| Popis: |
A Northern Renaissance? The 'allegorical poems' and the art historical context What are the characteristics by which the sixteen longer poems which together constitute the third part of the Gruuthuse manuscript, the so called 'allegorische gedichten' (allegorical poems), differ from anterior comparable texts in the history of Dutch literature, what, in other words, makes these poems 'new' as to their poetics and how do these new elements relate to the contemporary artistic scenery? These are the questions which are dealt with in his article. In comparison with what chronologically precedes in Middle Dutch literature, the most conspicuous characteristics of the Gruuthuse poems are: a tendency towards formal variation and complexity, to the point of mannerism; a quite considerable degree of intellectualism and 'scientific' learning; a rhetoric of performance and theatricality; autographic elements that often imply some degree of artistic self-awareness; the importance of actual contexts and of worldly reality in general. Virtuosity, intellectualism, realism, individualism and self-awareness also belong to the main characteristics of the other arts (especially music and the visual arts) of the Netherlands and Northern France at that time (about 1400). They are also prominent aspects of the contemporaneous 'Italian' Renaissance. This gives rise to the question whether the Gruuthuse texts could/should not be considered as the literary documentation of an 'early Northern renaissance', a concept which seems to be quite common in anglo-american research literature, but which, due perhaps to the strong opposition by Johan Huizinga, is still rather contentious on the continent. With this (quite plausible) assumption, the Gruuthuse texts would then, it is true, already show the complex relation between secularization and religious interiorization which in such a dramatic way is exemplified by the tormented genius of Hugo Van der Goes. |
