: Leo Perdue
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: Texas Christian University 2011
• Subjects: Brite Divinity School
• Online Access: http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-03232011-140145/

Job's wife speaks only once to her husband when she tells him to "Curse God and die," and then she nearly disappears from the story. Why then does Job's wife figure so prominently in art and literature of Job when she is clearly a minor character in the biblical book? The dissertation "Domestic Disputations at the Dung Heap: A Reception History of Job and his Wife in Christianity of the West" investigates how the brief appearance of an unnamed wife in the Bible has made a large impact on the imaginations of readers. The study tracks the marriage of Job and his wife as people have understood it down through the ages with methodological focus on reception history as a sub-set of cultural studies, and with gender theory as a structure of criteria. The thesis is that people receive/use Job and his wife in order to make claims about their own ideal constructs of gender within their broader historical socio-religious situations as Christians. The dissertation covers Job and his wife in a variety of sources: early Christian art, medieval theology and the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, Renaissance art and early modern literature, and the art of William Blake.