Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 15, Issue 3, 2010

Countering the conventional view of satire as a literary mode or literary art form per se, this article discusses it as a social phenomenon, focusing more specifically on its public impact and cultural function, and on the multivarious forms in which it has manifested itself through the ages. The recently started NWO research project The p ower of satire, cultural boundaries contested is our point of departure. In the first part of the article, we elaborate on the theoretical framework of this project by giving an in-depth description of the Anglo-American scholarly debates on (literary) satire and satire theory as they have taken place during the last fifty years. We point at several trends and we try to find out to what extent the existing theories may be useful for our own research. The second part of the article discusses two specific (Dutch) satiric cases using the theoretical notions of satire as play and satire as provocation. These cases are the so-called magic lantern periodicals from the 1780’s and the almanac-like periodical De Lantaarn of Pieter van Woensel, which was published between 1795 and 1801. The main question in this part of the article is: how can satire be playful and provocative at the same time? Our cases show that the answer involves both specific historical circumstances and broader cultural traditions of satire as a means to defame or to downplay certain targets.

This article argues in favour of a functionalist, discourse-oriented approach to literary periodicals. More specifically, the literary periodical is seen as a discourse which stabilizes literary and metaliterary communication, via its productive tension between on the one hand repetition and variation and on the other hand innovation and surprise. This approach is analyzed on two levels. On the one hand, its theoretical and methodological implications are explored by analyzing the periodical as a discursive object, as a discursive event, as a discursive space and, finally, as a discursive structure; On the other hand, this approach is illustrated by considering the case of De Tafelronde (1953-1981: The Round Table), a Flemish experimental periodical which gradually developed into an internationalist forum for concrete poetry and poesia visiva.

In Exit (1971), the third book of Ivo Michiels’s Alpha Cycle, the text is moving towards a zero point in language and communication. Michiels’s literary experimentation leads to a radical gesture: the last page but one displays nothing but an ‘o’ or ‘0’. Leading up to that zero point, the text introduces several forms of ‘playing’ as metafictional performances of language, text and communication. In my essay, I will focus on the interpretive implications of the TEXT AS GAME metaphor in Exit. Drawing on Marie-Laure Ryan, Linda Hutcheon and Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman among others, I will explain how the performed games function as metafictional references to writing and literature. In Exit, games reveal the workings of the literary experiment.

This article gives an impression of three recently published books about literature in the thirties of the twentieth century. That period appears to be a gold mine for the study of Dutch literature. The results of the investigations give rise to the expression of new methods of research. The contributions are discussed in a way that makes clear to what extent they complement and correct Oversteegens important study Vorm of vent (1969). Besides textual analysis contextual approaches of institutional research focus on writers, genres and texts that are not or are no longer canonical.

Christophe Verbruggen, Schrijverschap in de Belgische belle époque. Een sociaalculturele geschiedenis; Liselotte Vandenbussche, Het veld der verbeelding. Vrijzinnige vrouwen in Vlaamse literaire en algemeen-culturele tijdschriften (1870-1914); Joke Corporaal, Grimmig eerlijk. Anne Wadman en het probleem van de Friese literatuur; Gera, Judit en A. Agnes Sneller, Inleiding literatuurgeschiedenis voor de internationale neerlandistiek; Ton Naaijkens, Cees Koster, Henri Bloemen en Caroline Meijer, Denken over vertalen. Tekstboek over vertalen.