Neo-Latin and Vernacular Poetics of Self-Fashioning in Dutch Occasional Poetry (1635–1640)

Abstract

This chapter aims to reconstruct the general poetic system that is at the backdrop of self-fashioning, rather than the historical particularities of it. It especially discusses the bilingual aspect of these poetics of self-fashioning. The chapter focuses on a particular corpus for this research, namely Neo-Latin and vernacular occasional poetry from the Netherlands published in the period 1635-1640. The time frame of this corpus represents good cross-section of the bilingual literary system enveloping Low Countries at the time. The chapter discusses the envisaged poetics of self-fashioning in an orderly manner. The first kind of self-fashioning one can engage in through poetic means, is socio-cultural self-fashioning, which claims on the contemporary social and cultural ladder. The chapter presents tentative conclusions regarding the general properties of the Neo-Latin and vernacular poetics of self-fashioning. The chapter reveals to what extent the Neo-Latin and vernacular poetic repertoires had merged in the period 1635-1640. Keywords: bilingual literary system; Neo-Latin; self-fashioning; socio-cultural techniques; vernacular poetry