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Document Details :

Title: 'Mi smelten mine sinne in minnen oerewoede'
Subtitle: Reflecties over genre en subjectiviteit in de Liederen van Hadewijch
Author(s): FRAETERS, Veerle
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 55    Issue: 4   Date: 2013   
Pages: 427-457
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.55.4.2999872

Abstract :
While traditionally Hadewijch scholarship has considered the lyrical ‘I’ in the Poems in Stanzas or Songs to be referring unequivocally to the author, Fraeters and Willaert in their new edition of the Liederen (2009) have opted to make a functional distinction within the ‘I’: the adhortative ‘I’ they refer to as Hadewijch, the expressive ‘I’ as ‘the loving soul’. In this article this decision is motivated and taken one step further by including matters of genre. It is argued that the evident lyrical aspects of Hadewijch’s Songs have unduly overshadowed their narrative and epistolary qualities and that the generic hybridity of the Songs calls for a narratological rather than a poetical reading. In a narratological analysis the lyrical ‘I’ disappears and a pattern of two positions arises, a magistral and an exemplary one, which each are available to different subject positions and narrative view points. From a narratological analysis of Song 7 it becomes clear that either one of these positions is so infused with intertext that they cannot be linked directly and exclusively to the author without affecting their essentially exemplary character.

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