Verslagen en mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde. Jaargang 2008

[p. 439]

Samenvattingen - abstracts

Bloggen in de middeleeuwen. Naar een corpus voor de 15de- en 16de-eeuwse Nederlandse dialecten en idiolecten¹
Chris de Wulf

In 2008 the Royal Academy for Dutch Language and Literature (KANTL) has commissioned its research cell, the Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB), to build a corpus containing 15th and 16th century ego documents, hence aiming to extend existing mediaeval text corpora in time. In this paper I will discuss the existing 13th and 14th century corpora (1) and the need to extend them in time (section 2). Then I will give an overview of various similar initiatives for the subsequent periods (section 3). Finally, I will reveal how the CTB/KANTL plans to add to these during the current project (section 4). This means that I will transfer selection criteria of other types of non-literary texts (charters) to autobiographical texts (so-called ego documents.) I will also discuss some examples of manuscripts that are eligible for this kind of research according to these selection criteria. A modest case study involving one of these ego documents will conclude this paper (section 5).

1 A full length version of this text in English is to be found on the KANTL website: www.kantl.be (→ publicaties → V&M).

Het afwijzen van de wraakzucht in de 17de-eeuwse tragedie: het voorbeeld van Corneille en Vondel
Jean Weisgerber

In 17th century tragedies three methods are recommended to counter violence. The first one consists in controlling the inimical forces by introducing unlimited dominance. The second one requires rising above one's own person, which as a matter of fact equals self-conquest. The third one is quite practical in nature: it simply consists of getting out of the way. In Vondel's Maria Stuart (1646) and Corneille's Cinna (1642) the second solution - sublimation - is the central theme. The essence is, that the contradiction between two

[p. 440]

elements, thesis and antithesis, is eventually broken, and a synthesis on a higher lever is achieved. Revengefulness thus puts retribution against injustice met in purely material affairs, but both Maria and Augustus succeed in exceeding the opposition.

Een pleidooi voor verdediging. Maurits Dekker en de retoriek van Waarom ik niet krankzinnig ben (1929)
Lars Bernaerts

In the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century, the Dutch author Maurits Dekker (1898-1962) published a number of psychological novels in which madness plays a significant role. One of those novels, Waarom ik niet krankzinnig ben (Why I am not insane, 1929), was originally published as a mystification. As Dekker explains in the preface to the second edition, he wanted to lead his critics up the garden path and presented himself as a Russian author. Conspicuously, the rhetoric of his preface resembles the rhetoric of the allegedly mad narrator of Waarom ik niet krankzinnig ben. In the final section of the article, the opening paragraph of the novel will be analyzed precisely in terms of rhetoric and speech acts. This enables us to specify the way in which the narrator accuses himself in his excuses, the way in which he verbally attacks the narratee even though he claims he is only defending himself against the judgments of the psychiatrists.

‘Ge weet, dat ik in critiek een brekebeen ben’. Vrouwen en literaire kritiek in het fin de siècle in Vlaanderen
Liselotte Vandenbussche

This article aims to document the belated birth of the female literary critic in Flanders during the fin de siècle. While many men fiercely stood up for their personal views on contemporary literature, most women writers conformed to the allegedly feminine ideal of modesty and reticence. Although male editors invited some of their female colleagues to contribute to literary reviews, many of them encountered particular thresholds and hesitated to pass a judgement in public. Marie Lievevrouw-Coopman, for instance, publicly

[p. 441]

confessed that she did not judge literary works as male critics did, since she did not want to analyse what spoke to her heart. Virginie Loveling refused at first to write reviews because of her professed incompetence and Hélène Swarth finally quit reviewing for the same reason.

In this article, I want to explore whether these critics were as diffident as they at first sight seemed to be or whether this was merely a pose. I hope to single out some elements that influenced their decisions and to illustrate some of their strategies for coping with this hesitance. Many women writers made their judgments clear in personal letters and some of them also published their reviews, yet they often needed an incentive to surmount the obstacles facing them and make their views public. The possible significance of a critical practice for their literary prestige was neglected and their own production was put into focus.

Karel Jonckheere, Fernand Victor Toussaint van Boelaere, Karel van de Woestijne. Over de rol van trivialiteit in de literatuurgeschiedenis
Tom Sintobin

The correspondance between F.V. Toussaint van Boelaere and Karel Jonckheere is a valuable source of information on the workings of the Flemish literary field between 1935 and 1947. It shows how both authors cooperate: they provide each other with opportunities to publish and Toussaint helps Jonckheere to make a claim for financial compensation after he has been evacuated from Ostend in 1944. Furthermore, part of the veil is lifted from the quarrel between Toussaint and Maurice Roelants during the Second World War. Finally, one learns how Toussaint is prevented from publishing a collection of essays on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of Karel van de Woestijne's death and about the controversy over the tombstone and the commemoration day of the famous poet: not everybody was convinced it was a good idea to draw attention to Van de Woestijne in wartime. This article concludes with a theoretic reflection on the role these (seemingly) trivial occurrences or non-occurrences should or could play in literary historiography.