Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde - Volume 136, Issue 2, 2020

Abstract This paper compares the different possibilities of verbal complementation of the Dutch verb proberen ‘try’ and its Afrikaans cognate probeer ‘try’. In Dutch, proberencan take three complement types: an om te infinitive, a te infinitive and a bare infinitive. In Afrikaans, probeer can only take two complements: an om te infinitive and a bare infinitive. There are no semantic differences among the complemen-tation pa Read More

Abstract In 1620 Jacob Cats published his didactic poem Self-stryt, about the biblical story of Joseph in Potiphar’s house (Genesis 39) the title of which he might have borrowed from the English translation by his friend Josuah Sylvester, of George Goodwin’s Automachia (1607). Self-stryt can be read as an Arminian text, as the protagonist Joseph fights off the advances of Potiphar’s wife, with God’s help surely but in the first pl Read More

Abstract The memory of colonialism and slavery is finally becoming more widespread in the Netherlands. However, the field of literary studies still falls behind compared to the central place of the Dutch-Caribbean slavery past in recent societal debates. One of the reasons could be that the representation of trans-Atlantic slavery in literature is often oblique and allegorical. This article proposes a reading of such allegories in Read More