Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 25, Issue 1, 2020

This article argues that it is both important and viable to develop a diachronic perspective on the profits of literary authors in the Low Countries. Up to now, conceptual and theoretical boundaries between different subdisciplines within Dutch literary studies have resulted in a compartmentalized, fragmentary narrative of the economic, social and symbolic profits of literary authors throughout the centuries. On the basis of a survey of the theoretical frameworks dominant in the subdisciplines of medieval, early modern and modern Dutch literature, we highlight the opportunities and difficulties for a diachronic perspective on financial advancement, focusing both on practice and discourse. In addition, we propose a schematic model that tries to overcome the difficulties and enables us to profit from the opportunities. This proposal allows for a sharper focus on both the practice of and discourse on literary authors’ economic gain from a diachronic perspective.

A grand narrative of Dutch literary authors’ opportunities to economically profit from their writing is yet to be written. The general assumption, however, is that these opportunities developed teleologically from a dominant system of patronage during medieval and early modern times, in which financial gains were marginal and in which author’s independence of their supporters was constrained, to a system in which the commercial book market was dominant and where authors could be more self-supporting and thus more independent of supporters. This article argues that there is no such teleology. On the contrary: on the basis of an exploration of both practice and discourse of literary authors’ profits from the Middle Ages to the present, we conclude that in every period, it was possible for authors to profit from their writing through either patronage, market or governmental support, and often through a combination of these sources. Moreover, in every period varying types of independence of literary authors was valued highly. Our analysis of the discourse on profits shows that the continuous tendency to disguise financial advancement could be related to the importance of authorial independence throughout the ages.

Throughout the centuries, many literary authors were engaged in writing theatre plays. Although there are many studies about the theatre business in general from Medieval Times to the present, the perspective of the playwright’s profits is seldom taken into consideration. This article presents both a survey of author’s options to gain an income in the world of theatre and an analysis of the discourse about this advancement. More specifically, on the basis of a comparison of cases from the seventeenth century on the one hand and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on the other, this article argues that, despite the fact that for playwrights, as much as for other literary authors, it was a taboo to be open about economic profits, developments in the organization of institutional theatre created temporary openings for (public debate about) financial rewards.

This article presents the first diachronic overview of the economic, social and symbolic profits of ‘city poets’ (‘stadsdichters’) in the Low Countries. From the early fifteenth century onwards, there have been many (more or less) official relationships between city councils and poets. The prominence and the form of these relationships, however, diverged greatly in different periods: whereas official appointments were the standard in the fifteenth, sixteenth and the twenty-first centuries, the period in between saw a much more diverse landscape of informal appointments and relationships. After presenting a historical overview of the role of city poets throughout the centuries, this article focuses on two well-documented periods in which formal agreements were made between town governments and poets: the late Middle Ages and the start of the 21^st century. We analyze political and financial agreements explicitly in relationship to the complexities surrounding the production of city poetry. City poetry, paid by public money, is bound to be controversial: in general because its status is subject to changes and political discussions, but also because this form of commissioned poetry is sometimes seen as a form of propaganda. Official city poetry seems to flourish most in societies with a stable political-religious climate (as in the Southern Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth century) and/or with a keen interest in city marketing (as in Flanders and the Netherlands in the twenty-first century).