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Russ Hunt

I thought I'd check the obvious source and report what I found just as a way of showing how a wiki entry might look. I checked "Sally Clark" in Wikipedia, and after identifying the right one, found a quick bio -- she arrived in Toronto in 1973 and has worked with a number of theatre companies there, including Theatre Passe Muraille and the Shaw Festival. The wikipedia article is just a "stub" (maybe we could edit it after we've done the work?), but it suggests looking at the [|Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia] and [|The Playwrights Database] for further material. Wikipedia also lists a number of plays, but I'm not sure it's all of them.

Also, if you Google Artemesia Gentileschi you find not only a wikipedia entry, but an ambitious Web site called "[|The Life and Art of Artemisia Gentileschi,]" which you wouldn't want to quote but looks like a great starting point for finding out more about her. I've linked it. It offers this bibliography:
 * 1) Garrard, Mary D. 1989. Artemisia Gentileschi - The Image of The Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art. Princeton University Press.
 * 2) Garrard, Mary D. 1993. [|Artemisia Gentileschi.] Rizzoli Publications Inc., New York.
 * 3) Alexandra Lapierre, 1998 (translated by Liz Heron, 2000), [|Artemisia - a novel], Grove Press, New York.
 * 4) Bissell, R. Ward, 1999. Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art. The Pennsylvania State University Press.
 * 5) Garrard, Mary D. 2001. [|Artemisia Gentileschi around 1622: The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic Identity.] Discovery Arts Series, University of California Press.
 * 6) Vreeland, Susan 2002 The Passion of Artemisia Headline Book Publishing.

Ryan Hebert--- Searching around on Literature Online, I discovered an article by Tina Olsen Lent, where she creates the phrase "Artemesia Fictions" to describe works that have used Artemesia Gentileschi's real life story, but have altered it for their own purposes. //Life WIthout Instruction// is one of such works. Lent says that generally the 'artist fiction' focuses on the formative years of the artists life- and particularly, how loss of innocence, a drive for autonomy, and discovering a place in society develop the character (213). Lent also highlights that scholars who study artists, when the artist is female, tend to examine famous men she is attached to, or compelling aspects of her life. In //Life Without Instruction// this also true- Caravaggio is frequently mentioned though he is not present- and the trial that scandalized Artemesia's life is the conflict the entire play is centered around. -Artemesia was a Baroque woman painter, with many accredited works. Learned painting from her father and Agostino Tassi, a style that manifests Caravaggio. Artemesia became notorious due to a rape trial instigated by her father, sexualized her life's story, and stigmatized her for four hundred years. Lent suggests the Artemesia Fiction is popular because it works with so many contemporary tastes: The tie between creativity and passion, the sensational-ness of the rape trial, associating women's creativity with male influence (214). She mentions several examples, where the writers have used their creative freedom in a way that seems to change how we view the history- such as Agnes Lapierre's film //Artemesia//- which in focusing on the aspect of sexuality, makes the rape scene with Tassi become "a passionate love story, displacing Orazio to the sidelines" (215).

-It's interesting to note that in doing an Artemesia Fiction, Sally Clark deviated from the historical count on two occasions. These are highlighted in an article by Laura Benedetti. In the play, it is said that Tassi also undergoes torture to prove the veracity of his statements at trial- remember, it says that he is the sort of character that it has little effect on. However, as Benedetti explains, in reality, the court decided only to use torture on Artemesia- which reveals the court's attitude towards the case, in a way (48). Secondly, Sally Clark has Tassi confess to Orazio the murder of Caravaggio. Again, Benedetti stresses that this never actually happened.

Benedetti suggests that Sally Clark had Tassi undergo torture in her version, to add more solidty to his character- yet in doing so, it leaves out the court's double-standard towards Artemesia. Furthermore, Benedetti argues that Clark should not have ascribed Caravaggio's death to Tassi, because besides being untrue, Tassi's character is wicked enough through the trial that this statement is unnecessary.

Regardless of Benedetti's opinion, I find Clark's choice to change some of the historical aspects intriguing, and think that we should be aware of them.

Jan Cantin

In my research I attempted to gather a better understanding of the historical period of //Life Withough Instruction// in order to understand the character of Artemisia Gentileschi in her original context, hoping to use this knowledge to better analyse her importance as a historical character for Sally Clark to use as the centre of her work.

I consulted first wikipedia to gather a general view of her career, works and influences, as well as her style and movements in art during her life. From these initial gatherings, I focused in on the significance of her choice of characters in determining where her consistencies with artistic trends and departures created a career which brought her into partonage of the Medici family, and established a career whose products overshadowed the early dramatic events of her adolescence.

From wikipedia, I then reviewed some reference materials on Blackwell to develop a bibliography, and was imediately drawn to a book by Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock entitled //Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology// which itself sought to "escape this disturbing fascination with her life and return her work to its context within a specific time, place and school of painting" (p.21). The authors believed that by only examining this fuller picture of her character, could we fully appreciate her activities as a painter.

The relation between the works of Artemisia and Caravaggio are unmistakable, this much is true. During this period of Baroque art, Caravaggio represented the forerunners of the style's exact manifestations. Indeed, the characters which Artemisia's most famous works depict were popular representations at the time, and her representation of the Jewish heroine, Judith (especially //Judith Decapitating Holofernes//) had already been visited by Caravaggio in a very similarly graphic manner. To simplify this piece as being one which represents her anger towards men is a slight against her skill and contribution, as the later //Judith and her Maidservant With the Head of Holofernes// demonstrates; departing from the violent moment of the story so focused on by Baroque artists, she instead shows the tension of the moments afterwards, during which she must now escape from the camp of the enemy undetected. Artemisia departs from her contemporaries in depicting Judith as decisive in her role as duplicitous traitor.

Artemisia battled against the prejudices of Renaissance Italy throughout her life, but her role in decorating the Painting Gallery at the Casa Buonarroti (built by Michelangelo Buonarroti in honour of his famous uncle, Michelangelo) demonstrates the degree to which she attained acceptance for her skill as a painter, and not just for her dramatised upbringing. Her works contributed to the careers of female painters such as Elisabetta Sirani, and gave a significance to the female figure in art which cannot be overlooked; "intervention in an established and popular genre of female subjects through a contemporary and influential style" (Parker and Polloock, p.24).

Artemisia Gentileschi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_Gentileschi Baroque Art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_art Blackwell link: How Images Got Their Gender: Masculinity and Femininity in the Visual Arts - http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=625/tocnode?query=Artemisia+Gentileschi+pollock&widen=1&result_number=3&from=search&id=g9780631223931_chunk_g978063122393111&type=std&fuzzy=0&slop=1 Pollock, Griselda and Roziska Parker (1981) Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology. New York: Pantheon.

Ben Savoie (I hope I did this right... If you see any issues please e-mail me, hfnln@stu.ca :))

__**What’s the biblical story of Judith?**__ A book of the Old Testament in versions of the Bible based on the Greek Septuagint, Judith is included with the Apocrypha in the Authorized and Revised Standard versions; it does not appear at all in the Hebrew Bible. The work of an unknown author, the book is a fictitious account of the deliverance of Israel from a foreign army by Judith, the devout and beautiful heroine who first beguiled and then beheaded the Assyrian commander Holofernes. The book is dated to the Maccabean period in the 2d century BC. Craven, Tony. 1983. Artistry And Faith In The Book Of Judith. Society Of Biblical Literature. __**And are the characters in this play portrayed accurately?:**__ //Well, there are different accounts on the story of Holofernes, but if we are to take the actual Book of Judith as a reference, then yes, they are portrayed accurately. Here are some of the excerpts I found along with description of the events.// (I stumbled upon this unreal site with all three different versions of the death of Holofernes, it’s really, really extensive, but these following few excerpts break it down nicely.)

Judith willingly accepts the invitation of //Bagoas//(v.14): //'Who am I to refuse my lord? Whatever pleases him I will do at once …'.// One suspects that she had a different "lord" in mind though when saying these things. And she adds, ironically: //'… and it will be a joy to me until the day of my death'.//

Once again Judith prettied herself up whilst her maid went to //Holofernes'// tent and spread out for her mistress on the ground before //Holofernes// the lamb skins that Bagoas had provided (v.15). Enter Judith again, and let the party begin (vv. 16-18):

//Then Judith came in and lay down. Holofernes' heart was ravished with her and his passion was aroused, for he had been waiting for an opportunity to seduce her from the day he first saw her. So Holofernes said to her, 'Have a drink and be merry with us!' Judith said, 'I will gladly drink, my lord, because today is the greatest day in my whole life'.//

And whilst Judith ate and drank simply what her maid had prepared, //Holofernes// became drunker than he had ever been in his whole life (vv. 19-20). With //Bagoas// and the slaves having withdrawn as the party wore on, Judith had her perfect chance. After a prayer for strength (vv. 4-5), she moved into action (vv. 6-10):

//She went up to the bedpost near Holofernes' head, and took down his sword that hung there. She came close to his bed, took hold of the hair of his head, and said, 'Give me strength today, O Lord God of Israel!' Then she struck his neck twice with all her might, and cut off his head. Next she rolled the body off the bed and pulled down the canopy from the posts. Soon afterward she went out and gave Holofernes' head to her maid, who placed it in her food bag.// //[]//

Ang Moore

Judith – Who was she? For the historical Judith character I went to a Jewish Encyclopedia site that gave me more information in regards to who she was. The story of Judith can be found in the Apocryphal version of the scriptures and not the Cannon version that most people are familiar with. Judith is a heroic figure in the Jewish tradition, and as the myth goes, saved her people from the capture and destruction of an enemy people group called the Assyrians. This storytelling form was typically used for house-hold reading, not necessary for teaching the history of the Jewish people.

The events surrounding this story seems to be true as it takes place in a city called “Bethulia”, a place in which the Jewish people were concerned about the advancing enemy. The enemy, the Assyrians, cuts off the water supply in order to capture the city. Judith, a woman who lives in Bethulia gains the trust of the Assyrian captain, Holofernes, and gets close enough to cut off his head and save her people.

Sources Judith - http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=711&letter=J#ixzz0deRFsG3k

--- Whitney Slipp---

For my research I based my searches from the search tool JSTOR. This method was incredibly handy for the question: What is "marriage by capture". I found many articles, but one which stood out tremendously was an article obviously titled "Marriage by Capture" which was part of a collaboration of essays and other journal entries. This article discussed the act of "marriage by capture" and related it to acts such as rape.

By viewing a few Wikipedia pages I found out that “marriage by capture” is an act which is carried out by a man in which he deliberately abducts a woman so that he can marry her. This is deemed as a sex crime and is not a proper marriage tactic. This tactic was sometimes used as a form of elopement in which the couple runs away together and seeks permission later. This method is still used today. Although this may appear as a former act in history according to some researchers this method still takes place in remote areas such as Bama, west of Ile Mandiri. (Barnes 58) R.H. Barnes, a researcher at the University of Oxford, researched the subject and found that this act occurred in many countries. Some of the countries which he researched intimately were Indonesia, the Caribbean, Amazonia, Australia and New Guinea. Although “marriage by capture” is set apart from rape, pillage, slave raiding, or the actual selling of women, it is closely related to these acts and therefore is viewed just as negatively. (59)

According to the research article by Barnes, he found that while researching in East Indonesia, he was told the raw actions of the act. "If a young man had made up his mind that he wished to marry a certain young woman and was encountering resistance, he would wait at an appropriate hiding place and capture the woman.” (57) He was then told that the man’s friends and whoever else was assisting him would get him drunk so that when he got back he would run a small risk of feeling any pain, physically or emotionally. The family of the woman would chase the man to the place where she was captured and the family of the men would then fight. After months or even a year after the incident and the woman was still captured, there is still a chance for elopement. (Barnes 58) Throughout history this method has been frowned upon along with the measures which some men would take to abduct women for their own fulfillment.

What were the roles of women in the 1600’s?

I viewed wikipedia and came across a few articles surrounding the right's of women in the 1600's leading up to the 18th century where women’s rights were merely non-existent. According to an essay written by a student at Yale University in 2004: 	Women were not given the right to vote. 	Married women had no right’s reguarding their own property 	Husbands had legal power over women and were given the right to beat or imprison their wives without question. 	Divorce and child custody laws gave all their rights to the man. 	Most occupations were solely open to men and women were not allowed to enter the professions of law or medicine, nor were they allowed in universities to further any sort of education. 	Women were made to be completely dependent on men and were even taken away the right, with a few exceptions, to attend church due to the freedom of thought. Majority of the men during the Renaissance discredited the claim that women should and could retrieve an education. It was said that a woman’s body was made for staying at home while a man’s body was made for learning. There have been many bold claims regarding what women are deemed “capable” of, none of which are just or remotely fair.

In relation to the play //Life Without Instruction// this method can be related to on may levels. The relationship which Artemisia has with Tassi and the whole trial process completely embodies this act. The way in which she is treated by the interrogator and the way she is treated by the court in general is unfair and gives her few options for stating her case. Even when she does tell her story she is further questioned and unfairly judged. The reactions she gets from the court are unfairly placed upon her. As well the way which her father treats her is said to be incestuous by Tassi which puts her in an unfair state as well. The women in this play are clearly not treated properly whether it was in the court room or in the bedroom. Rape was prominent and overlooked as the right of the man, which today would clearly be a crime against the man. Men had an up on women and used it to their full advantage. Sexual assault was not necessarily deemed a crime by men at this time and men got away with nearly everything regarding this topic.

Barnes, R.H. //Marriage by Capture//. “The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute” Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 57-73. 1999.