Michiel de Swaen - de Swaen As A Rhetorician

De Swaen As A Rhetorician

By profession, De Swaen was a surgeon; he also formed part of the judicature. But he was also a member of the Dunkirk chamber of rhetoric, the Carsouwe, also known as Sint Michiel (Saint Michael was their patron saint); the chamber of the Kassouwieren (different ways of spelling for instance De Kersauwe are found; the word descends from the Dutch kersouw or daisy). Michiel de Swaen, as a rhetorician, was befriended by rhetoricians from the region coming from cities such as Diksmuide and Ieper. He became a prince in 1687 at the Dunkirk chamber. Through the chambers of rhetoric, rhetoricians such as De Swaen kept in touch with the part over de schreve of the Southern Netherlands under Habsburg rule, even after the French occupation. For instance, in 1688 De Swaen was a guest in Veurne of the chamber the Kruys-Broeders. In 1700, De Swaen participated in a dramatics competition, called the “landjuweel“, organised by the Bruges chamber of rhetoric, the Drie Santinnen. To the amazement of many, he did not win the competition. His fellow men convinced him to write to the Bruges chamber of rhetoric to prove to them that they had made a mistake. Disappointed for only having obtained the second prize and facing the existing standards of the Bruges competition, he attempted to formulate a poetical theory Neder-duitsche digtkonde of rym-konst, which he made after the prototype of that by Aristotle.

By the end of his life, De Swaen pretended that he only stayed with the chamber of rhetoric as a member to keep in touch with his friends. Nonetheless he took his work as a rhetorician seriously, taking Vondel and others as an example.