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Document Details : Title: Chaos en Subjectiviteit Subtitle: Een analyse van de stijl van Maarten Biesheuven en Jan Arends Author(s): FAGEL, Suzanne , VAN LEEUWEN, Maarten , BOOGAART, Ronny Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 53 Issue: 2 Date: 2011 Pages: 183-217 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.53.2.2119623 Abstract : Both Jan Arends and Maarten Biesheuvel are known for their literary representations of madness. Stylistically, however, the work of these authors shows radical differences, as is confirmed by intuitive judgments of readers. Whereas Arends’ prose is considered ‘clear’ and ‘objective’, Biesheuvel’s style has been characterized as ‘chaotic’ and ‘subjective’. However, these statements are ‘impressionistic’ and often not based on linguistic evidence. In order to determine which textual properties give rise to these judgments, we offer a comparative grammatical analysis of two short stories by Arends and Biesheuvel. With regard to the first opposition (clear vs. chaotic), our analysis suggests that the impression of chaos in Biesheuvel’s story does not follow directly from the grammatical complexity of his sentences, but rather from the lack of causal coherence. As for the other opposition (subjective vs. objective), we use the cognitive linguistic notion of ‘subjectivity’ to demonstrate that the narrator in Arends’ ‘objective’ story may in fact be more subjective than the one in Biesheuvel’s. |
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