Authors:Tijl Nuyts Abstract: Commonly known as one of the last Flemish authors who resorted to French as a literary language, Suzanne Lilar (1901-1992) constitutes a curious case in Belgian literary history. Raised in a petit bourgeois Ghent-based family, she compiled a complex oeuvre consisting of plays, novels and essays. In an attempt to anchor her oeuvre in the literary tradition, Lilar turned to the writings of the Middle Dutch mystic Hadewijch (ca. 1240), remodelling the latter’s memory to her own ends. This article argues that Lilar’s remembrance of Hadewijch took shape against the broader canvas of transfer activities undertaken by other prominent cultural mediators of Hadewijch’s oeuvre. Drawing on insights from memory studies and cultural transfer studies, an analysis of Lilar’s mobilisation of Hadewijch in two of Lilar’s most important works, Le Couple (1963) and Une enfance gantoise (1976), will show that Lilar’s rewriting of the mystic into her own oeuvre is marked by an intricate layering of mnemonic spheres: the author’s personal memory-scape, the cultural memory of Flanders and of Belgium, and a universal ‘mystical’ memory which she considered to be lodged within every human soul. In teasing out the relations between these spheres, this article will demonstrate that Lilar aimed to further the memory of Hadewijch as an icon of (Neo)platonic nostalgia and as a marker of Flemish and Belgian cultural hybridity. Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 1
Authors:Petra Boudewijn Abstract: Prizes have become indispensable to contemporary literary culture and have developed into one of its most high-profiled phenomena. This article examines the intersections between literary awards and gender, whilst drawing on fieldtheoretical approaches to literature. It successively discusses awarding behaviour, jury composition, and jury reports of a large number of Dutch literary prizes from the post-war era to the present. It argues, that the award scene has been governed by a conservative judging habitus, which seems to be inspired by the literary dispositions, inclinations and preferences of (white) middle-aged men who have predominantly populated juries for many decades; yet a drastic change in jury composition and awarding behaviour has swept through the award scene in recent years, resulting in a steep rise of female laureates. Additionally, it examines the ways in which juries have written in their reports about gender in connection to literary quality over the course of years. Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 1
Authors:Cora van de Poppe Abstract: In the seventeenth-century Dutch navy, low-born men who were practically trained found themselves able to climb the social and professional ladder from ordinary sailors to celebrated naval officers. Perhaps the best-known example is Michiel de Ruyter (1607–1676). This article examines how De Ruyter employed his modest writing skills in his obligatory ships’ logbooks to report to the Dutch government. Applying a narratological perspective to his factual recounting of naval events, I argue that De Ruyter’s linguistic variation represents a strategy he employed to articulate and foreground certain events within a larger narrative discourse. The focus here is on verbs as a key means to create a sense of eventfulness. De Ruyter’s logbooks are characterised by a simple style typically lacking in verbs. The mere presence of a verb thus not only helps describe but also draws attention to a particular event. In addition, De Ruyter varied his verbs as a way to make significant naval, political, or meteorological events meaningful to his readers on land. Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 1
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