Abstracts

Nele Bemong
K.U. Leuven, Belgium 
The 19th century Flemish historical novel and Bakhtin's  'chronotope'

In his essay on the Bildungsroman and in his "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel", Mikhail Bakhtin proposes the use of the concept of the chronotope (literally "time-space") as the basic principle of generic distinction. In my paper I show how this concept offers an inte resting perspective for the study of the intrinsically hybrid genre of the historical novel. In applying it to the example of the early 19th century Flemish historical novel, I illustrate how chronotopes that can be traced back to the oldest instances of both the adventure novel of ordeal (the Greek romance) and the adventure novel of everyday-life (Apuleius and Petronius) are deployed in very specific ways.

As I will argue, the nature of these revisions is influenced by the particular poetics of the Belgian historical novel (I regard the Flemish literature of the early 19th century as part of a truly Belgian literary system), which is in its turn determined by the fact that during the first two decades of Belgian independence, the genre was primarily intended to serve both nationalistic and didactical functions. As I will illustrate by the example of Joseph Ronsse's historical adventure novels, the role this genre played in the construction of a Belgian nation-state resulted in a manipulation of the traditional chronotopes.

Elke Brems
Department of Dutch Literature, K.U. Leuven, Belgium
A Flemish tale: Flemish roots-literature and the dismantling of Flemish identity

Since 1970 the federalisation of Belgium has gained momentum. Flanders especially has presented itself as a self-confident area claiming autonomy and a coherent identity. On the one hand the difference between Flanders and its neighbours is stressed and on the other hand an internal cohesion is proclaimed. Flanders seems to be obsessed with the concept and the reality of 'border' and has an intense awareness of 'space'. Flemish identity is narrativized into a Flemish tale, or rather the Flemish tale. It is a Bildungsgeschichte in which the main character is a 'we' (as opposed to 'the others') and the motifs are language, history, particularity, struggle etc.

Together with this political discourse (narrative), a particular literary genre has boomed in Flemish literature: so called roots-literature in which a search is undertaken towards one's descent and/or origin. In Flemish and especially in Dutch literary criticism this genre is considered to be 'typically Flemish', which suggests that the genre contributes to the construction of a Flemish identity. Yet, the confrontation with about a hundred novels from a very heterogeneous group of authors (from Hugo Claus, to Walter van den Broeck, Leo Pleysier and Stefan Hertmans) shows us a very different picture. A closer look reveals indeed that Flemish roots-literature deconstructs the ideas of cohesion, autonomy and origin. Flemish identity is exposed and dismantled, the concept of space is criticized (be it Belgium, Flanders or a specific region or village) and the 'borders' are questioned.

The literary narrative undermines the political narrative instead of being a docile illustration of it, which shows an important discrepancy between political and literary discourse. It also shows how a quest for the roots leads to the pursuit of rootlessness.

Flemish literature resists the ideas of cohesion and harmony that is being forced upon it. A typically Flemish trait perhaps?

Mirela Ciutacu
Avram Iancu School, Timisoara
Per Speculum Alteritatis. Imagology of the Dutchmen under Romanian Eyes

One of the recurrent literary topoi revealed by the travel diaries is the image of the other, the image of a foreign people, the hetero image. The image one gets through the traveler's and, at the same time, writer's eyes falls under the spell of his own norms and values as this image is a mere projection thereof. Therefore the study undertakes to reflect upon a Romanian image of the Netherlands, in which the Dutchmen (the hetero image) are compared to the Romanians (auto image).

The object of our study is made up of the travel notes of Nicolae Iorga, a Pieter Geyl of the Romanians and of Mihail Sadoveanu, a Simon Vestdijk of the Romanians. Iorga had traveled thrice to the Netherlands and published his notes which he had used for three public lectures in a book called "About Holland"(1936). Mihail Sadoveanu published his travel impressions from the Netherlands in 1928.

Iorga extolled Dutch hospitality, the Dutch history and culture (Helmers, Bilderdijk, Van Gennep), the Dutch respect for tradition and uttered words in praise of the Dutch fight for independence. Not less was he amazed by the Dutch intellectual achievement. As he himself could speak Dutch, Iorga got first hand knowledge of the Dutch culture. For him knowing Holland was tantamount to gaining precious experience.

Mihail Sadoveanu couched his boundless admiration for the Dutchmen in a lyrical language. Hard work, egalitarian education, majestic art, honesty, hospitality, tidiness, history and science are all subject to Sadoveanu's eulogy. "The Dutch civilisation emerged from the discipline of suffering", Sadoveanu concludes.

The authoress will analyse this imagology as a generalised and differential kind of topology and will establish the relational prevailing items typology under which attitudinal substrates function (according to Berne, 1964 and Pageaux, 2000). 

Sorin Ciutacu 
University of the West of Timisoara 
The "Loisirs" of the Republic of Letters. John Locke in the Dutch-Romanian/Greek Connection,  or The correspondence between Jean Le Clerc and Nicholas Mavrocordatos

At the beginning of the 18th century Europe saw the spread of corridors of  intellectual exchange between the men of the Republic of Letters. The Netherlands stood at the centre of it. Jean Leclerc's exchange of ideas with John Locke is a case in point. The author in another paper has shown how Locke must have drawn upon the Arminian outlook on tolerance when he wrote the "The Letter on Tolerance" as an outcast to the Netherlands.

This time the author focuses on the Balkan connection, where the traffic of (political) ideas was in full swing. Jean Le Clerc, the Remonstrant scholar and publisher of mainstream book series, kept up a close correspondence with Nicholas Mavrocordatos, Prince of Moldavia and Walachia (alternately), the two Romanian principalities. Mavrocordatos was of Greek origin and was interested in the philosophy of Bacon, Hobbes and Locke. It is from Le Clerc that Mavrocordatos obtained Locke's "Two Treatises of Civil Government". The reading of these books prompted Mavrocordatos to write "Les Loisirs de Philote", which reaped the main philosophical ideas, some of which also cherished by Le Clerc, and which introduced these to the Romanian and Greek intellectual readership for the first time.

The study will show forth the extent to which Locke's and  Le Clerc's political ideas spawned an intellectual debate in the Balkan cultural space as a consequence of the correspondence between Le Clerc and Mavrocordatos, two kindred minds of the Republic of Letters, and will shed light on the buds of political reforms intended by Prince Nicholas Mavrocordatos in the 18th century Romanian polities in accordance with the balanced absolutism downtoned by representative institutions foreseen by Locke.   

Anne Decelle
K.U. Leuven, Belgium
Stefan Hertmans's Muziek voor de overtocht (1994) and the poet's quest for a voice of his own    

Since October 2001, I am preparing a dissertation on the poetry of the Flemish author Stefan Hertmans (1951).  Between 1984 (Ademzuil) and 2003 (Vuurwerk, zei ze), Hertmans has published 12 volumes of poetry. Because of its inscription of Dutch literature in an international context, I think it would be interesting for the ALCS conference to focus on the collection of poems Muziek voor de overtocht (Music for the Crossing) (1994). Each of the five sections of this book presents a key figure of international avant-garde: the German composer Paul Hindemith, the French poet Paul Valéry, the French painter Paul Cézanne, the Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky and the American writer Wallace Stevens.

Throughout the sections, Hertmans progresses in his search for an own voice by expressing an ambiguous attitude towards these models. On the one hand, he shows his fascination for their projects: he quotes from Valéry's Cahiers and admires Cézanne's persistent attempts to represent the Mont Sainte-Victoire. On the other hand, the poems focus on the darkest periods of the artists' lives, on their isolation, depressions or even sheer madness, and on the failures of their artistic projects. This quest for an own voice raises larger issues: the position of Dutch poetry in the context of international avant-garde; the role of literature in the larger context of culture, including music, painting and dance; the relationship between art and reality and the current problematic postmodern speaking concerning the merits and shortcomings of the modernists of the past century.

Esther ten Dolle
Dutch Department, University College London
Under the Guise of a Lie (Or: Multatuli's Sales Trick)

"Is it my fault, that truth, in order to find an entrance, so often has to borrow the guise of a lie?," Multatuli wondered in 1860 in his by now world-famous novel Max Havelaar. Of de Koffieveilingen der Nederlandsche Handelmaatschappij (transl. Max Havelaar. Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company)

In order to sell his "truth about the colonies", Multatuli used the cloak of a lie. This paper investigates how Multatuli's 'sales trick' has been applied by other Netherlands East Indies writers, in particular authors who have dealt with the reality and history of the decolonisation-conflict between the Netherlands and Indonesia (1945-1949) - a war which was not then allowed to be called a war, but which in fact was. Which 'lies' have writers borrowed (and why?) to find an entrance for the complex, sometimes even forbidden, truth behind this painful conflict? (A few small case studies will be used as examples).

Elizabeth Edwards
University of Kent
'The commemorative poems and other pamphlets on the political activities of Gaspar Fagel': 'de nagel in de doodkist van der Staat' or 'Stuurman van het Hollands Schip' ('the nail in the coffin of the State' or 'pilot of the ship of Holland')?

In the 1740s François Fagel, the nephew of the grand pensionary, Gaspar Fagel (1672-88) encouraged the creation of a myth of his family's Orangist heritage in the 'authorised ' celebrations of his own political achievements,  building on the foundation laid by his uncle.  By the twentieth century Gaspar Fagel had become a shadowy figure in the history of the states as no more than a faithful servant of William III, the lesser successor of de Witt and the forerunner of the more cosmopolitan Heinsius. The contemporary pamphlet literature relating to Fagel is small compared with that on de Witt, but has a richness of style and interest which makes it worthy of investigation.  His opponents and supporters were equally fierce in their criticism or praise.  The dominant theme throughout is the security of the States, their privileges or sovereignty and the risks or wisdom of leaving them in the hands of Fagel.  The Prince of Orange is frequently marginalised in these publications.

This paper will examine the political ideology of a selection of these pamphlets, their structure and place in the determinism of the nature of the late seventeenth century Dutch polity.

Katie Featherstone
UCL Dutch
Cultural Diasporas, comparisons between Joseph Conrad and Multatuli's self imposed exile

This papers aim will be to explore one aspect of which Multatuli and Joseph Conrad shared in common, an aspect that crossed from the borderlines of their lives and into their writing, the effect of self imposed exile.

The focus therefore shall be twofold, of a biographical and literary perspective, showing how diaspora is an important factor which can be the result of isolation and removal from socially acceptable behaviour and conduct/ morality of contemporary society.  In the case of Multatuli, such a diaspora resulted and was further exacerbated by the writing of Max Havelaar, however in the case of Conrad, the effects of exile from his native land, Poland have been echoed in the lives of his characters,  Jim (Lord Jim) and Kasper Almayer (Almayer's folly) 

From a biographical perspective, this papers assertion is to highlight, in this instance of exile, the similarities both Conrad and Multatuli shared biographically.  The relevance of all this is to build on to an important connection between the two writers and how such a connection may affect the scholarship of each writer and colonial literature in general.       

Jane Fenoulhet
UCL Dutch
A Dutch Suffragette: Jo van Ammers-Küller's Anglo-Dutch feminist fantasy

In the 1930 novel Vrouwenkruistocht (Women's crusade) Van Ammers-Küller imagines the conversion of the orphaned Joyce Coornvelt, staying on sufferance with wealthy relatives in London, to the suffragette cause. This paper looks at Van Ammers-Küller's ambivalent representation of English feminism which portrays the suffragettes as heroic, but ultimately misguided, or even dangerous. One disturbing aspect of this portrayal is the charismatic figure of Mrs Pankhurst herself who is depicted as manipulating the crowd at a Westminster rally in a way that is reminsicent of other charismatic leaders of the period. Add to this potent mixture an unlikely mutual attraction between the poor little Dutch girl and her suave cousin Tom, whose wife has become a feminist and left him, and the reader is left politically and ideologically disorientated. The contact with English feminist activism ultimately claims Joyce's life in a dramatic end to the novel.

Despite being well-researched, Vrouwenkruistocht is a sentimental popular novel which uses recent English history to undermine feminism before reasserting Dutch traditional values.

Maartje van Gelder
Amsterdam
Changing tack: the conflicting allegiances of a Flemish international art-dealer, merchant and information broker

This paper traces the often conflicting roles and changing fortunes of Daniel Nijs (1572-1647) in order to investigate the strategies used by immigrant merchants operating in early-modern Europe. Born in Germany as the son of religious exiles from the Southern Netherlands, Nijs moved to Venice to become a trader. A renowned collector himself, he was instrumental in the sale of the Mantuan Gonzaga art-collection to Charles I. But this was only one of his many ventures: besides his activities as an international merchant, Nijs also controlled one of Venice's customhouses, acted as post-master between the Serenissima and the Dutch Republic and became consul for Sweden. In addition, he financially contributed to Venice's war efforts against the Austrian Habsburgs and opened his Venetian home to Calvinist services. He embarked on yet another course of action when he was recruited as a spy by the Spanish ambassador, preparing a conspiracy against the Venetian Republic. This entrepreneur constantly juggled different allegiances, showing a remarkable strategic adaptability in the complex arena of early-modern international trade, politics, religion and culture. His access to goods, information and artefacts made him the epitome of an intermediary.

An analysis of his professional practices and ramified network of contacts will show how the early-modern immigrant merchant manoeuvred between conflicting and malleable national, cultural and religious identities.

Sofie Gielis
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The Thin Grey Line: From Narrative to Essayistic and Back

The contemporary Dutch novel seems to have lost sight of its genre-boundaries. Charlotte Mutsaers' novels Paardejam, Kersebloed and Zeepijn consist of essays, and Atte Jongstra's De psychologie van de zwavel contains essays disguised as stories. Gerrit Krol published a mathematic novel, Het gemillimeterde hoofd. He intertwines the novel with mathematic formulas and illustrations which play an important role in the understanding of the novel. M. Februari's debut De zonen van het uitzicht is part story, part philosophic treatise. Her second novel Een pruik van paardehaar & Over het lezen van een boek combines her doctoral thesis on economist Amartya Sen and The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal with a story about a banker, his ex-wife and his 18th century ancestor Julia.

How does classical narratology cope with this sidestepping of genre-borders and can poststructural theories fill in the gaps?

Michiel van Groesen
Dept. of Early Modern History, University of Amsterdam (NL)
Interchanging representations: Dutch travel accounts and the De Bry collection of voyages

When Dutch maritime expansion gained impetus around 1600, many travel reports quickly gratified the curiosity of a growing group of readers. Certain texts, like Jan Huygen van Linschoten`s Itinerario, gained canonical status overnight. Several Dutch accounts were assembled in the De Bry collection of voyages (25 vol.; Frankfurt 1590-1634), a monumental series that brought together early modern reports of overseas encounters. Publishers and copper engravers, Theodore de Bry and his sons translated the texts into German and Latin to reach an international readership. In addition they modified and invented illustrations when appropriate, manipulating first-hand observations of the overseas world to suit their own representational objectives.

The De Brys relied heavily on the sales figures of the collection for the prosperity of the publishing firm as a whole. Many of the various changes made to the original journals were therefore commercially driven, tailor-made to meet the demands of expected customers. Despite comprising several Dutch reports, the collection was avidly read in the Dutch Republic. This paper examines the ways in which Van Linschoten`s Itinerario was modified by the De Brys, and, in turn, the ways in which this new interpretation of the Itinerario subsequently influenced the cultural representation of the overseas world in the Dutch Republic.

Camiel Hamans
European Parliament Brussels/Strasbourg & Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland
Language of inheritance or language of guilt: The case of Yiddish in the Netherlands

In November 1992 seventeen European countries signed the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, drawn up by the Council of Europe. According to this Charter the national authorities of the countries should protect and stimulate actively the regional or minority languages spoken within its territory. The Charter does not refer to the languages of immigrant workers, it effects the traditional 'national' minority languages only.

At the ratification of the Charter the Dutch government recognized four, later five minority languages: Frisian, Low Saxon, Limburgian, Roma and Yiddish. Although there might be some discussion about the recognition of the Low Saxon and Limburgian dialects already, linguists get really surprised when they realize the Dutch authorities recognize two languages which are not spoken in the whole country at all.

For instance West Yiddish, the language, which was in use in Jewish communities of Amsterdam, became extinct in the 19th century in the Netherlands and Germany. As far as there is Yiddish spoken in Amsterdam, Antwerp (Belgium) and in Berlin (Germany) as well, it is East Yiddish brought to Western Europe by recent immigrants and refugees from Central and Eastern Europe.

In this paper I will examine why the Dutch authorities recognized two extinct languages as minority languages of their country.

Theo Hermans
UCL Dutch
Irony's Echo

When Erasmus heard that his books were being published in Spanish, he wondered if the motivation was love or hate. We normally assume that translators either have no particular axe to grind as regards the texts they translate, or that they approve of the work in question. In any case we as readers want a translation to give us the fullest possible access to the original, and we expect translators to remain neutral, transparent, invisible. As Erasmus knew, the reality can be different. What if the scene of translation involves a clash of values?

The main part of the paper explores a range of Dutch translations which invite ironic reading. The theoretical framework is provided by the notion of irony defined as 'echoic utterance' in Relevance Theory, complemented with ideas about audience design. I suggest that while strong forms of irony are relatively rare, we can hear ironic echoes in many translations.

Alice van Kalsbeek
Steunpunt Nederlands als vreemde taal, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Intercultural competence of teachers Dutch as a foreign language

Language and culture are inextricably connected within the education of a foreign language. The insight that they cannot be separated from each other has now set foot in the world of Dutch as a foreign language (Van Baalen e.a. 2003). Recently, studies have been conducted in order to determine the role of culture in educational tools (Van Kalsbeek 2004, Vismans & Van Rossum 2004). From the results of the conducted studies we can conclude that the role of these tools is mostly one-sided: the majority of the methods focus on knowledge transfer, not on teaching intercultural skills or cultivating a certain attitude. It is interesting now to see how teachers bridge this gap: In what way do teachers deal with intercultural competence during their classes? What kind of materials do they use? What is their personal intercultural competence like? In an ideal situation, what should a teacher's intercultural competence include?  In this reading I will mostly examine the last two questions.

At the moment the 'Steunpunt Nederlands als vreemde taal' is developing a competence profile for teachers of Dutch as a foreign language. Intercultural competence is a part of this profile. In this project the Erasmus language centre in Jakarta and the 'Steunpunt' are working together as a team. My presentation includes results of this project in relation to intercultural competence as well as the results of a questionnaire on the same subject amongst teachers Dutch as a foreign language.

Joy Kearney
Erasmus University Rotterdam
A taste for the exotic: Melchior de Hondecoeter and the trade in exotic fauna in the 17th century

Melchior de Hondecoeter was a pioneer in the field of the painting of live birds in a realistic manner in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. In his time he was extremely popular and was court painter to Willem III at Paleis Het Loo and other stately homes belonging to the Royals. The birds appearing in his paintings originate from countries in Asia, South America and Africa, as well as native European birds. There is reason to believe that he worked for the VOC or Dutch East India Company, who more than likely imported the birds into the Netherlands that subsequently adorned the bird parks and menageries of the privileged few. I wish to promote interest in this much underrated painter and his family, which includes the painters Jan and Jan Baptist Weenix, about whom little has been written to date.

William A Kelly
Scottish Centre for theBook
Napier University, Edinburgh
Pre-1801 Low Countries imprints in Great Britain

With the exception of libraries in London, whose holdings of early Low Countries imprints have been surveyed by Prof. Salverda and of those in Scotland, where a survey will be undertaken by me in 2005, our knowledge of such holdings in British research libraries is still largely impressionistic. A much more detailed knowledge is desirable because it will help both rare book librarians to offer more accurate advice to their immediate readers and to their governing authorities on questions of collection development and also to researchers to know where they are more likely to find the collections most appropriate to their particular topic of enquiry.

I propose that the information gathered from these two surveys can be used as the basis of a much wider survey of the holdings of early Low Countries imprints in Great Britain, and hopefully also in Ireland, in the same way as that gathered for the survey of early German holdings, which was published as v.10 of Bernhard Fabian's 'Handbuch deutscher historischer Buchbest?e in Europa'. In order to carry out this more comprehensive survey an approach for financial assistance should be made to the relevant ministries in The Netherlands and Flanders and to large commercial organisations.

Christophe Madelein
Ghent University, Belgium
Feeling the world beyond: the 'sublime' in Kinker and Bilderdijk

This paper is part of a research project on the sublime in the Netherlands in the period between 1770 and 1830, in which the notion of feeling plays a central role.

Immanuel Kant stated that the only knowledge we as human beings can ever hope to attain is based on what we perceive. Only the phenomenal world is open to human understanding. In the sublime we feel both pleasure (Lust) and non-pleasure (Unlust): non-pleasure because our imagination cannot cope with the demands of reason; pleasure because we become aware of the supersensory realm (without attaining knowledge of it).

The Dutch Kantian Kinker believed that knowledge of the supersensory world was possible, through the aesthetic feeling of the beautiful, in which mind and matter, the "world spirit" (wereldziel) and the phenomenal nature are united. But his contemporary, the poet Bilderdijk was distrustful of all knowledge derived from sensory experience, because the perception of appearances is necessarily distorted. Only through un-mediated feeling can we attain "true knowledge." Both Bilderdijk and Kinker believe in the possibility of knowledge of a world beyond the phenomenal appearances, and both see feeling as the faculty through which we can gain access to it, but they claim to be following radically different paths.

My aim is to show that, even though Kinker claims to be following Kant's philosophy, when it comes to the notion of 'feeling' he is in fact closer to Bilderdijk's view.

Samuel Mareel
University of Ghent, Belgium
Department of Dutch literature
Princely ethics in Dutch rhetorician literature (1450-1550)

Although one does not easily associate princely ethics with urban, Dutch rhetorician literature, a number of these texts, written in praise of the ruling house of Habsburg-Burgundy, contain guidelines as to the behaviour of a good prince. In this paper, I want to examine how and why this subject is treated.

Special attention will be given to the political and artistic context in which these texts originated and to the way in which they relate to the medieval and early modern tradition of the mirror for princes.

Anneke Neijt
Afdeling Nederlandse taal en cultuur,
Center for Language Studies,
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
The relation between form and meaning: linking schwa in Dutch

Dutch linking schwa, an aspect of Dutch that receives much attention because of its orthography, shows in a nutshell the intricate relation between form and meaning. Observe that variation exists, cf. visoog - vissenoog, pandeksel - pannendeksel and woningbestand - woningenbestand. The choice depends on factors such as:

(a)paradigmatic uniformity, the tendency to use the same form of a word in all compounds,

(b)plural semantics, the tendency to use en in contexts where a plural meaning of the left constituent is most appropriate,

(c)rhythm, the tendency to avoid stress clashes, and

(d)length, the tendency to use more en in shorter compounds than in longer ones.

The factors (a), (c) and (d) suggest that linking schwa is a formal element, a phoneme, factor (b) on the other hand suggests that linking schwa is a semantic element, a morpheme. In this presentation the outcome of experiments will be presented showing that linking schwa is a phonomorpheme; it is phoneme and morpheme at the same time. Formal characteristics of the compound such as rhythm and presumably also length determine the interpretation of linking schwas as plural markers.

Natasja Peeters
Brussel
Spanish art collections in Antwerp around 1530-1570

On the basis of previously unpublished, original archive research, the paper will treat the comparisons between the decorations in the houses of the general population and the Spanish merchants in Antwerp. It aims at giving an overview, so it is not strictly art historical but also social and economic, with stress on the migration and the power of the Spanish as a group in Antwerp and their mixing with the Flemish culture in the XVIth century.

Gijs Rommelse
Leyden
Friends and arch rivals. the public discourse on international relations in England and the Dutch Republic during the 1660s

During the 1660s the Dutch Republic and England concluded a treaty of friendship, fought a bloody war and agreed on a political alliance. In this period of dynamic international maneuvering, the course of affairs was closely followed by an interested public. Their opinion and perception was influenced by and represented in pamphlet literature. These publications illustrate how both peoples viewed each other and the event.

This paper aims to study the images and visions on the political discourse that arise from published pamphlets in both the Dutch Republic and England.

Koen Rymenants 
Leuven
Willem Elsschot and the Concept of 'Cynicism' in Dutch Fiction (1933-1946)

By the end of the Thirties, literary criticism has constructed a fairly homogeneous image of Willem Elsschot as a person and a writer. His so-called 'cynicism' is an important aspect of that image and the subject of a heated critical debate in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Such is the pervasiveness of this concept, that it is sometimes defined as a literary current or period in its own right, for instance in Willy van Cauwenberg's essay Het Cynisme in de moderne Vlaamsche Letteren (1936/1942). Moreover, some critics see the influence of Elsschot's 'cynical' writings in the work of younger authors such as N.E. Fonteyne, John Hendriks, and Hendrik Prijs, or use the term in relation to, among others, Louis Paul Boon and S. Vestdijk.

I will first analyze various definitions and uses of the concept in criticism and literary historiography. Secondly, I will investigate possible similarities between novels and stories conceived of as 'cynical' on the level of setting (the modern city), social context (the bourgeois), themes (the world of trade and industry), and literary devices (I-narrators, irony). This may shed some light on a little-known trend in Dutch literature (from Vestdijk to Grunberg), and on Elsschot's historical position in Low Countries literature.

Miranda van Rossum, University of Hull
Roel Vismans, University of Sheffield
Trading culture, teaching culture. The role of the language tutor in the acquisition of intercultural skills at beginners level

In a beginners language course intercultural skills are often acquired implicitly. An earlier investigation into culture in beginners courses of Dutch as a foreign language (cf. Van Rossum and Vismans 2004) demonstrated that teaching materials for beginners contain a wealth of cultural information. However, it also pointed to the absence of a systematic approach in providing students with a critical perspective on foreign (and home) culture, and in training their intercultural skills. Student questionnaires suggested that tutors play a significant role in the acquisition of such skills.

The present paper aims, first, to deepen our  insight into the role of the language tutor in the acquisition of intercultural skills at beginners level. We  concentrate on this level, because it is here that the foundation for the future development of intercultural skills is laid. Yet it remains relatively under-researched. Our second aim is to identify examples of successful processes in the acquisition of intercultural skills as well as examples of successful 'products' (skills themselves). The paper is based on a variety of data from classroom observations, questionnaires and/or tutor and student diaries.

Reference

Miranda van Rossum and Roel Vismans (2004) 'Cultuur in leergangen Nederlands als vreemde taal voor beginners.' Neerlandica Extra Muros 42.3: 1-25.

Ute Schuerings  
Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Oldenburg, Germany
Paradoxical style? Metaphor and metonymy in Paul van Ostayen's 'Bankruptcy Jazz'

Inflation and jazz are the stars of Van Ostaijens projected film "Bankruptcy Jazz" (written in 1920, published in 1954). The scenario depicts a totally chaotic world, where national bankruptcy is the rule and Charlie Chaplin the head of state. Frenetic jazz music represents a civilisation which has erupted into total anarchy, the Dada movement and national governments work hand in hand.

In spite of its interesting vision, there is no detailed stylistic analysis of this text yet. In his study of the grotesque in van Ostaijens creative prose, E.M. Beekman identifies a paradoxical style, which is achieved by a contiguity of disparate elements. Could the scenario be described as paradoxical as well?

Because film works with cuts, one would expect a strong tendency towards metonymy. The text, however, uses metaphors as well, without saying how to perform them visually. The scenario therefore oscillates between visual and written communication. The rhythmical typography can be seen as a hint at the relevance of the text as written artefact. It can therefore be classified as a hybrid form and experiment in genre. This paper focusses on the function of metaphor and metonymy in the text and reads it as an experiment in genre.

Jill Stern
UCL Dutch
Religion and the Orangists 1650-1675

The House of Orange and the Reformed Church have traditionally been seen as partners. The end of the war in 1648 and the death of the stadholder in 1650 left both vulnerable and on the defensive. This paper examines Orangist rhetoric on religious issues in the critical years from the death of William ll to 1675. It draws on pamphlet literature, poetry and print to illustrate the varying strands of Orangist opinion and demonstrates that the responses of Orangists to issue such as religious toleration and the public church were more complex and diverse than has been previously understood.

Dorothee Sturkenboom
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Shifting sexual differences, or: How the Dutch mercantile spirit subverted gender patterns in the 17th and 18th century

Dutchmen tend to view their country as one of the most liberated in the world. The recent political debate on the integration of Islamic immigrants in Dutch society seems to reinforce the idea that a majority of the Dutch population rejects the presence of traditional patterns of thinking about men's and women's roles in their society. Never mind the reality of many a Dutch housewife who is still obsessed with the cleanliness of her houses and doorsteps, and never mind statistics showing the participation of Dutch women in the national labour force to be among the lowest in Europe.

The question therefore is: where does this idea of a liberated country originate? In this paper I will argue that there is a historical connection between this modern self-image of the Netherlands as a model country for sexual equality and the development of the early modern Dutch Republic into a nation that distinguished itself above all by its omnipresent mercantile spirit. The image of the Dutch tradeswoman who successfully conducted business independently of her husband, soon spread itself in travel journals and other writings of authors abroad. This has not gone unnoticed in the publications of modern historians and literary critics. What has, however, been conspicuously overlooked is that according to contemporaries not only Dutch women but Dutch men as well displayed incongruously gendered behaviour .

Eddy Verbaan
University of Sheffield
'I Opened the Door with New Ideas and Skills and Showed the Way', Seventeenth-Century Dutch chorography in the Wake of Guicciardini

Lodovico Guicciardini's Descrittione di tutti Paesi Bassi (1567) is a seminal work in the Low Countries' historical-geographical literature. It has been the subject of intensive study, mainly focussing on its (rhetorical) structure, sources, editions and illustrations. This paper investigates the influence Guicciardini's work had on the increasing number of chorographical publications in the Dutch Republic, a topic that has not yet been studied systematically: maps and atlases, and descriptions of provinces and cities. By looking at these works, and by contrasting Guicciardini's description with Hadrianus Junius' Batavia (1588), it will be shown that Guicciardini, a Florentine living in Antwerp, was one of the important links between the new Italian chorography of the cinquecento and the chorographies that flooded the Dutch market in the seventeenth century.

Julien Vermeulen
Université de Lille III
Where Belgians didn't fear to trade.
On the colonial nature of narrative structures

When Dutch colonial literature is mentioned, one automatically thinks of Dutch prose dealing with the former Dutch East Indies, often referred to as '(Nederlands-)Indische literatuur'. And yet, quite a lot of Dutch (Flemish) novels are devoted to Africa, since the Congo was a Belgian colony until 1960. Hence, quite an extensive colonial literature on Central Africa has been published in Dutch. Between 1880 and 1980 some 200 publications were released. At the turn of the century travelogues and stories by missionaries made a small beginning. Later on novels and volumes of short stories were added to the text material that supported the colonial discourse of the time. Needless to say that an impressive amount of religious journals and missionary reviews added to the dissemination of what may be coined as 'colonial values'. After the independence of the Congo in 1960 some former colonists, civil servants and missionaries reflected in their literary works on the era that had come to an end. In the sixties and seventies the so-called 'postcolonial' Flemish literature reached remarkable heights, both in terms of production and in terms of literary value.

In my approach I shall focus on the analysis of some representative novels trying to exemplify a triple process. Colonial structures seemed to have created narrative patterns which, in turn, reinforced the values and concepts of the time. The ideals of cultural evolutionism undoubtedly structured and modelled both narrative plots and literary characters. On a stylistic level the literary production helped to forge colonial metaphors which often became the hallmark of colonial discourse. That imagined community (although not always as imaginary as we might have hoped) undoubtedly showed off with its invented traditions and only few writers could resist the rhetoric of the time.

Catherine Wright
(IHR London)
Putting the Dutch on the map: aspects of the Austin Friars community, 1660-1720

This paper presents some initial findings from my investigation of social and cultural connections between the English and the Dutch in London, c.1660-c.1720, and will focus on the places where members of the Dutch Church, at Austin Friars, lived. This community included both new immigrants and more long-standing residents and was widespread in London. I also hope to touch on some other aspects of the Dutch presence in London, such as the occupational structure of the community, and to situate the material in the context of social and commercial interchange between the Dutch and the English. The aim of the project overall is to increase knowledge of who the Dutch in London were, what they did there, and what their links with the host community were like, in this period of intense and fluctuating relations between England and the United Provinces.

Bregje van Oel, Mart van der Zanden
Certificaat Nederlands als Vreemde Taal, Leuven
Dealing with cultural bias in the Certificate of Dutch as a Foreign Language - Functional and contextualised language proficiency tests in a international environment without cultural bias: a difficult balance exercise

The Certificate Dutch as a Foreign Language (CNaVT) is a certification system that is used worldwide to measure the language proficiency of those who for one reason or another want to use the Dutch language. The CNaVT chooses a functional, contextualised and integrated certificate system that consists of four socially relevant profiles. In view of certification it is examined if the candidates meet the requirements within a certain profile.

The relationship between what is tested and the situations in which one has or wants to function, is crucial. Each profile stands for a collection of expectations of language performance that the individual and the society have.

But still, which society and culture are we talking about? Does a candidate in Australia get the same opportunity as a candidate from Estland? In other words: do the exams of the CNaVT in their pursuit of a high validity don't loose their impartiality and reliability? How culturally biased are the exams that take situations, tasks and contents as a starting point? Is it at all possible to construct a 'culturally free' test measuring only 'pure' language proficiency?

In this paper presentation we will discuss the tension between reliable and 'culturally free' tests on the one hand and valid, culturally integrated language tests on the other hand.

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