TY - THES ID - 137937770 TI - Het godsbeeld in het Nederlandstalige luisterlied AU - Akkermans, Hanne AU - Vandevelde, Tom AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Letteren. Opleiding Master in de westerse literatuur (Leuven) PY - 2021 PB - Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Letteren DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:137937770 AB - Based on previous studies by Laurens Ham and Geert Buelens, this thesis makes a case for closely analysing song lyrics (of songs that are not written in English) in the same way we analyse poetry: in depth and with an awareness of the importance behind it, being cultural, intellectual and historical relevance. Building on this conviction and the fact that belief in God and religion which drastically changed in the 1950s, coincided with the rise of politically and culturally engaged Dutch songs, a corpus of 24 Dutch songs pertaining God was assembled to analyse how religion, and god images more specifically, are manifested in ‘het Nederlandstalige luisterlied’. Whether the representation of the image of God and the religious experience in ‘het Nederlandstalige luisterlied’ has evolved over time, is another point of examination. The intersection is analysed using three categories: first, the positioning of the speaker, second, the positioning of the speaker towards God, and third the depiction of God. Following the intricate process of analysing the song lyrics, many observations came to the surface. Since this corpus is rather ‘small’ and many more songs about God exist in Dutch, it was only possible to indicate certain tendencies at the end, no grand evolutions or conclusions. However, the selected case studies should provide a fairly robust sample that can be supplemented in later research. The study of these song lyrics showed that the songs in which God is spoken about, but in which God himself is not ‘a part of the conversation’, are in the great majority opposite to songs in which the speaker addresses God and songs in which God himself is speaking. In addition, the songs in which God himself was allowed to speak left a striking effect. Assigning the role of the lyrical self to God turns out to be a productive means for the singer or writer of the song to send a certain (whether or not cherished) conviction, vision or message to the reader, since it adds more intensity and weight to the chosen words. It is no longer a random unbelieving, anti-religious fanatic who comments, but God Himself as a lyrical I. This shows the enduring authority that the idea of God radiates. Furthermore, an increase in individualization was observed over the years, where the speaker seems to appropriate God more and more, in a negative as well as a positive sense. Moreover, the image of God seems to have become less polemical in more recent years, and more open to interpretation and questioning than reproving or negative. A recurring element of criticism is when an angry speaker protests against cruelty happening in the name of God; the “self-proclaimed representatives of God's cause” invariably look bad in the end. The core of the problem thus lies with man, not God. Whether they are artists from the 1960s or contemporary artists such as Moen, one thing is clear: most of them recognize the important and even crucial difference between faith and God on the one hand and religion on the other. In angry comments directed at God, the arguments often betray that the speaker is actually talking about religion, not faith or what God himself stands for. It might be interesting to explore this lack of distinction in further research, with God serving as a ‘pispaal’ for religion ER -