Voiceless Vondel? Conflicting interpretations of Vondel’s "Jephta of de Offerbelofte"
1 Introduction In 1999, Frans-Willem Korsten published an article in which he presented a new interpretation of Jephta of de Offerbelofte , [1] a seventeenth-century play written by Joost van den Vondel (1587 – 1679). Inspired by modern thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, and working along the lines of modern rhetoric (explicitly) and more in general post-structuralism [2] (implicitly), Korsten tries to find new perspectives and unlock new meanings of the canonical renaissance author. However, in doing so, he was immediately confronted with counterarguments, most notably from Jan Konst. After all, it is Konst’s work that is used by the scholar to illustrate some theoretical and methodological problems in literary research within the Netherlands. Their debate, however, seems to be a representation of a larger ‘conflict’ of paradigms. This essay deals with this debate as a case study to focus on these conflicting approaches to texts from the early-modern period, ...