Internationale Neerlandistiek - Volume 48, Issue 4, 2010

Modern philologies are intrinsically bound to the ‘Nation Project’, a concept of substantial influence on language, literature, and culture from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries in Europe. As a consequence, philologies are basically national philologies. The situation of the twentyfirst century is of a post-national situation and is, thus, a challenge to the nation-bound concepts of language, literature, and culture. A major task for Read More

In the recent past, two medieval Dutch Reynaert-stories have been published in separate editions, each with a modern translation: Van den vos Reynaerde with an English translation, Reynaerts historie with a German translation. In this article these two editions are presented as the outcome of a transnational approach. Following a sketch of the medieval tradition of stories about the famous fox, it is substantiated that both Du Read More

This article posits that language teaching methods which implicitly assume a direct link between one particular national culture and one particular language cannot address the changing needs of language learners in contemporary multicultural societies, which are characterized by increased mobility and cultural complexity. It further charts different views of intercultural communication and, along with Kumaravadivelu (2008), Read More

All too often researchers and teachers of literary texts assume that their audiences share a body of knowledge which they cannot possibly share because of its cultural specificity. In this article Great War poetry by Jacob Israel de Haan, Ber Horowitz, Edward Słoński, René de Clercq, Jozef Simons, Albert Verwey and Herman Gorter is used to illustrate how the authors' notions of nationhood and (inter)nationalism are determ Read More

This paper discusses a new concept of multilingual communication in the Netherlands, i.e. receptive multilingualism or so-called lingua receptiva (LaRa). ‘LaRa is the ensemble of those linguistic, mental, interactional as well as intercultural competences which are creatively activated when listeners are receiving linguistic actions in their ‘passive’ language or variety. In order to monitor and process ‘passive knowledge activat Read More

This article discusses the position of Dutch as a Foreign Language within the curriculum of Translating/Interpreting and Germanic Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava and within the context of national and European language politics. First, it analyzes the development of language and culture of language in Slovakia and the manner in which that development influenced communication Read More

This article pleads for a ‘transnational approach’ to modern Dutch literature, with proper consideration of the national and even local perspective. In fact, the tension between local, national and international tendencies is one of the factors constituting the literary system. In this respect, the study of Dutch literature has been based on the romantic idea of a ‘nation state’ and a monolingual culture, thereby neglecting the esse Read More