Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden Of Earthly Delights : the Senses and the Soul in Dream and Awakening

It is wonderful: you will be able to understand The Garden of Earthly Delights! Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting is explained here as an enjoyable theological essay. The painter did not create a ‘Find the Hidden Objects’ puzzle at all, because even the smallest detail has its function and its precisely appropriate placement. The emphasis will be on a dream and what can be learnt from it; on the senses and on perception, and on imagination and on the commandment to control the senses. The soul and its mystical marriage to God are integral to the discussion as well as human sexuality both within marriage and for its own sake. Furthermore, we will explore self-knowledge, humility and pride, free will and grace, and God’s love. Its converse can be found in Hell in an ugly polemic employing a catalogue of anti-Jewish motifs. To unravel the meaning of the Garden of Earthly Delights is not to detract from the painting’s enchantment. Its aesthetic and intellectual beauty will, in fact, fascinate even more than before because of the ambition of its discovered allegorical meaning. Copyright Title Page Table of Contents 1. Preliminary Note 2. A Wheel of Senses 3. Perception as Conception/Procreation 4. Instruction for Understanding and Behaviour 5. At the Foundation of Creation 6. Adam’s Dream and the Emphasis on Two Weddings 7. The Commission 8. Evil Has a Double Meaning and Is Hidden 9. Paradise as locus amoenus, locus amoenus as Paradise 10. A Circle, Three Zones and Four Triangles 11. Gazing and Holding 12. A Brussels Kamasutra? 13. Mystical Love? 14. ‘Tasting Wisdom’ 15. The Staging of a Dream 16. The Great Sinner 17. Which Dreams is she Dreaming? 18. A Custodian, Doctor for the Soul? 19. Portal and Underground 20. A Pair of Lovers? 21. Lust and Marriage 22. Black but Beautiful 23. In the Inner Orchard 24. Deformation of the Soul and the World 25. Self-knowledge 26. Divine Assistance, Grace, and Will 27. Senses and Mind 28. Mirror of Virgins and The Strife of Love in a Dream 29. Four Wasted Rings 30. Heavenly and Earthly Love 31. Chaos with the Beast-Man 32. Add iniquity unto their Iniquity 33. May they be Blotted out of the Book of Life 34. Further anti-Jewish Motifs 35. False Witness Punished 36. Trapped? Assessment of Hell 37. Church and Synagogue, Mind and Carnality 38. History and Stages of the Soul 39. Who Seals the Contracts of Hell? 40. Who Squandered the Rings? 41. Methodologies 42. A Difficult Birth 43. For Whom was it Painted? 44. For the Duration of a Heartbeat Notes Picture credits