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Document Details : Title: Koppie kopie Subtitle: Het bereik van de waanzin in Hugo Claus' De Verwondering Author(s): BERNAERTS, Lars Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 47 Issue: 4 Date: 2005 Pages: 377-401 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.47.4.2005200 Abstract : This article, inspired by Shoshana Felman’s theoretical accounts on writing and madness, presents a reading of De verwondering (1962), the famous novel by Hugo Claus. Several critics have drawn attention to its complex narrative structure, without, however, making clear to what extent the composition bears the stamp of the narrator’s mental condition. In this article the narrator’s mental state offers the point of departure for an analysis which will show how in Claus’s novel – to borrow Felman’s words – the rhetoric of madness collides with the madness of rhetoric. In order to examine the particular effect of madness in this text, I will conceptualise the madness of the narrator both as a rhetorical device and as a clinical entity. |
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