Urban space and the literary exploration of self – A rhetorician makes a mental tour through his city

• Published in: Renaissance studies Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 106 - 120
• Main Author: Mareel, Samuel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-02-2018
• Subjects: 16th century; Autobiographical literature; autobiography; chorography; de Dene, Eduard; Dramatists; Eduard de Dene; literary testament; memory; Poetry; Renaissance period; Rhetoric; Urban studies; Bruges Belgium
• ISSN: 0269-1213; 1477-4658
• DOI: 10.1111/rest.12377

A remarkable characteristic of the Testament Rhetoricael (Rhetorical Testament) (1562) by the Bruges rhetorician Eduard de Dene, one of the most important collections of lyrical texts to have come down to us from the sixteenth‐century Low Countries, is its combination of autobiography, and chorography. The author's persona provides the reader of that time with an unusual amount of information about his occupations, character, social world, and opinions. Most of it is given in the context of an evocation of specific places and spaces in the author's hometown. This essay analyses why, for a mid‐sixteenth century Netherlandish author such as Eduard De Dene, personal recollections seem to have been triggered in particular by specific urban places and spaces.