Dutch Experimental Realism of the 1960s - Reading Documentary Literature through Autobiographical Genres (FWOTM720)

This project aims to give an overview of the Dutch documentary literature of the 1960s. During this period various authors introduced reality in their work in a non-traditional way, pursuing an experimental realism. In order to approach this subject matter in a way that will contribute to both the understanding of Dutch literary history and documentary literature on an international level, I will study how readers are able to understand the 1960s texts as 'documentary'. Two rhetorical effects that are also important for autobiographies support this way of reading: credibility and veracity. In my research I will focus on the genres in the text that evoke these effects, acknowledging the multiform nature of documentary literature.
Documentary texts frequently display a contradictory repertory of signals. The characteristic documentary techniques are verbatim reproduction of external texts, interviews and reportage, which provide the text with a connotation of objectivity. But documentary texts also make use of fictionalising techniques, e.g. consciousness representation and focalisation, to evoke credibility and veracity. All these techniques bear references to certain genres in them. I will examine the specificity of the Dutch documentary literature in the 1960s, by analysing which fictional and non-fictional genres are referred to, in which ways, and how they are interrelated, specifically in comparison to autobiography.

Keywords:linguistique et littérature, linguistics and literature

Disciplines:Comparative literature studies