Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 19, Issue 3, 2014

Abstract Models in Dutch Literature 1900-1920. An Introduction In Dutch literary history, the timespan between 1900 and 1920 has often been conceived of as a period of relative calm and stability in contrast to the preceding fin-de-siècle years and the years following World War I. Recent publications, however, broadening their scope from the canonical literary texts and the major authors to a more comprehensive view on Read More

Abstract Claiming or Proving. Models in Dutch Literary Criticism around 1917 The first two decades of the twentieth century saw a rapid expansion of literary criticism in the Dutch literary field. Models played an important role in contemporary debates about the nature and function of criticism. In search for new modes of critical writing after the Movement of 1880, critics (consciously or not) made use of discursive conventions, t Read More

Abstract The Traveler, the Painter and the Writer. Travel Books by Jacobus van Looy Travelling never occurs unmediated. Travelers are guided by pre-existing representations of the Other (discovering or covering foreign realities), by patterns of cultural self-perception and of individual self-observation. The same holds for travel writing, that even shows a double mediation: (1) the mediation of the travelling itself by the selec Read More

Abstract The Prose Poem in Flanders and the Netherlands as a Model. On Genres and Generations This article explores the ways in which the genre of the prose poem functioned as a model in Flemish and Dutch literature from the 1890’s to the 1920’s. Focusing on two cases – a prewar and a postwar one –, it is argued that the genre was reinterpreted by new literary generations and, infused with new elements, became a prod Read More

Abstract Models and the Author’s Self-fashioning. Some Reflections and the Case of Mina Kruseman This article explores the ways in which the concept of the ‘model’ can be used for research into the self-fashioning of literary authors. After reviewing the role of the concept in theoretical contributions dealing with the process of self-fashioning (Goffmann, Meizoz, Heinich), it raises some crucial methodological issues, such Read More

Abstract Patterns of Giving and Receiving: the Case of the Cultural Magazine De Beweging (1905-1919) The Dutch poet Albert Verwey was editor of the cultural magazine De Beweging between 1905-1919. This article uses gift theory to investigate the alliances he forged with his publishers, with his readers, and with the writers he worked with, and takes stock of the ways he tried to keep the insolvent magazine financially afloat. V Read More

Abstract Literary life lessons. The first ‘Scharten novel’ as a model of new middlebrow literature Presenting the case of one of the first bestselling novels by C. and M. Scharten-Antink, this article analyzes how at the beginning of the twentieth century the middlebrow novel was introduced in the Netherlands, which gave rise to a rapidly growing tradition of literary midcult. This new kind of novel, it is argued, is not merely a new ge Read More