Queeste. Tijdschrift over middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden. Jaargang 2010

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Naar aanleiding van...

‘seer loffelyck ende tot verwonderinghe aan alle vreemdelinghen’ - Chambers of Rhetoric at the Crossroads of History and Literature
Orsolya Réthelyi

With regard to: Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Om beters wille. Rederijkerskamers en de stedelijke cultuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1400-1600). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008. 376 p. ISBN 978905565612. Price: € 34, 50.

One of the central paradigms of recent scholarship on medieval and early modern Dutch literature regards its relation to historiography, especially to the history of culture and mentalities. Since the 1980s the historical approach - owing a large debt to the influential work of the literary historians Frits van Oostrom and Herman Pleij - has transformed not only the repertoire of what is considered part of the literary canon, but also the manner of approaching historical Dutch literature. The book Om beters wille by Anne-Laure van Bruaene is embedded in this discussion, because of its approach and methods. Van Bruaene argues that because of their literary production the Chambers of Rhetoric (literary guilds or confraternities) in the southern Low Countries are unique, or at least very exceptional, within the vast landscape of merchant and artisan guilds, religious confraternities, and shooting guilds in late medieval urban culture. Her sources as well as the theoretical framework of her study are, however, emphatically historical. Scholars have previously used historical sources to study the Chambers - argues the author - ‘but have used literary-historical methods to ask questions about function, patronage and the audience of the literary texts. This study sets out directly from the historical sources and its methodology is historical.’ (p. 20, my translation).

In Om beters wille Van Bruaene publishes the findings of her dissertation defended at the University of Ghent in 2004. The research was executed within the framework of a Belgian-Dutch research project with the explicit goal of studying the Chambers of Rhetoric as historical institutions. In an immense amount of archival material and secondary sources Van Bruaene identified and collected information on 227 Chambers in the Southern Low Countries in the period between 1400 and 1650. The extensive data on the Chambers is systematized in an on-line database electronically accessible in the Digital Library of Dutch Literature (dbnl). Several other appendices have been electronically published on the website of the publisher.¹ The geographically and chronologically large scope of the study not only makes it possible for the author to nearly double the inventory of known Rhetorical Chambers listed by Antonin Van Elslander in 1968, but also allows for an investigation of the role of the Chambers within the wider urban network of the Southern Low Countries instead of looking at certain towns in isolation. The large scope combined with the diversity of source types also poses a challenge regarding the structuring of the rich material. Two large sections follow the introductory chapter in which the author defines the research question, her methodology and sources, and situates her own research within the wider framework of recent theoretical discourse on towns, public space and civic ritual.

In the first section, containing the bulk of the material, the history and development of the Chambers of Rhetoric is presented diachronically, divided into four time periods. The evidence of the sources is combined with a choice of methodological questions (e.g. the origins and development of the Chambers in the Burgundian Low Countries and the discussion of the carnavalesque, the Bur-

1 https://www.dbnl.org/organisaties/rederijkerskamers/ and http://www.aup.nl.

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gundian-Habsburg period and the concept of the theatre state). The chronological examination of the institution of the Chambers of Rhetoric is interrupted by the prosopographic analysis of three specific cases, the Chambers De Corenbloem and Den Boeck from Brussels and the Chamber Mariën Theeren from Gent. The abundance of evidence from the different Chambers and the densely presented information makes the first section difficult reading at times, despite efforts to structure the information with reader-friendly summaries, introductions and sub-conclusions. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges from the chapter is that of an open, flexible and dynamic urban culture in the Southern Low Countries, with the Chambers playing a central role in the shaping of urban identity.

In the second section Van Bruaene uses the case of the Chambers of Rhetoric to draw further-reaching conclusions about early modern civic culture in the Low Countries. Central to her argument is that the urban middle class determines the character of town identity and therefore is representative of its character. Using a set of five motifs, those of lay-devotion, harmony and honour, instruction and entertainment, she skilfully draws together the evidence from the preceding section and reconstructs a lively and detailed picture of the Chambers. It is in this section that the main findings of her research, already introduced in the first section, are fully developed. In a fascinating analysis the author clarifies and redraws the role of the Chambers in lay devotion and civic religion, convincingly arguing for a more central role for the Chambers than traditionally assumed by literary historians. She reinvestigates and challenges the concept of the Chambers of Rhetoric as institutions of an urban civilizing offensive (‘burgerlijk beschavingsoffensief’), a notion especially represented by Herman Pleij. She then proceeds to define symbolic competition - which enhances communal identity within the group and ritualises and channels conflicts between the groups - as an essential component of urban culture.

Certain questions could have received more attention. I would have wished to see a more detailed discussion of the relationship between men and women within the structures of the Rhetorical Chambers and urban identity. The author indicates the presence of women, which seems to be a characteristic of the Chambers in the County of Flanders, rather than of the chambers in the Duchy of Brabant, and the limited possibility for their participation. She also briefly refers to the relationship between men and women, when stating that Chambers of Rhetoric offer an excellent tool for the analysis of urban culture, because even though they represent only part of the urban population - the male middle class of skilled artisans, shopkeepers and local merchants - this was exactly the social group which defined urban identity (e.g. p. 197). Her argument would have profited from a more systematic development of the question within the study itself, even though interested readers can consult the author's article discussing the subject.² It also would be useful to include more on the phenomenon of Rhetorical Chambers in international comparison. If this form is (almost) unique, why is that so? What kind of associations can be compared to the Rhetoricians outside the Low Countries? How does the art of the Rhetoricians relate to the literary production in contemporary Europe? There is some discussion of the practices in Europe, like the fascinating but short chapter on the cultural offensive of Emperor Maximilian of Austria and his son, Duke Philip the Fair, and how the Chambers were involved in a large scheme of self representation and dynastic legitimation and propaganda (p. 60-61). More comparative material, however, would have made the results more relevant to a wider international audience.

It is obvious that international urban studies will profit from the excellently researched and intelligently presented findings in Om beters wille. But how does Dutch literary history profit from Van Bruaene's analysis of the Chambers of Rhetoric? The more obvious answer is that providing a detailed context for literary production, involving the organisations, the individuals, the circumstances, the purpose, makes a wealth of cultural-historical information available to literary historians. This in turn can lead to new approaches for the interpretation of texts. The strongly circumstance-bound character of the literary production of the Chambers of Rhetoric, and its often laboured language,

2 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘Brotherhood and Sisterhood in the Early Modern Chambers of Rhetoric in the Southern Low Countries’, in: Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005) 1, 11-35.

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does not make it an easy heritage to come to grips with, even within the community of scholars of Dutch literature. ‘The striking connections between civic ritual and urban theatre have brought social and literary historians much closer together. Both now focus on context and performance’ - says the author.³ And indeed in Om beters wille the explicitly historical analysis of the historical sources combined with the author's sensitivity to recent scholarship that focuses on the poetics of literary production - for instance that of Nelleke Moser - opens new doors for interpretations of the literary sources of the complex and dynamic phenomenon of the Chambers of Rhetoric.⁴ The author's interdisciplinary perspective must have been enhanced by the larger framework of the international research project. Whether one likes it or not, the high degree of specialisation within the field of historical literature is an unalterable fact. Therefore it is not surprising that one should limit attention to non-literary sources for the comprehensive treatment of a subject as complex as the institutions of the Chambers of Rhetoric. Om beters wille, however, leads me to conclude that such a specialized approach is best implemented in the framework of a larger interdisciplinary and preferably international project.

A further advantage arises from an international, comparative perspective. Though the author chose to publish this book in Dutch, she has made most of her results available to international scholarship through a number of English and French publications. If the Dutch literary tradition already finds it difficult to appreciate fully the literary heritage of the Chambers of Rhetoric, this is even more so for international audiences. Some works of historical literature seem to speak directly to the modern reader, others need skilful advocates to explain why they should be admired. Van Bruaene's analysis helps the reader to understand more of urban culture in the Southern Low Countries, and to seek closer acquaintance with the texts that have been instrumental in shaping it. I would like to pinpoint yet a third, perhaps less immediately obvious, advantage for literary historians. One of the evident strengths of the book is its firm grounding in recent discussions of theory on urban space, civic identity and economy of symbolic exchanges, to mention just a few of the key concepts, and the lively dialogue that Van Bruaene conducts with these theories in light of the new evidence. Besides being a merit of the author, this seems to be a characteristic more typical of the historical approach than of that of the literary discipline in the field of medieval and early modern Dutch literature. I believe that the way Van Bruaene positions her study in recent scientific theory can be a source of inspiration for scholars from both disciplines.

Address of the author: Vakgroep Neerlandistiek / Department of Dutch Studies, Eötvös Loránd University (elte), Rakóczi út 5, H-1088 Budapest, Hungary; [e-mail]

3 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘“A wonderfull tryumfe, for the wynning of a pryse”. Guilds, Ritual, Theater, and the Urban Network in the Southern Low Countries, ca. 1450-1650’, in: Renaissance Quarterly 59 (2006), 379.

4 Nelleke Moser, De strijd voor rhetorica. Poëtica en positie van rederijkers in Vlaanderen, Brabant, Zeeland en Holland tussen 1450 en 1620. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001.