Internationale Neerlandistiek - Volume 51, Issue 3, 2013

The concept of ‘irony’ is important in the oeuvre of Harry Mulisch. His selfpresentation was often labelled ‘arrogant’ or ‘vainglorious’, but Mulisch himself referred to it as a form of ‘self-irony’. In his dispute with Gerard van het Reve in the first half of the 1970s, Mulisch rejected Van het Reve’s irony. To illustrate his complaints, Mulisch referred to Thomas Mann as a ‘true ironist’, as opposed to the ‘flat ironist’ Van het Reve. Already in the early years of his writing career, in the 1950s, Mulisch had devoted a couple of articles to the function of irony in the work of Thomas Mann. In this article, I examine the writings of Mulisch on the irony concept of Mann and its potential influence on his own ideas about irony. In addition, I compare Mulisch’s interpretation with dominant interpretations in the ‘Mann-Forschung’, in order to be able to differentiate between more objective and more subjective observations of the Dutch author. This allows me to account for the image Mulisch may have created of Mann’s irony concept, so that it would be more in line with his own goals and needs as a young, still relatively unknown author.

This article discusses the significance of the life and work of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) in De keisnijder van Fichtenwald (The stone cutter of Fichtenwald; 1976) by Louis Ferron (1942-2005). In this historical novel, which is set in a fictitious Nazi concentration camp, the prisoners perform two plays. In the first, the last hours and joined suicide of Kleist and his beloved Henriette Vogel are brought on stage. In the second, the final act of Kleist’s Penthesilea (1808), in which the amazon queen deprives herself of life, is performed. In this article it is shown that these two plays have a key importance for the interpretation of De keisnijder van Fichtenwald. They also shed new light on the ideas of Ferron on fascism, which are placed within the broader framework of German cultural history.

Dutch is one of the most well-studied living languages; research on it has had a major, and continuing, impact on the development of formal linguistic theory, and it plays an important role in various other types of linguistic research. It is therefore unfortunate that there is no recent comprehensive scientifically based description of the grammar of Dutch that is accessible to a wider international audience. The series Syntax of Dutch (SoD), which has become available as of the period 2012-6 in book form (Amsterdam University Press) as well as open access publications (oapen.org), aims at filling this gap for syntax. The SoD is primarily intended as a tool for scientific research, but may also be useful in other contexts. This article provides some general information about this series concerning its target group, goals, object of description and overall organization in order to enable the reader to determine when the SoD can be fruitfully used in, e.g., classroom situations. Work on the SoD will continue after completion of the book series within the wider context of the project Language Portal Dutch/Frisian, and this article therefore also discusses some future prospects.

De literatuurstudie heeft steeds geprofiteerd van de wisselwerking met andere wetenschappen. In het begin – de tijd van formalisten en structuralisten – was het vooral de linguïstiek die voor inspiratie zorgde; daarna waren onder meer de psychoanalyse, de sociologie en de filosofie richtinggevende partners. Door deze niet-literaire, soms zelfs niet-tekstgerichte disciplines kwam de studie van het literaire-werk-op-zichzelf minder centraal te staan en kregen de andere partijen in de literaire communicatie – vooral de schrijver en de lezer – steeds meer aandacht. Hieronder komen vijf recente publicaties aan bod die getuigen van het grensverkeer tussen de literatuurwetenschap en andere disciplines, en die daarbij meestal de rol van de lezer benadrukken. Ze tonen niet alleen hoe literatuurspecialisten omgaan met andere wetenschappen, maar ook hoe mensen uit die disciplines aankijken tegen literatuur.