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De maskers van Louis Couperus. De personae in Nippon (1925) en Het snoer der ontferming (1924)
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Nederlandse Letterkunde, Volume 28, Issue 3, Dec 2023, p. 305 - 337
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- 01 Dec 2023
Abstract
By combining the traditional ‘persona’ concept – which served to understand the relation between the author’s world-view and that of the characters in his fiction (Elliott) – with present-day narratological views on authorship (Walsh) and a sociological analysis of the themes in (fictional and nonfictional) travel literature (Moroz), this article construes a new perspective on persona. This conceptualization of persona does not reduce a literary text to mere behaviour: rather, it is a narratological tool that allows us to understand the author as he struggles to write down his impressions, while negotiating with expectations that are formulated by the institutional and discursive conditions governing the literary field. This ‘new’ concept of persona serves as the starting-point for an analysis of Louis Couperus’ understanding of Japan in his travel books Nippon (1925) and Het snoer der ontferming (1924).