picture of Karin Huegel

Cover The Books of Samuel

Abstract:

Karin Hügel, "Queer Appropriations of David and Goliath: Artistic Self-portraits as Defeated Pederasts".

The Jewish reception of the biblical narrative of David's victory over Goliath offers homoerotic reinterpretations of this story. The relationship between Goliath and David is read through an erotic lens as the relation of a grown-up man with a beautiful young man. The appropriations of David as victor over the pederast Goliath in works of visual art are well-known. The point is that Goliath is not wounded by a stone in these interpretations, as the description in the Hebrew Bible in the first Book of Samuel in chapter 17 implies, but by the sight of David's excellent beauty. Several sculptors and painters from the Early Renaissance to the present time identify with the pederast Goliath: for example, Donatello and Caravaggio.

  • Karin Hügel, "Queere Aneignungen von David und Goliat. Künstlerische Selbstporträts als besiegte Knabenliebhaber", in: Walter Dietrich/Cynthia Edenburg/Philippe Hugo (eds.), The Books of Samuel: Stories – History – Reception History, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 284, Peeters, Leuven 2016, 541-553.

    The Books of Samuel: Stories – History – Reception History, BETL 284, 2016.
    XXIV-650 pages,
    ISBN: 978-90-429-3371-2,
    paperback,
    EUR 96,00.

    Table of contents of The Books of Samuel: Stories – History – Reception History

    I gave a lecture on my queer appropriations of David and Goliath at the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense LXIII at the Catholic University of Leuven on July 31, 2014.

  • Donatellos David

    Donatello's bronze David, ca. 1440, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

    Donatellos David

    Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath, 1609/1610, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

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