“Es ist ein eigentümlicher Apparat.”
— Franz Kafka, In der Strafkolonie
The meaning of justice is an ancient old question. One of its meanings and the most pivotal one in this case is the “administering of deserved punishment or reward”.[1] This immediately raises the next question, namely determining what is deserved punishment (or reward). One of Western literature’s masterpieces dealt, among others, with this concept of justice and punishment. Dante wrote with The Inferno not only a daunting description of what hell might be like, he also portays those who are being punished and the supposed justice behind it. Of course Dante was not the only great author to use the ever–fascinating motif of crime and punishment. Apart from Dostoyevsky’s identically titled great novel, Kafka excercises the notion of justice in his short story In der Strafkolonie (In the Penal Colony). Since both deal with the precarious concept of justice, it would be interesting to compare both notions of justice. Is there a link or great difference between the crime and its punishment in the texts of The Inferno and In der Strafkolonie? Lees verder…
De tijdvakdichter
go ahead punk, make my day
door
angstvalligheid
stelt hij zich buiten
de voorwaarde van
lyriek, die
overgave tot
genade
is.
— Paul van Ostaijen, een tijdvakdichterlijke adaptatie (271)[1]
Er was eens een soort dichter, aldus befaamd Vlaams dichter en criticus Paul van Ostaijen, en zijn naam was de tijdvakdichter. De tijdvakdichter is de kunstenaar die bewust speelt met de eigentijdse literaire varianten van bling bling, van hipheid en modieus zijn. Maar, het leven van de tijdvakdichter is niet al goud dat daar glimt. Want de tijdvakdichter weet geen maat te houden – hij gaat te ver met zijn waarden en trucjes die tegen de heersende conventies ingaan. Hij vernieuwt niet, hij druist slechts tegen de gevestigde orde in, om het kont tegen de krib gooien an sich. De tijdvakdichter wordt dan ook alleen binnen zijn eigen tijdvak gewaardeerd, hij schrijft immers dat wat het publiek op een specifiek moment in de tijd wil horen – juist dat wat haaks staat op wat er grootschalig geproduceerd wordt. Het lot van de tijdvakdichter is krampachtig pogen tot de eigen tijd te behoren, terwijl zijn glans langzaam verloren gaat in de kosmische universaliteit. Lees verder…
“Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!”
― The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
“Watson, quick, man, if you love me! And don’t budge, whatever happens ― whatever happens, do you hear? Don’t speak! Don’t move! Just listen with all your ears.”
― The Adventure of the Priory School
The character of Sherlock Holmes has accelerated the heart rhythm of many fans since his literary birth. Together with his trusted sidekick John Watson, M.D., he fights the forces of wicked evil by solving cases that seem impossible to solve. It seems that over the years the popularity and the mythologisation of the supposedly pipe-smoking and chequered-hat-wearing detective has only grown. Many decades after its creation the affection for Sherlock Holmes continues, together with the existence of many similar detectives ― in either literature or on television screens. The intricate relationship between Holmes and Watson is sometimes even reflected in some of these later literary characters (e.g. Poirot and Hastings). This ambiguous relationship is precisely what needs proper Holmesian investigation and deduction. Many whispered suggestions are those of homosexual affection, but no great literary research has been performed to show beyond a reasonable doubt that this could be the case. This highly sophisticated proposal will show an attempt at doing precisely this. Lees verder…
With its roots in the Bible, the word ‘golem’ denotes an “unshapen form” of a human being (Psalm 139:16). Ever since, the motif has often been used and re-used in literature: the golem motif, by Koven appropriately explained as “a metaphor for humanity’s quest for the creation of life” (217). Also known as the bringing to life of something that was initially not alive before, as revolving “around the animation of an inanimate statue” (Koven 218). There are many works of literature that use this motif and the largest usage is found in the Jewish literary tradition which itself knows many diverse variations of the golem legend (Koven 218). One of these mythical stories about a golem is Ishaak Bashevis Singer’s The Golem (1982). Singer’s golem is explicitly given life by God, whereas Shelley’s golem is electrocuted into this world. Singer’s version of the golem myth entails religious magic, whereas Shelley shocked the world with her scientific approach to a story — that makes it even more impossibly frightening. On an interesting sidetrack lays Harry Mulisch modern version of the golem titled De Procedure (The Procedure, 1998). Mulisch’s novel entails two golems, one in the third ‘act’ (chapter) in which the narrator relates the myth of the golem (Prague in the 16th century) according to the Jewish myth of the golem, apart from the fact that this golem is female. In the rest of the novel, the contemporary protagonist himself creates a golem. In his novel, Mulisch incorporates both the mythical and the modern (Frankenstein-like) golem. All of which raises questions as to what the thematic overlap between these versions are and what the startling differences are in both Singer’s golem and Shelley’s. Does the reason and method of creation influence their kinship? Lees verder…
― The Adventure of the Red Circle
“It’s a mongoose,” I [Watson] cried.
― The Crooked Man
~
Introduction
Philip Guedalla called the detective story “the normal recreation of noble minds,” whereas others regard the pleasure of reading detectives as a trashy and sensational pastime (Gilbar 5). W.H. Auden, for example, regarded it as an “addiction like tobacco or alcohol” (Priestman 1). This varied appreciation of the genre as either high or low culture already illustrates the intricate position of the genre as a whole. The history of the detective novel is just as difficult to establish. Some trace the detective novel back to the biblical story of Daniel, in which Daniel “scatters ashes and looks at the footprints,” something Sherlock Holmes does ages later in The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez (Reyes 65). But this biblical story that includes deduction does not purposely produce suspense. It is Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin who is commonly regarded as the first detective in the Anglo-Saxon literary tradition, although the first Dupin story (The Murders in the Rue Morgue) does not even contain an actual crime in the common meaning of the word (it lacks intent and a human perpetrator). According to Reyes detective fiction as a broader genre can be easily traced back to the ancient Greek story of Oedipus in which brother-in-law Creon functions as Oedipus’s Watsonian sidekick (66). However, Dupin is still seen as detective fiction’s bedrock, a genre that is nowadays one of the best selling genres known to man (Knight x). Moreover, Poe is responsible for many of the cliché and fixed traits that the character of the detective should comply with. After Poe, writers such as Dickens and Collins attributed to the genre of detective fiction. None, however, had such a great influence on the character and genre of the detective as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He even surpassed Poe’s Dupin with the creation of Sherlock Holmes. This famous inhabitant of Baker Street 221B made many (if not all) subsequent productions of detective fiction seem like pastiches.
It was not until the Golden Age[1] that Great Britain produced another great influential writer of detective stories. A true Queen of Crime settled on her throne, as Agatha Christie wrote fifty-eight detective novels and various plays, including the longest running play ever: The Mousetrap (1952). Christie followed Poe and Conan Doyle in the creation of strong, what would become prototypical characters. In the line of Dupin and Holmes, Christie brought Hercule Poirot to the literary stage. Although a foreign Belgian, Poirot embodies many values earlier found in the British Holmes – and French-American Dupin. Nusser, however, states that Hercule Poirot “als Detektive weit von den Überhöhungen eines Sherlock Holmes entfernt ist,” (as a detective does not approach the heights of a detective as Holmes, 101). He admits that “nur skurrile Züge sind als Merkmale geblieben” (merely silly characteristics have remained, 101). Perhaps Nusser’s understanding of what are “nur skurrile Merkmale” is somewhat strange, as many highly essential characteristics of Poirot are also found in Holmes (and Dupin). Lees verder…
If you are reading these words, I am dead. […] Matters of such darkness and depravity could never be considered material for fiction, let alone a history.
— writes the fictionalised A. C. Doyle in the Prologue of The Patient’s Eyes
On Tuesday the 4th of September 2001 the BBC broad casted the movie “The Patient’s Eyes”, the second movie in the Murder Rooms series.[1] Like its predecessor (“The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes”), David Pirie had written its screenplay. Three other movies would follow, all of which the screenplays would be written by different writers. Pirie as a script writer is most commonly known for his unconventional rewriting of Wilkie Collins’ great mystery The Woman in White in the 1997 movie adaptation. Arguably, Pirie’s Murder Rooms screenplays were most intruiging due to the fact that he knew how to intermingle fact and fiction into an uncanny thriller with suspense that would make Arthur Donan Doyle himself shiver. The movie “The Patient’s Eyes” draws on both biographical facts of the life of Sherlock Holmes author Conan Doyle as well as and Pirie’s creative process. The originality lies in the usage of Doyle’s existing Sherlock Holmes literary canon, which functions as a mediator between the facts of biography and pure fiction Pirie’s creativity adds to the story. Simultaneously, Pirie remediates Doyle’s canon by tying it to the occurrences he creates from his discourse of faction. The film “refashions [a] prior media form” (Grusin 17). What actually is happens, is that Pirie takes hollow facts (e.g. the fact that Doyle’s inspiration for Holmes was his mentor Dr. Bell) and fills these facts up with hypotheses of occurrences-that-could-have-taken-place. These hypotheses are then strengthened by the links Pirie ties between his could-have-happened concepts to the fictional happenings in the Sherlock Holmes stories. In a way, this literature itself is both fact and fiction – since it exists, but it did not happen.[2] Pirie tries to play the Sherlock Holmes stories up as merely fictionalised variaties of the cases that Doyle actually experienced with Dr. Bell. Thus literature becomes a fiction of fact (which is in fact fiction). This dynamic process of fact, fiction and literature in “The Patient’s Eyes” makes it a promising object for study. However, there is more. After Pirie wrote the screenplay for the second Murder Rooms film, he also wrote a novelisation of “The Patient’s Eyes”. The question that arises is in what way the notions of adaptation and novelisation agree with and play a significant role in the film and novel of The Patient’s Eyes. Lees verder…
Funnily enough, the excerpt from Shamela shows how much of a dramatist Fielding was. In his popular afterpiece The Virgin Unmasked (1735) he created the heroine Lucy Goodwill.
Lucy is the not-quite-sixteen-year-old daughter of a rich and possessive old father who means to marry her according to his own wishes. But she, on the contrary, is guided by her own cheerful instinct for getting whatever she wants and appears in the play as an immensely engaging sort of barracuda virgin, descending from a line of innocently rapacious stage characters like Wycherley’s Margery Pinchwife and Congreve’s Miss Prue. She is entirely innocent of experience, and of disguise, but certainly not of desire. (Lockwood, 107)
When Lucy’s father asks whether she should like to have a husband, she replies as follows. Lees verder…
1. Inleiding
Basisinformatie
Lippijn is een sotternie, oftewel klucht, die in het handschrift Van Hulthem is overgeleverd, een handschrift uit het begin van de 15de eeuw. Deze naam heeft het gekregen naar aanleiding van de eigenaar Karel van Hulthem. Het handschrift is een verzamelwerk waarin zich nog vijf andere sotternieën, vier abele spelen (waarvan Lippijn bij het abel spel Esmoreit hoort) en overige fragmenten bevinden. De auteur is ons niet bekend, net als de plaats van herkomst. (Waarover natuurlijk wel uitgebreid over gespeculeerd wordt.)
De verhaallijn
Voor de relevantie van ons college is de verhaallijn wel zo nuttig: Een man, Lippijn, ziet zijn vrouw op een dag vreemdgaan. Vervolgens loopt hij een vriendin van zijn vrouw tegen het lijf, de comere. Zij weet Lippijn na lange verhalen te overtuigen dat zijn vrouw niet vreemdging, maar dat de duivel Lippijn slechts wilde doen geloven dat het zo was, en dat het dus niet zijn vrouw was. Het zal wel aan zijn slechte ogen gelegen hebben, meent de comere Trise. Na veel overtuigingskracht bindt Lippijn in. De comere zegt hem maar in zijn huis te kijken, daar zal hij zijn vrouw wel zien zitten. En ja hoor, in de tussentijd is zijn vrouw natuurlijk weer naar huis geslopen. Maar Lippijn gelooft het en veronschuldigt zich voor het ooit hebben kunnen twijfelen aan zijn vrouw.
The Houyhnhnms are unequivocally not the good creatures Gulliver believes them to be. They both embody good and bad characteristics of the human race as much as they differ from the human race – in a negative way. I will use the concept of remote goodness for humanity as a starting point – as Swift uses the inhuman beastly actions of the Yahoos as an illustration to the opposite of this elevated humanity of the Houyhnhnms. Simply put: the Yahoos are bad, the Houyhnhnms are good.The strangeness lies in the fact that the Houyhnhnms are seen (by Gulliver) as the good ones in his final travel in the story. The elements that make them into good creatures are those of humanity. Therefore it is strange that these human-like horses make Gulliver despise his own (human!) race. It is as logical as a platypus convincing a mouse to hate mice. Lees verder…
Vanden Basilisco ende t’ Weselken.
Allene de wesel verwinnet
want alsment in dat lant kinnet
jn wat ole dat si wonen
comen de liede metten gonen
met ruten al omme beanghen
ende doense in den oleganghen
dar bitise doot ter stede
ende dan moeti steruen mede.[2] Lees verder…
