 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
|
Document Details : Title: 'Wij sullen valcken zijn, en hebben arents oogen' Subtitle: Zien, blindheid en kennis in Constantijn Huygens' Ooghentroost Author(s): GOSSEYE, Lise Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 54 Issue: 2 Date: 2012 Pages: 165-191 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.54.2.2160685 Abstract : Constantijn Huygens’ long consolatory poem Ooghentroost (1647) is built upon the opposition between two forms of seeing: one physical and one mental. This opposition is part of the poem’s consolatory rhetoric. Physical seeing is subordinated to mental seeing and physical blindness becomes an instrument for mental vision. However, the way in which both forms of seeing are conceptualized in Ooghentroost dismantles the opposition between them and leaves room for an interpretation in which the importance of early-modern scientific developments and the new epistemology are acknowledged. I analyze the meaning of the friction between mental and physical seeing in view of the epistemological revolution – from humanism to science – that is reflected in Ooghentroost. Starting from the oppositional interplay of both forms of seeing in the poem my analysis provides an insight in the particularities of the historical moment in which it is written and which it helps shape. |
|
