Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde - Volume 139, Issue 2/3, 2023

Publishing a journal was a popular undertaking for political authors at the end of the eighteenth century. Taking as an example Karel Broeckaert’s Dagelyks Nieuws van Vader Roeland (1792-1793), the current study sheds light on how authors of the eighteenth-century Southern Netherlands tried to give a voice to the common man. The journal not only derived its effectiveness from the use of the Flemish vernacular, but also from embedding its political reporting in a conversational scenography. While the democratizing potential of het Dagelyks Nieuws should not be exaggerated, it did become a locus for the development of public opinion. By thus analyzing Broeckaert’s editorial strategies, we gain insight into his motivations – as well as those of other writers of the Southern Netherlands – for publishing a Dutch-language journal in a French-dominated cultural context.

In this article, we aim to uncover language views and ideologies of foreign language textbook authors from the early modern period. We regard these authors as actors in the process of ‘foreign language making’. We compare the views of two 16th century authors (Noël de Berlemont and Gerard de Vivre) with those of Matthias Kramer, a ‘Sprachmeister’ (i.e. a professional language teacher) at the transition from the 17^th to the 18^th century. We argue that, in the course of the early modern period, the formation of standard languages and the emerging standard language ideology impacted language teaching and the construction of the concept of ‘foreign languages’.

In the few articles that have been written about ‘la Muse Belgique’ Marie-Caroline Murray over the past 250 years, she is invariably labelled a polyglot. However, the question arises to what extent Murray effectively internalised this multilingualism, and to what extent she actively deployed it in her writings. An initial analysis of her personal correspondence shows that her exceptional erudition was accompanied by a predominantly passive knowledge of these languages, and that this was mainly determined by the changing networks in which Murray moved throughout her life. This article examines the role of these networks in Marie-Caroline Murray’s perception of multilingualism by systematically mapping them. This staged ‘deconstruction’ of multilingualism shows that Murray repeatedly outdid herself in making original translations through these cosmopolitan contacts (Camões), but that this did not lead to an internalisation of multilingualism as revealed by Murray’s later descriptions of literary agency.

In the Northern Low Countries, the eighteenth century is often regarded as the period of so-called ‘Frenchification’. On the one hand, it refers to the French influence on Dutch language use. On the other hand, it also refers to the choice of language, with French being chosen over Dutch in specific social domains. The second aspect is the focus of this article. Language choice is mapped on the basis of two substantial source collections, with special attention to variables such as time, region and gender. We focus on two social domains: private life (i.c. ego-documents) and public opinion (i.c. pamphlets). An important aim is to examine whether the peak of alleged Frenchification is rightly placed in the eighteenth century, and also whether it is possible to objectively measure and quantify a rather subjective phenomenon like Frenchification.

The end of the eighteenth century ushers in a new ‘foreign ruler’ for the Southern Netherlands, revolutionary France and then the Napoleonic Empire (1794-1814). As the finale of the long eighteenth century, the period is in several ways exemplary for the Southern provinces: the first explicitly formulated language policy promotes French – until then only culturally hegemonic – as the sole national language. Its elaboration and effects are probably most striking in the press. For instance, press repertories show a spectacular decline in the number of periodicals from 1800 onwards – and an exponential increase after 1814 – and for about five years no Dutch-language journals appeared, but a striking number of bilingual ones. On the other hand, it is also significant that precisely the press – which experienced a steep rise during the eighteenth century – underwent a far-reaching curbing during this period. Similarly, for dix-huitiémists too, periodicals are not only sources of documentation, their role as important actors in the literary and cultural field is also studied. Drawing on several journals with the most diverse positions – the Tyd-Verdryf, the Esprit des Journaux, the Wekelyks Berigt van Mechelen, and the various bilingual Journaux du Département, this contribution aims to sketch a picture of the influence of the increasingly pervasive French language policy on the journalistic and literary practices of Southern Dutch journals, oscillating between hidden translation and explicit multilingualism.