Poetry in the Age of Transition: ‘Rhetoricians’and ‘Rhetorical’ Poetics in the Netherlands (1400–1550)

Samenvatting

This article offers a survey of the poetry of the late-medieval Netherlandic ‘rhetoricians.’ Netherlandic ‘rhetorike’ is placed in a historical framework the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands from the early 15^th to the mid-16^th century; the nature of ‘rhetorical’ activities in the vernacular is examined in the context of the poetics of Matthijs de Castelein, one of the most significant theoreticians of Netherlandic ‘rhetoric.’ By linking medieval Latin ‘rhetorica’ to Netherlandic ‘rhetorike,’ one can arrive at a better understanding not only of the poetics of De Castelein, but also of the persuasive function ascribed to poetry by the entire ‘rhetorical’ movement as shown in Dutch research, especially by Herman Pleij.