Mystical Heritage and Modern Identities. Reception and Appropriation of the Medieval 'Flemish' Mystic Hadewijch in Interwar Belgium.

This project offers an in-depth study of the polymorphic reception of the Middle Dutch or 'Flemish' mystical author Hadewijch (ca. 1240) within the intellectual field and the wider socio-cultural field in Interwar Flanders (including Brussels), a society characterized by acute 'pillarization'. The enthusiast appropriation of the hitherto hardly known oeuvre of Hadewijch by a remarkably broad range of intellectuals belonging to very different circles – traditional Catholics, francophone modernists, avant-garde artists - challenges us to rethink the common frame of an all-pervasive polarization between Catholic and 'liberal' ideologies and between the traditional and the modern(ist), and will enable us to detect diverse forms of Flemish identification which remained largely unexplored until now. A combined approach will be used that draws on methods and concepts of reception studies, discourse analysis and imagology. Firstly, a material and contextual analysis of the Hadewijch publications published in Belgium in the Interwar Period, will lead to a list of Hadewijch transmitters; a view of the networks between them, and an understanding of their ideologies The results will be complemented by archival research. Secondly, a discursive and narrative analysis of a selection of texts will be carried out in order to study the symbolic production of a national figure. An 'indexical' reading of the Hadewijch-texts will allow us to create a nuanced typology of the constructed Hadewijch images, and to uncover the motives underlying the dissemination of her work. Thirdly, the correlation of the findings of steps one and two will reveal differences and/or similarities between types of appropriation processes at work, and will uncover unexpected crossings between the ideologies and networks of the key mediators within the different sites of Hadewijch appropriation. This will allow us to draw nuanced conclusions about the cultural and political significance of Hadewijch's reception in Interwar Flanders The study will result in an innovative cultural history of Interwar Flanders, as the unique perspective of the multifocal circulation and appropriation of a female medieval poet, mystic and visionary, will compel us to depart from fixed divisions. Moreover, the study significantly contributes to Dutch literary history as it writes an important and as yet unkown chapter in the reception history of Hadewijch, who today is considered to be one of the major authors of Dutch literature and of Western mysticism. On a more general level, the project will deepen our understanding of the uses of literary heritage in the complex processes of identity formation.

Keywords:DUTCH LITERATURE, CULTURAL IDENTITY, CULTURAL HERITAGE, MYSTICAL TEXTS

Disciplines:History, Language studies, Literary studies