[Ulrich Tiedau]

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies
vol. 44, no. 3 (November 2020)

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ydtc20/44/3?nav=tocList

Contents

Editorial

Ulrich Tiedau

The Sea Voyage as a Marriage Snare: Gender in Novels about the Passage between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies (1869–1891)

Coen van ‘t Veer

From Propaganda to the Denial of Free Speech: Politics and the Misuse of Language in Elizabethan England in the Writings of Anglo-Dutch Polemicist Richard Verstegan (c. 1550–1640)

Marcin Polkowski

From ‘Peripheral’ Warsaw to No Less Marginal Groningen: Mieczysław Szczuka’s Artistic Influence on Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman

Michał Wenderski

Why Sir Philip Sidney Chose the Dutch National Anthem as the Tune for a Song

Cornelis W. Schoneveld

‘Hoop op iets vaags’: ambiguity, unreliability and indeterminacy in Erwin Mortier’s Marcel (1999)

Bram Mertens

Ekphrasis and/As Translation in Marlene van Niekerk’s Volumes of Poetry Gesant van die mispels and In die stille agterkamer

Louise Viljoen

Abstracts

The Sea Voyage as a Marriage Snare: Gender in Novels about the Passage between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies (1869–1891)

Coen van ‘t Veer

Nineteenth century fiction about the sailing ships (around the Cape) that crossed the seas between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies between 1850 and 1890 are presented as micro colonies in the novels: a condensed version of colonial society. In the analyzed novels, women are represented as passengers who are finding their ways to exercise power in a colonial micro cosmos that is been dominated by white men.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03096564.2018.1512255

From Propaganda to the Denial of Free Speech: Politics and the Misuse of Language in Elizabethan England in the Writings of Anglo-Dutch Polemicist Richard Verstegan (c. 1550–1640)

Marcin Polkowski

This article discusses Anglo-Dutch recusant polemicist and publisher Richard Verstegan’s concern with the misuse of language and its impact on society, reflected in his religious–polemical publications. An analysis of pamphlets ascribed to Verstegan reveals that he acknowledged the existence of a close link between the misuse of power in Elizabethan England and the misuse of language. The former impacted linguistic communication through the foisting on English society of propaganda based on deliberate disinformation, and through the limiting of free speech. In his pamphlets, Verstegan used elements of mystification characteristic of the convention of ‘epistolary fiction’. In the final part of this article, therefore, an answer is provided to the question whether such a literary strategy may be classified as a form of misuse of language.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03096564.2018.1553007

From ‘Peripheral’ Warsaw to No Less Marginal Groningen: Mieczysław Szczuka’s Artistic Influence on Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman

Michał Wenderski

This article presents a remarkable case study of artistic influences between two avant-garde artists who still gain insufficient recognition in international accounts of European modern art, namely between Mieczysław Szczuka and Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman – eminent representatives of Polish and Dutch interwar avant-gardes, respectively. They both lived and worked far from historiographical artistic ‘centres’, did not travel much, yet their work indicates considerable influence exerted by one of these ‘peripheral’ artists on the other. Interestingly, it is the Polish artist Szczuka whose works became a source of artistic inspiration for the Dutchman Werkman, providing a remarkable example of East-West artistic influence that has so far rarely been recognized by the historiographers of the avant-garde. This particular case study is based on an analysis of preserved historical material and selected artworks that give evidence of Szczuka’s influence on Werkman and at the same time question historiographical assumptions regarding cultural mobility ‘from centres to peripheries’ and ‘from West to East’.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03096564.2018.1553332

Why Sir Philip Sidney Chose the Dutch National Anthem as the Tune for a Song

Cornelis W. Schoneveld

This article provides internal arguments, based on a close reading of the poem, proving that the poem is an elegy, and external arguments based on historical research, which lead to a rejection of the traditionally supposed identity of the person who is the subject of the poem, and provides the real identity of that person.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03096564.2019.1576009

‘Hoop op iets vaags’: ambiguity, unreliability and indeterminacy in Erwin Mortier’s Marcel (1999)

Bram Mertens

Erwin Mortier’s acclaimed debut novel Marcel, first published nearly twenty years ago, tells the story of a Flemish family haunted by a dark past: the involvement of several members in the wartime collaboration with the German occupier. The novel has usually been read as a narrative of reconciliation, showing the often painful process of successive generations gradually gaining some understanding of the past and coming to terms with it, before being able finally to lay its guilty weight to rest. However, a close reading and historical contextualisation of Marcel reveals a much more complex picture, casting doubt both on the accuracy of the characters’ understanding and the sincerity of their intentions. This article is the first to offer a rival interpretation of Mortier’s novel, proposing that, rather than recognising their guilty past, the characters may be unable or unwilling to acknowledge it as such, and could instead be poised to sow the seeds of its continuation and repetition.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03096564.2018.1476800

Ekphrasis and/As Translation in Marlene van Niekerk’s Volumes of Poetry Gesant van die mispels and In die stille agterkamer

Louise Viljoen

This article discusses two volumes of ekphrastic poems by the South African author Marlene van Niekerk. The volumes are based on paintings by two relatively minor Dutch painters. The first, Gesant van die mispels [‘Emissary of the medlars’], centres on paintings by Adriaen Coorte who presumably lived from 1659 to 1708, whereas the second In die stille agterkamer [‘In the quiet backroom’] relates to paintings by Jan Mankes who was born in 1889 and died of tuberculosis in 1920. Taking its cue from the poet’s comments in an interview with Jan Steyn, the article explores the way in which writing ekphrastic poetry can be seen as a process during which artefacts produced in one semiotic system (the visual) are translated into artefacts in another semiotic system (the verbal), making use of theoretical insights by James Heffernan, W. J. T. Mitchell and Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux. The article also explores the further significance of publishing the original version of the poems written in the language Afrikaans next to their translations into Dutch, pointing out the significance of the fact that the poems highlight the historical connection between the two languages. The article also discusses the way in which the poet engages with the way in which the two artists dealt artistically with their respective realities. It includes analyses of two poems, one from each volume, in which the poet deals with certain profound qualities she finds in these painters’ work.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03096564.2018.1552971

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