Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde - Volume 140, Issue 1, 2024

Dutch author Gerrit Krol wrote several essays on capital punishment. In these essays, he uses various mathematics- and physics-based metaphors. Within the field of literature and science studies, scholars have pointed out that imagery connects different discourses and has a constitutive function in the construction of knowledge. This contribution uses a literature and science approach to study the mathematics- and physics-based metaphors used by Krol. It shows how the author succeeds in effectively linking different discourses – on mathematics, physics, and capital punishment – and makes clear that his typical use of metaphor is an essential part of the articulation of fundamental ideas about capital punishment. The contribution argues that four different functions of Krol’s metaphors can be distinguished: an epistemological, psychological, political and transgressive function. Thus, it makes clear that a literature and science approach to metaphor inspired by the notion of interdiscursivity contributes to a careful interpretation of Krol’s ambiguous essays on capital punishment, and illustrates that a focus on metaphor analysis is of value when studying the interdiscursive nature of literature.

The Old Dutch phrase Hebban olla uogala, discovered in 1931 by Kenneth Sisam in MS Bodley 340 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, has been, since its publication by Moritz Schönfeld in this journal, one of the most hotly debated and well-known phrases of the Dutch language. After a brief overview of this discussion, all five texts noted by the scribe as pencil proofs on the last manuscript sheet (f. 169^v) are discussed. These include a supplication to St. Nicolas, a Goliardic poem Scribere qui cupiunt, the verse Hebban olla uogala with its Latin parallel (Abent omnesvolucres), the aphorism Rector celi nos exaudi and, finally, the incipit Age iam precor mearum comes inremota rerum from Prosper of Aquitaine’s Exhortatio ad coniugem, often used in the classroom as a sample of anacreontic verse. The texts of all five probationes pennae appear to occur or at least have reminiscences in the manuscript of the so-called Cambridge Songs, Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5.35. This makes it likely that the connection between Hebban olla uogala and the Carmina Cambridge Songs is even stronger than previously has been assumed.