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Document Details : Title: 'Moeten verstaanbaar blijven' Subtitle: De genese van de registervariatie in Claus' De verwondering (1962) Author(s): ABSILLIS, Kevin , LEMMENS, Wendy Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 58 Issue: 2 Date: 2016 Pages: 215-248 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.58.2.3164932 Abstract : This article intends to show how the genetic material of Hugo Claus’s novel De verwondering (1962) adds a dimension to stylistic research into the register variation in this author’s prose. Starting from Claus’s notes on the implementation of dialect use, written down in a notebook he kept during the realisation of De verwondering, we reconstruct the development of the registers of two rather marginal characters – a cigarette salesman and a blind fisherman. Our findings confirm the hypothesis that already long before his play Vrijdag (1969), Claus had started experimenting with literary language deviating from Standard Dutch. Furthermore, a comparison between different versions not only shows that Claus gave the literary representation of norm-deviating registers quite some thought, but also that he gradually discriminated between ‘in-between-lingual’ registers and clearly marked dialectical registers. On top of that, our analyses reveal several nuanced differences that probably fell through during the editorial process. In short, the genetic material of De verwondering offers new insights in the evolution of the register variation in Claus’s prose, a crucial aspect that provides manifold opportunities for future research. |
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