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- Volume 24, Issue 1, 2019
Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 24, Issue 1, 2019
Volume 24, Issue 1, 2019
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Hennen van Merchtenen en de Voortzetting van de Brabantsche yeesten (ca. 1430-1450)
More LessAbstractHennen van Merchtenen and the Continuation of the Brabantsche yeesten (ca. 1430-1450): The attribution problem
In 1432, a Brabantine poet completed the first of two volumes which together would constitute the Voortzetting van de Brabantsche yeesten, a detailed account of the more recent history of the duchy of Brabant, meant as a complement to the authoritative history of Brabant, the Brabantsche yeesten, which Jan van Boendale had finalised about the middle of the fourteenth century. As a whole, the Voortzetting would cover the period from about 1350 until the birth of Philip the Good’s son, the later Charles the Bold, in 1433. The text is anonymous, but some historians have seriously considered an attribution to Hennen van Merchtenen, the author of a Chronicle of Brabant (Cornicke van Brabant), presented to duke John IV in 1415, in which Merchtenen committed himself to a much more important historical work, on condition that the necessary means were granted to him. Merchtenen was also a judicial officer in the service of the duke, and, because his traces in the archives disappear after 1418, it was assumed that he had died relatively shortly after that year. In this article, we contest this assumption and adduce a number of arguments concerning tenor and style in favour of one authorship for the Cornicke van Brabant and the Voortzetting.
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Lezers in de marges van Vondels Palamedes
Authors: Alie Lassche & Arnoud VisserAbstractReaders in the margins of Vondel’s Palamedes: A census of seventeenth-century editions in public collections
This article explores how Joost van den Vondel’s politically charged play Palamedes (first published in 1625) was read in the seventeenth century. It presents the findings of a systematic and focused census of copies of 25 seventeenth-century editions that have been preserved in public collections. Inspection of 150 copies has resulted in identifying 32 copies with manuscript annotations. Viewed together these annotated copies show the importance of different forms of collective reading. Two general patterns can be distinguished, documenting on the one hand different forms of rhetorical and stylistic analysis, made for didactic or studious use. Another category reveals a persistent interest in decoding, remembering, and sharing the political meaning of the play. This category includes a set of annotations that probably derived from Vondel’s biographer Geeraert Brandt, which circulated in manuscript before appearing in print in 1705. As an exercise in census-research, this case also confirms the idea of the long life of the book, documenting extended use and enrichment of individual copies.
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‘De Vorst is om ’t gemeen; ’t gemeen niet om de Vorst.’*
By Tom LaureysAbstract‘The Monarch is there for the common; the common not for the Monarch.’ Governmental reflections in three Dutch revenge tragedies (1638-1645)
Although early modern Dutch revenge tragedies have for a long time been studied in the light of the idea that passions need to be restrained, there is an inseparable political dimension connected to such plays. In the three revenge tragedies discussed in this contribution (1638-1645), the royal sovereignty of the political rulers degenerates into tyranny. The sovereign paradigm, however, rouses dismay among several dramatis personae. Frequently, we hear critical and dissenting voices, which explicitly oppose the conception of sovereignty as it is advocated by the potentates. In this article, I consider the question whether in the criticism of the old, sovereign conception of power (souveraineté) an apology for a new, alternative policy is articulated, which Foucault termed gouvernementalité. Moreover, I argue that the revenge plays participate in the discursive context of Frederick Henry’s potential expansion of power in the period around 1640.
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De uitgeversrol in het succes van een Nederlandstalig literair auteur
More LessAbstractPublishers’ marketing strategies in exploiting literary oeuvres. The case of the Dutch author Arthur van Schendel (1874-1946)
In two ways, publishers of Dutch literature were keen to promote the body of work of their prolific writers. On the one hand they tried to reach as broad as possible an audience for individual book titles, on the other they aimed to build a solid reputation for the writers on their lists. This paper looks into the publishers’ marketing strategies and maps the extent to which the publishers had room for influencing the literary reputations of their authors. It focuses on the work of Arthur van Schendel (1874-1946) whose books were published for the most part by the Amsterdam-based publishing company of Meulenhoff.
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