years saw the development of virtual reality (VR) poetry as a subset of electronic literature and VR art. This article examines the interplay between estrangement and immersion in two Dutch-language VR poems by poet Micha Hamel and developer Demian Albers. To explore how the lyrical mode intersects with the embodied and virtual affordances of VR technology, we draw on Jonathan Culler's theory on the lyrical 'triangulated address.' We discuss how this theory serves to analyse the self-reflexive strategies used in these VR poems, as well as the self-reflexive potential of VR poetry. Given the inherently embodied nature of VR technology, we argue that VR poetry opens up new possibilities for reconsidering the embodied dimensions of the lyric genre.
Demeyer and Vitse (2018, 2020) argue that contemporary Dutch-language fiction reveals a dominant focus on affective questions and concerns about attachment and connection to the world and to the other. This article aims to examine to what extent this hypothesis of the 'affective dominant' applies to contemporary Dutch-language poetry. It verifies this hypothesis in close readings of three recently published poetry collections, by Frank Keizer, Maxime Garcia Diaz and Dewi de Nijs Bik. We argue that these poetry collections also evoke a subjective experience of the world which is primarily affective, in the sense that it is primarily an experience of being violently and painfully affected by the world. The subject is exposed to the violence of political depression (Keizer), to the violence of misogynist digital culture (Garcia Diaz) and to the violence of intergenerational (post)colonial wounding (De Nijs Bik). In these poetry collections this affective focus is-more explicitly than in contemporary fiction-overdetermined by political and ideological critique. We contend that the affective is epistemologically mediated by frames derived from neomarxism, postcolonialism and gender critique. This epistemological mediation affords the possibility to move towards a reparative position of healing, connection and resilience.
This article explores the tension between physical suffering and spiritual emancipation in Anna Ampt's Schaduwbeelden uit Suriname (1858). While her poetry aligns with a sentimental rhetoric of abolition, depicting the corporal torments of the enslaved in much graphic detail, it frames true liberation as a matter of the mind rather than the body. Situating Ampt within Dutch Protestant abolitionism, this study examines how her poetry reflects missionary ideals and racial hierarchies, ultimately revealing how Christian antislavery discourse often deferred real emancipation in favor of religious salvation.
In literary contexts, breathing has predominantly been explored as theme, metaphor, and symbol in written poetry. However, actual breathing by real performers in oral poetry has barely been investigated. In this article, the results are presented of close listenings that were conducted on more than fourteen hours of video and audio recordings of Dutch-language poetry performances at the Nacht van de Po & euml;zie Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands, between 2019 and 2024. Breathing turns out to have a thematic, iconic, poetic, self-reflexive, temporal, rhythmic, liminal, grammatical, metaphysical, empty, genre-characteristic, formal, theatrical, affective, ambiguous and paratextual function. Also, non-breathing proves to be meaningful. Similar to the meaningful role of white space in written poetry, breathing is essential to meaning-making in poetry performances.
This article analyses the similarities between the oeuvres of the nineteenth-century poet Hendrik Tollens and the twentieth-century singer Zangeres Zonder Naam in the way they make use of the sentimentalist mode. Sentimentalism is a transhistorical, transmedial and transnational tradition of artworks that appeal to the emotions of the reader, listener or viewer; the mode notion enables the critical reader to analyse this tradition across the borders of countries, media and time periods. In this article's operationalisation of sentimentalism, this tradition is also strongly linked to an implied reader's or listener's reflexive view of an imagined world. Usually, that imagined world depicts the suffering of underprivileged groups. This article analyses and compares the tropes of these texts, revealing the janus head of sentimentalism. This mode promises its reader that through the heart-the seat of feeling, which can be reached through a precise and compassionate gaze-communication is possible between people from diverse social backgrounds. In practice, however, these inequalities are not only constantly named, but even strengthened by that naming.
article on the representation of draft dogs in Dutch realistic animal stories from the period 1864-1910 explores how underlying genres of the animal autobiography and the sentimental orphan story interact with the way the draft dog problem is addressed and made part of a civilization offensive. In order to get the animal welfare message across, these genres draw the dog into our moral community in their own, specific way. The orphan story calls for a better treatment of draft dogs through the portrayal of a child protagonist's affection and compassion for the animal. The animal autobiography uses a pedigree dog narrator which takes up a mediating role between the human reader and his animal self, within a circulation plot that sheds light on the contrasting lives of domestic dogs and draft dogs, who coexisted in the Netherlands for most of the nineteenth century. Both genres find the solution for the draft dog problem in the ideal of domesticity, which made the dog the perfect housemate for the middle class.
The Flemish writer Ivo Michiels (1923-2012) is not only regarded as one of most important experimental authors, but also as an example par excellence of an oeuvre writer. This article explores how Michiels' literary works are intentionally structured to be an oeuvre, emphasizing the importance of titles as pivotal elements that shape this perception. Through an analysis of recurring syntactic patterns and semantic fields, I demonstrate how these titles create a coherent framework that transcends individual works. Key themes and motives, such as the obsession with the endless new beginning and the impact of war, recur across titles, reinforcing a sense of unity and continuity. The cyclical nature of Michiels' titles, in which each new title emerges from the previous one, not only continuously marks a new beginning but also enriches the overarching poetic narrative. This article aims to contribute to the existing scholarship on Michiels by highlighting the role of titles in constructing an oeuvre and enhancing the thematic and stylistic coherence of his body of work.
Seghelijn van Jherusalem is an epic text from the fourteenth century, set in a multi-religious world at the beginning of the Christian era. The protagonist, Seghelijn, encounters many non-Christian characters throughout the narrative. These non-Christians play a crucial role in the numerous twists and turns in Seghelijn's life, which is dedicated to strengthen Christianity. This article examines the differences and similarities between the non-Christian characters and Seghelijn, and also highlights the distinctions among the non-Christians in the story. By approaching the concept of 'otherness' in this manner, it becomes evident that the non-Christian characters in the Seghelijn are portrayed with much more nuance than previous research has suggested. This opens up space for a new interpretation that departs from the conventional assumption that the Seghelijn is an expression of crusade ideology.
the late 1920s onwards, the number of literary translations from Dutch into both Czech and Polish increased significantly. On the one hand, this was related to the emergence of the new states of Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1918, where new elites emerged who saw literature as an opportunity to affirm their own status. In connection with this, new publishing houses emerged and literature became a form of social capital. In both countries, however, the establishment of the PEN Club around 1925 appears to have played a decisive role in the choice of works to be translated. This created a kind of 'international canon' of mainly middle-brow Dutch-language authors. In the contribution, we give after a brief introduction a survey of available archival material, what role PEN played in the respective national literatures and how the PEN Clubs were important for the transfer of Dutch-language literature, using three case studies: the novels of Madelon Szkely-Lulofs, of Johan Fabricius and by Jo van Ammers-K & uuml;ller.
The Dutch theatre society Nil Volentibus Arduum was founded in 1669 amid the rise of various rationalist debates in the Dutch Republic. Both the theoretical works and the plays produced by the society have often been read as expressions of a rationalist worldview and a Spinozist approach to the human passions. In this article I complicate that reading by arguing that the plays produced by Nil Volentibus Arduum were also shaped by anti-rationalist ideas. By comparing the society's genre theory to the composition of 22 plays published by its members, I demonstrate the differences between 'order' versus 'disorder' as story models underpinning the historical and everyday realities depicted by tragedies and comedies respectively. These genre differences are analysed using quantitative narratology and network analysis, focusing on 'storyworld speed' and character interactions. This article thus also showcases the potential of computational methods for comparative and cross-lingual approaches to early modern drama.
In the archives of the Stichting Jean van Caloen (Loppem), a previously undiscovered and unexamined folio was found, once part of the original opera omnia manuscript of Jan van Leeuwen (dagger 1378), produced and preserved at the priory of Groenendaal (near Brussels). Apart from a handful of separate folios (Ms. Brussels, Royal Library, II138), the rest of the manuscript (c. 1415-1420) has been lost. This article presents a diplomatic edition of the folio, comparing it to the corresponding passages in the two other known witnesses of the text, namely Jan van Leeuwen's second treatise on the Ten Commandments (1358). The comparison forms the basis for revised and new hypotheses concerning the textual tradition (the number of editions) and the distribution of Van Leeuwen's opera omnia (the potential existence of loan copies). By doing so, we aim to clarify the relationships among the surviving text witnesses and provide insights into how Van Leeuwen's works were distributed by Groenendaal.
This article uses a stylistic analysis to detect authenticity effects on a synchronic and diachronic trail (version 1946 / version 1960) in Louis Paul Boon's Mijn kleine oorlog (My Little War), based on Lut Missinne's account of authenticity effects. The analysis combines a synchronic approach with a diachronic variant comparison using the works of Dorrit Cohn, Mikhail Bakhtin, Monika Fludernik, Ansgar N & uuml;nning, and Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck. It demonstrates how Boon uses both signals of fictionalization and genuineness by combining procedures such as polyphony (Bakhtin), metacommentary, a distinctive style (marked by a deviant spelling, word, and language use), 'krompraat', topoi of truthfulness, and the display of mnemotechnic deficits, thus creating effects of authenticity in his writing. The comparison of two versions of the novel ultimately shows different outcomes of authenticity effects.
- In this paper, we offer a close-reading of Sevtap Bayc & imath;l & imath;'s novel De Nachtmerrie van de allochtoon, and an analysis of her authorial posture. We also position both within their historical contexts. Approaching book and authorial ethos as a time capsule, we will show how the common presupposition that voices critical of Multiculturalism and Islam could only make themselves heard after 2001 is belied by the fact that such voices were already so clich & eacute;d in 1999 that Bayc & imath;l & imath; could easily satirise them. We will furthermore discuss the challenge to the concept of 'migrant authors' posed by Bayc & imath;l & imath;, as she stresses how this concept is as much a construction of the public debate and so-called experts, as the allochtone is in society. We recommend a closer look at more literary works produced during this period, and how they negotiated debates about migration and integration, which continue to reverberate in present-day Dutch politics.
This article presents a methodological reflection on supervised machine learning, a research design which is gaining ground in digital humanities research. In supervised learning computer models learn to classify data, i.e. to assign data to categories established by the researcher. The classification model is trained on manually annotated data and is then tested on data which were not used in the training. This article argues that so-called 'wrong predictions' should be studied carefully since they can help detect and understand ambiguities in the training data and in the categories for annotation. The data for this contribution are gathered from a series of experiments applying machine learning to the study of gender representation in modern Dutch fiction. Based on qualitative analysis of selected 'wrong predictions' this article presents methodological reflections on the technical process of annotation, on the reading process and on the ideological dimension of annotation.
In recent societal discussions about reading and literary education two recent studies constitute important interventions: Elke D'hokers Leerlingen en literatuur. Hoe vaardige lezers vormen (Tielt, LannooCampus, 2022) and Omdat lezen loont. Op naar effectief lees onderwijs in Nederland, edited by Yra van Dijk, Marie-Jos & eacute; Klaver, Els Stronks & Micha Hamel (Pica, 2022). This article evaluates the new perspectives offered by D'hoker and Van Dijk et al. against the background of broader developments in the field, such as the rapprochement between Dutch literary studies and literary pedagogy, and the increasing importance of empirical findings.
In this article, the author discusses how a richer analysis of seventeenth-century theatre can be made through a cross-fertilisation of historical literary studies and theatre studies. To do so, the author uses concepts from the History of Emotion, such as emotional practices and emotional communities. He applies these concepts to the case study of Hester (1659) by theatre director Johannes Serwouters. By applying cultural-historical data to the historical performance, it thus becomes clear how Jewish theatre-goers were probably the drivers of dramaturgical innovations, such as the inclusion of one or more tableaux vivants. Moreover, it is discussed how the character Esther played a role in the cultural memory of theatre-goers through parallels with Magdalena Moons and the Dutch Virgin, which parallels were shaped in the text and during performance.
this article I look at three theatre and performance productions that work with multilingual textual material: Van Aerschot's When in doubt, duck, De Smedt and Salamon's Dance #2, and Zuidpool's Empedokles. All three adopt an experimental, non-realistic dramaturgy to explore written and spoken communication in the 'postmonolingual condition' (Yildiz). Using a combination of literary studies, theatre studies and literary translation studies I ask how these productions engage with processes of writing, speaking, hearing, translating and recoding languages. I show how they perform the mobility and relationality of these processes in a multimedial scenography and/or choreographed dramaturgy, thereby adding other technological and corporeal ways of communication and semantics to the dominant paradigm of alphabetical languages. My analysis concludes that these productions foreground a poetic, autonomous multilingual creativity while at the same time stressing the existential need for learning to listen to multilingualism.
Since the post-dramatic shifts of the 1980s, literary analysis of the performing arts seems to have become unrelated to performance studies. At best, theatre academics may sometimes wonder: how did the director or theatre-maker deal with the (repertory) text? Thus, however, the possibilities of literary theatre analyses seem quite limited. This article shows that it is not only the text that directs and determines a performance. The (new) performance-to be read as the living tissue of current thoughts, living artists, prevailing views from the social sphere-just as much questions the text as it asks the text a question within a (new) current reality. Using the renowned western 'repertory text' Medea by Euripides, this article investigates how such questions can be answered in the interplay between text and performance. In doing so, it relies on three authors and/or theater makers who have engaged with the Medea material: German theatre innovator Heiner M & uuml;ller, the Belgian director Piet Arfeuille, and the Belgian theater maker and performer Naomi Velissariou. All three have internalized the Greek source material and have, through their performances formulated a response tailored to the needs of their own time. By the analysis of their performances, this article shows that text and performance should not be two worlds, but that our former definitions of what 'text' is, hamper such a reaching out.
