Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 22, Issue 2, 2017

Abstract Strayed from the path. The portrayal of lesbian love in Edith Werkendam’s and Johan de Meester’s prose Walmende lampen (1921) by Johan de Meester (1860-1931) is one of the first few literary novels that has descriptions of lesbian love. Although the novel addresses several sensitive matters, it was received relatively positive. The appreciation for the depiction of sexually deviant behaviour or perversions in lit Read More

Abstract Courtly Love in Elsschot’s Het Dwaallicht (The Will-o’-the-wisp) Willem Elsschots novel Het Dwaallicht (The Will-o’-the-wisp) (1946) contains a story about a miserable, rainy November evening in seaport town Antwerp. Four Afghani sailors are looking for Kloosterstraat 15, the whereabouts of a girl who worked on their ship that morning and promised them a rendezvous after nightfall. Desperately looking for th Read More

Abstract The (de)construction of the ethnic other in the novel Schaamte (1972) by Hugo Claus Schaamte (Shame) is a complex and obscure novel in which Hugo Claus ridicules the postcolonial, imperialistic attitude of the members of a European film crew spending a working holiday on a sunny island. This article uses the analytic concept of othering as it was coined by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to investigate the ways in which t Read More