This section of JeroenBoschPlaza provides the user with a survey of basically all books and articles that have ever been written about Jheronimus Bosch. Its main objectives are to help Bosch scholars and enthusiasts to find information and to give them an idea of what a particular book or article is about, when this book or article is written in a language they cannot understand. Taking into consideration the huge amount of texts that has already been published on Bosch, the following could be a nice motto for this section:
Therefore, whoever does not keep to an order and a method in the reading of so great a collection of books wanders as it were into the very thick of the forest and loses the path of the direct route; he is, as it is said, always learning yet never reaching knowledge.
[Hugo of St Victor, Didascalicon – De studio legendi, Book 5, chapter 5, 12th century]
As there seems to be no end to the stream of publications regarding Bosch, this section is bound to be permanently UNDER CONSTRUCTION. There are periods when more is written on Bosch than even God could read within a reasonable span of time. Moreover, the number of books and articles published in the past is immense. Walter S. Gibson did a wonderful and admirable job when he published his survey of Bosch literature up to 1983 (see Gibson 1983), but inevitably some titles were lacking in his bibliographical tour de force. Obviously, two know and see more than one, and ten know and see more than two. That is why we would kindly like to ask our users to report any gaps (or even errors) that they might detect in our own bibliography.
IMPORTANT NOTE: the ‘critical passages’ of the summaries and reviews in this section (usually written in italics) represent the personal opinion of the author. They are not intended to attack, humiliate, or hurt anyone, and they do not imply that the author has a monopoly on wisdom when it comes down to Bosch. They only approach the often complex and confusing literature on Bosch from one particular perspective (namely the author’s) and try to use valid arguments whenever possible.
PRACTICAL NOTE: the alphabetical order of the authors’ proper names in this section takes into account prepositions, pronouns, and articles. This means, for example, that Van Dijck has to be looked for under the letter V, not under the letter D.
