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Van theeziekte tot snuiflust
De verbeelding van modieuze verslavingen in Nederlandse kluchten rond 1700
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: De Achttiende Eeuw, Volume 56, Issue 2024, Oct 2024, p. 93 - 110
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- 01 Oct 2024
Abstract
Around 1700, three farces were put on the Dutch stage in which addiction to fashionable consumer products played an important role: Pieter Bernagie’s De románzieke juffer (1685), De buitenspoorige toebaksnuiver by Enoch Krook (1697), and De theezieke juffers by Enoch Krook and Daniël Kroon (1701). On the one hand, these farces functioned as a form of social criticism, in which addicted characters illustrated how the consumption of tea, tobacco, and romance novels could get out of hand. On the other hand, they seem to explain the very concept of addiction to its respective audiences through a process of imagineering. The farces imagine addiction as a social problem, and suggest that the consequences are more serious for the addict’s environment than for the addicted individual themselves. This article closely analyses these three farces in order to gain insight into early modern Dutch conceptions of addiction, morality, fashion, and consumption culture, as well as the correlations that existed between them.