Paul Zumthor – författare

Rembrandt's life coincided with what the Dutch refer to as their "golden age." This engagingly written study presents a rich picture of a dynamic society that had torn itself away from the mediocrity of its past - a stagnant nation of peasants and fishermen - to pursue an overseas empire that led to great financial wealth and a highly sophisticated cultivation of the arts. This classic work first appeared in English translation in 1963.Among the myriad topics covered are homes, gardens, clothing, food, religion, childrearing, education, medicine, sports and games, holidays and celebrations, painters, musicians, writers, the theater, publishing, aristocrats, workers, peasants, the merchant fleet, the armed forces, trading and colonizing companies, fisheries, and the famous Holland dikes.

This book aims to provide an analytical study of the sources, the art and the presentation of oral, or spoken, poetry. Paul Zumthor, a literary theorist, discusses the development of oral poetry from antiquity to the present in all its aspects: the forms of oral poetry; the epic in the West, Africa and other parts of the globe; styles of performance across the world; roles played in oral poetry (the poet as interpreter, the listeners, the variable duration of oral poetry in time and space, etc.); and oral ritual actions from archaic times to the present.