T.R. - Neophilologus

Abstract

Evert van der Starre had been editor of Neophilologus for 27 years, when he unexpectedly died in 2004. He had plans for a special issue of his beloved journal. The topic would be the composition of poetic collections, on which he had already published an article in this journal (‘Editions de textes et structures du recueil poe´tique. Char et Queneau dans la Ple´ iade’, Neophilologus 76 (1992), pp. 535 548). In his view the study of poetic collections had been unjustly neglected as literary scholars tend to focus one-sidedly on the individual poem. To rectify this deficiency he published a Dutch volume with articles (De tweede gisting, Over de compositie van dichtbundels, Amsterdam, 2001, edited together with Ad Zuiderent). Discussions with colleagues which lay at the basis of this book confirmed his view that the issue merited further theoretical reflection and a more diachronic and comparative approach. In the current issue we present a series of articles which show the rich variety of problems that are closely connected with the study of poetic collections.