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Document Details :

Title: Hoe overtuigt Coornherts Comedie vande Rijckeman?
Subtitle: Enargeia en het opvoeren van personificaties
Author(s): BUSSELS, Stijn
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 50    Issue: 1   Date: 2008   
Pages: 1-40
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.50.1.2033300

Abstract :
This article focuses on the allegory that was performed in Dirk Volckertszoon Coornhert’s Comedy of the Rich Man (1550). By comparing the drama text with related print series that are the result of a close cooperation between Coornhert and Maarten van Heemskerck, I try to assess the persuasion of the contemporary performance of the play. This attempt concentrates on the agency of the allegory which dominated the scene through personifications, characterised by their clothing, sayings, actions, and attributes. The rhetorical concept of enargeia or visual clarity is used as a guideline to find out how visualisation of originally abstract ideas could instruct the onlooker, as well as provoke identification and empathy.

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