Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Visionary Pastiche : Hildegard Von Bingen's Reconciliation Of Divine Experience And Representation, Rachel Lynn Gamarra

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Hildegard von Bingen invents a new rhetorical topos—that of prismatic refraction—which allows her to communicate her divine revelation to others through narrative, artwork, and explication. While her patristic counterparts, Augustine and Jerome, think about rendering the divine only as it relates to their understanding of Scripture, Hildegard exploits rhetoric in order to push the boundaries of human epistemology through grappling with her unique mystical experience. Though Hildegard recognizes that there is a degree of difference between her visions and her representation of them, Hildegard still finds value in language as a communicative tool. Hildegard refracts her divine experience in Scivias, …