Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 25, Issue 2, 2020

During the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany, the Dutch literary field was drastically restructured and politicized. Immediately after the liberation, efforts were made to rebuild the field. The first step that was made in the reconstruction, was to purge the field of collaborators. This purge was carried out by the Board of Honour for the Letters and the Central Board of Honour for the Arts. This article investigates just how these Boards contributed to the reconstruction of a(n) (relatively) autonomous literary field in the Netherlands. In doing so, it takes recourse to historical sociological theories regarding the legal and deontological responsibility of the writer.

Historically, the glorification of the past and the eulogizing of national heroes in art and literature have been constructive elements in the process of nation building. In the postmodern era, however, a cultivation of national history and its great men and women is often regarded outdated or even suspect and regressive. The ‘nine eleven’ terrorist attacks in the United States and the rise and assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn intensified an ongoing debate in the Netherlands about the meaning and value of a shared ‘Dutch national identity’ in a multicultural, diversified society. In this article, I argue that several novels and poems about Dutch naval hero Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676), published in or in the wake of the ‘De Ruyter year 2007’, both reproduce and challenge a wide range of voices, viewpoints and sentiments within the hot topic of national identity in the twenty-first century.