Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde

Jan Konst

Het vrouwelijke perspectief: pastorale liefdesklachten van Jan van Broekhuizen (1649-1707) en Charlotte Lochon († 1689)

Abstract -- This article discusses two Dutch pastoral poems dating from the second half of the seventeenth century: 'Veldman' by Jan van Broekhuizen (1649-1707) and ''t Klagende Zwaantje' by Charlotte Lochon († 1689). During the 1670s Van Broekhuizen and Lochon had a brief love affair. The two poems mentioned above were both published for the first time in Jan van Broekhuizen's Gedichten (1677), edited by Joan Pluimer. Lochon's ''t Klagende Zwaantje' must be regarded as an imitation (imitatio) of Van Broekhuizen's 'Veldman'. Both poems offer a love complaint from a female point of view and are therefore relatively unusual and remarkable in the light of early modern literary conventions. The article shows that Van Broekhuizen and Lochon were influenced by two important literary texts from classical antiquity, in both of which a shepherdess similarly complains about the unfaithfulness of her male lover: Theocritus' second Idyll (Pharmaceutria) and Vergil's eighth Eclogue (Damon and Alphesiboeus).

TNTL 122-1 (maart 2006), 54-69