Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 15, Issue 2, 2010

During the majority of the seventeenth century, religious literature produced in the Dutch Republic contained far fewer illustrations than the religious literature produced in the Southern Netherlands, England and Germany. The relative freedom with which different denominations and their attendant ideologies coexisted in the seventeenthcentury Dutch Republic, would seem to provide an ideal setting for the integration of old and new religious visual practices. Visual components were, however, not easily integrated in literary-religious publications in the Republic. In fact, the process was unexpectedly complicated and discontinued, one aspect of which is discussed in this article. It is argued that in at least in one city in one of the Republic’s neighbouring countries old and new visual traditions intermingled earlier and more thoroughly, judged by the development of religious emblematics in Frankfurt between 1617 and 1631. In this period, a group of talented Southern Netherlandish engravers and authors joined forces with the Calvinistic publisher Lukas Jennis to produce a series of hybrid religious emblem books. The last book in the series was Bartholomeus Hulsius’ Emblemata sacra, the first Dutch Reformed emblem book ever published. Frankfurt provided exactly the sort of climate in which different confessional traditions intermingled and influenced each other with little friction. This exemplary case urges us to reconsider the nature of Dutch toleration: why could a country known for its religious toleration not develop these forms of cultural hybridity on its own initiative?

During de second half of the eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth century the literary societies were the most influential authorities in the literary life. They were the places where the debates about the function and purpose of literature were hold. After the thirties they lost their position to the cultural and literary magazines. This article concentrates on the Hollandsche Maatschappij van Fraaije Kunsten en Wetenschappen, founded in 1800 and one of the most prominent literary authorities in the North Netherlands. The Hollandsche Maatschappij was an ‘arbiter of taste’, especially in the years 1813-1833, after the French annexation period. Focusing on the texts that are written within the context of this literary society will make a valuable contribution to a better understanding of the prevailing poetical ideas about literature in the first part of the nineteenth century.

In 1843, the Groningen classicist Petrus van Limburg Brouwer (father of P.A.S. van Limburg Brouwer, the author of the orientalist novel Akbar) published a candid translation of the autobiography of the Italian Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini; the translation does not shy away from references to homosexuality. A study of the applicability of concepts taken from queer studies and conceptual history studies of the nature of artistry and genius points towards a classicist concept of beauty with which Van Limburg Brouwer took a stand against the romantic concept of morality.

Publishers are often compared to gatekeepers both on account of the role they play in the selection process as on account of their vital contribution to the social recognition of authorship. The comparison signals an important phenomenon but has its limitations. The first is of a historical nature. For centuries the printing culture coexisted with the much older manuscript culture. Publishers only started to play a key role between authors and the market at the moment when in the 18th and 19th century a print society originated. The second limitation concerns the distinction between literary genres. Those who call publishers gatekeepers suggest that they do so all across the board. That this is incorrect appears from an investigation into the publication of poetry and plays.