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Document Details :

Title: De 'Mengeldichten' van pseudo-Hadewijch
Subtitle: Een onderzoek van enkele vormaspecten
Author(s): VALLARSA, Alessia
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 54    Issue: 4   Date: 2012   
Pages: 403-427
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.54.4.2179597

Abstract :
The article discusses the form of pseudo-Hadewijch’s Mengeldichten 17-29. Because of the rhyming structure the Mengeldichten are divided into two groups: 17-24 en 25-29. The poems in the first group have the aabccb rhyme scheme in 169 short line stanzas. The poems of the second group have monorhyme stanzas that have longer four-accent lines. In the first group the original gnomic character of the aabccb scheme clearly shows in a number of stanzas. Still, pseudo-Hadewijch transcends the mere gnomic character of the aabccb scheme: in the organic long poems the poetic voice is an autobiographic I, like the one that also appears in the lyric of the Lundse gedichten. A comparison of poems 17 to 24 with ‘longer’ poems Van den ever en Jan Praet’s Speghel der wijsheit reveals, in contrast, that the discourse of pseudo-Hadewijch’s aabccb stanzas does not reflect the rational argumentation between two opponents, but is immediately understood by the insiders of the ‘school of love’. The second group’s monorhyme structure as well as some other indications (among others verse 3 of Mengeldicht 26) suggest that poems 25 to 29 were meant to be sung, as was the case with the Italian ‘laudesi’. The religious nature of monorhyme poems recorded in the Nederlandse Liederenbank corroborates this hypothesis. The possibility that aabccb poems 17 to 24, too, were sung cannot be excluded.

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