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Document Details :

Title: Wie durft?
Subtitle: Het manifest in Michael Tedja's Hosselen
Author(s): CLAUS, Jan-Bart
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 64    Issue: 3   Date: 2022   
Pages: 197-225
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.64.3.3291494

Abstract :
This article seeks to contribute to the understanding of contemporary experimental Dutch prose. It examines how Michael Tedja’s Hosselen (2009) revitalises the avant-garde manifesto to discursively construct and comment upon the contemporary avant-garde, which is explored by confronting the historical use of the manifesto and its use in a 21st-century experimental novel. In the first part this article develops a historical and formalist perspective on the manifesto, establishing the act of manifestation as a theatrically performative language of rupture which inflects the suasive and aesthetic functions of the manifesto genre. In the second part this literary mechanism is examined in Tedja’s novel to uncover what and who ‘manifests’ in the novel. Ultimately, this article is a heuristic probing of historical avant-garde forms for the exploration of contemporary Dutch literary experimentation.

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