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- Volume 14, Issue 3, 2009
Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 14, Issue 3, 2009
Volume 14, Issue 3, 2009
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Kellendonk, cultuurcriticus
More LessAfter the secularization which, analogous to developments in western culture as a whole, established itself in nineteenth and twentieth century Dutch literature, a countermovement has recently been noticed. In the works of several authors one sees a distinct religious and ethical reorientation. This article focuses on the case of the novelist and essayist Frans Kellendonk (1952-1990), who articulated his social, political and religious ideas in a way which shows affinity with T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Percy Wyndham Lewis, F.T. Marinetti and H. Marsman, authors who were part of the broad modernist movement during the period 1910-1930.
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Ontworsteling en ontworteling - Kleine verhalen achter een groot verhaal over religie
More LessThe recent come-back of master narratives illustrates the political turn in the historical discipline. Poststructural and postmodernist theoretical approaches to history in the past decades have resulted in plural or even fragmented views on the past that are not considered helpful in the search for a coherent national identity. In response to the call for grand and coherent views on the Dutch and their history, a new historical canon was presented in 2007. This canon illustrates the central role of Christian religion in the grand narrative of the Dutch past – a past that is definitely over in a country that profiles itself as secularized. Although this view on religion fits in smoothly with the – by now discredited – secularization thesis it reflects only a partial view on religion and does not account for expressions and meanings of religion beyond the church-based institutions. Historians, historians of religion in particular, have to come to terms with the often capricious role of human agency in religion, in past and present. Contemporary literature, I argue in this article, provides ‘small stories’ of belief and faith that help to re-conceptualize religion as dynamic, lived religion that defies the existing master narrative.
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‘Met zijn rug naar de toekomst’ - Harry Mulisch als historicus van de Tweede Wereldoorlog
By Bax SanderThe Dutch literary writer Harry Mulisch has an ongoing project of reflecting on the nature of historiography. In several essays he opposed the narrative reconstruction of the historian to the experience of the historical moment itself. History recreates the past as a closed ‘then’, whereas literature can recreate the past in a new kind of ‘present’. In this article Sander Bax relates Mulisch’ philosophical ideas on historiography to the theses of Frank Ankersmit on the sublime experience of the past. His concept of traumatic experience of historical moments seems to fit quite well with the way Mulisch writes on historical moments in some of his novels. Bax proposes new interpretations of Het stenen bruidsbed [The stone bridal bed, 1959] and De aanslag [The assault, 1982]. In both cases Mulisch uses the novel to portray characters that experience the past as traumatic. Norman Corinth’s role in the bombing of Dresden has turned him into a traumatic figure (Het stenen bruidsbed) and Anton Steenwijk’s seperation from his parents in 1945 has made his whole life fractured (De aanslag). Mulisch not only portrays the psychological development of these characters, he also foregrounds them as fictional characters by using a mythical style of writing. In that sense they are part human, part character. By doing this, Mulisch lays bare the problems of linguistic representation of reality. On the one hand he tries to bring the reader closer to the historical event, on the other hand he reflects on the impossibility of literature to close that gap.
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Representaties in ander proza en postmodern proza
By Vitse SvenThere is no consensus among literary scholars concerning the delimitation of postmodernism in Dutch and Flemish fiction. More specifically, scholars do not agree about the position of experimental ‘other prose’ and its relationship to the postmodern novel. This article contributes to this on-going debate by offering a comparative analysis of other prose and postmodern fiction. It focuses on the concept of representation: it investigates the ways in which authors of both other prose and postmodern fiction question this concept in their literary works. The problem of representation will be analysed in works by Robberechts, Van Marissing and Vogelaar on the one hand (other prose), and Jongstra, Beurskens and Verhelst on the other hand (postmodern fiction). In both other prose and postmodern fiction literary representation of extratextual reality is felt to be a problematic issue. For authors of other prose the relationship between language and reality poses not just a literary but also an ideological and a political problem. Conventional forms of literary representation are considered to produce false images that need to be destroyed and replaced by alternative forms. Authors of postmodern fiction undermine narrative conventions from within: they make use of paradox and inconsistency to unsettle the narrative framework within which they work. In postmodern fiction, the belief in a position outside of linguistic mediation and in a truthful account of reality can no longer be upheld. In conclusion, it can be said that the concept of representation helps to distinguish other prose from postmodern fiction.
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‘Je lijkt me gevaarlijker dan al die hoge heren bij elkaar’ - Referentialiteit en retorica in De keisnijder van Fichtenwald (1976) van Louis Ferron
By J.W.H. KonstThis article offers a new interpretation of one of the main works of Louis Ferron: De keisnijder van Fichtenwald [The stone-cutter of Fichtenwald] (1976). The hypothesis elaborated here is that, in the guise of Friedolien Mahler, voice is given to a Nazi-Täter who does all he can to obscure his role in the war and his ideas, which are fed into by the ideology of national socialism. In order to show this, a rhetorical reading of the novel is offered, i.e. one which assumes that Friedolien practises impression management from the beginning to the end and is out to manipulate the reading public. For this purpose he for example makes use of the stylistic repertoire of irony and goes in for role-playing of an especially subtle kind in which he, the SS man and guard at the Konzentrationslager Fichtenwald, makes it appear as if he were a victim, a convert and a harmless madman respectively. The stress laid on Friedolien’s guilt here is new in the reception of Ferron’s novel. Finally, the last pages of this article show that Friedolien is ultimately a figure thought up by the camp doctor Jankowsy on which the latter projects his own Nazi past.
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