The Spectatorial press in Dutch

The present paper outlines the main periods and tendencies in Dutch moral weekly publishing. Although academic research has, for a long time, been focussed on Justus van Effen, who published spectatorial magazines in both French and Dutch, many other writers between 1718 and the 1790s also took part in the endeavour of moral weekly writing or reacted to it by producing ‘anti-spectators’

Eighteenth-century theatrical war plays and the experience of war

In my paper I will discuss ‘war plays’ as they were presented on the 18th-century stage in relation to the question how the identification of the audience with ‘the military’ was realized or prohibited by means of theatricality. Masquerade-like spectacles like the great military camps, invited the public to imagine itself being a soldier, adopting military appearance and wearing the same uniforms as the soldiers during their maneuvers. Also the military spectacles performed on stage in the first half of the century until the late 1770-ies provided a ‘realistic’ experience of war spectacle. On the other hand it was also by way of theatrical performances that the audience was enabled to critically reflect on this masquerade-like adoption of a ‘military self’ and to envision imitated military behavior as artificial, childish and ‘unreal’. How then did war acts as a commercial spectacular theatrical event relate to the aim to get a better insight, not only in the play of war but also in the internal perspective of the solider, his feelings, fears and doubts? Which tensions between and within theatre texts occur where war acts are presented as playful experiences

The travesty of egoism : same-gender passion and homosocial desire in a Dutch seventeenth-Century morality play

In the seventeenth-century Netherlands, drama and politics were interwoven with one another. This was also the case with the controversial morality play Tieranny van Eigenbaat (Tyranny of Egoism, 1679), which opposed the House of Orange, and especially William III, Stadtholder of the Netherlands and King of England (who was, according to the writers of the play, a true example of uncontrolled egoism). Although the main character Eigenbaat (Egoism) disguises himself as a warrior woman (an Amazon) to seize power, his cross-dressing has not been discussed in relation to rumors surrounding William's alleged sexual preferences. By "reading against the grain," this article discusses the so-called faultlines, where the characters display same-gender passions for each other. The article focusses on two examples of such relationships: Egoism, who seduces Lady Will, while in female disguise, and the intimate nature of Egoism's relationship with his male servant and slave, Vice. As such, the article offers an elaboration on the thesis that Tieranny van Eigenbaat was used by the republican authorities of Amsterdam as a propaganda play to discredit William III for rule, as well as his offspring

Neptun die Arme abgeschlagen...: die literarische Entmythologisierung der freien Handelsstadt im frühen 18. Jahrhundert

The essay examines the literary representation of towns in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the dramatic poetry of the 17th century, the leadership of autonomous German and Dutch trade towns was extensively praised within the context of the mythos of the city blessed with everlasting prosperity by God. In the early 18th century, new forms of trade increasingly undermined the social and economic security of the municipal patriciate. The essay outlines conservative reflexes of the endangered urban elites by examining dramatic texts from Amsterdam and Hamburg, in which the territorially defined source of solidarity of the town was no longer employed as a dramatic frame of action

Patriotism and bellicism in German and Dutch epics of the enlightenment

The German and Dutch historiography of eighteenth-century patriotism defines two different forms of patriotism. It is either presented as an enlightened and virtuous-eudemonic form of ‘love for the fatherland’ based on reason, or as an ideology that foreshadows nineteenth-century emphatic forms of aggressive nationalism. A critical reading of the mid-eighteenth-century epics Cyrus by Christoph Martin Wieland and De Gevallen van Friso by Willem van Haren shows that the discourses are strongly intertwined. Heroism in these epics is based on a personal experience of war acts and no longer on distanced and ‘theatrical’ experiences of the military spectacle. It confronts us with aggressive war fantasies related to early bellicism, as well as with pacifist statements. In Cyrus, for instance, the sentimental warrior inspires his fellow-soldiers to offer their blood in the struggle against the enemy, but he has doubts about the war and shows compassion with the enemy. Explorations of the effects of individual emotions on the battlefield, prepared both further idealisations of patriotic war acts and a more critical literary approach to war and fatherland

'De laatste, heilge strijd tot broedertwist verlaagd...' Socialisme in het werk van Freek van Leeuwen

Communist, christen, arbeider, kluizenaar, het zijn typeringen die allen van toepassing zouden kunnen zijn op de dichter-schilder Freek van Leeuwen. Als ‘zingende dwaas’ (typering van Henriëtte Roland Holst) verzette hij zich in zijn gedichten van de jaren dertig fel tegen uitbuiting en werkloosheid van de arbeiders. Na de oorlog keerde Van Leeuwen zich af van politiek en maatschappij en ging hij naast schrijven ook schilderen en tekenen. Zijn schilderijen zijn sterk religieus geïnspireerd, waar zijn latere tekeningen eerder ‘spiritueel’ te noemen zijn. Een vergeten oeuvre dat iets verteld over de teleurstellingen van een ‘arbeider-schrijver’ in de socialistische utopie en zijn politieke kameraden, over diens sociaal-religieuze betrokkenheid en kritiek op de inhoudsloze consumptiemoraal van na de oorlog

Drill and allocution as emotional practices in seventeenth-century Dutch poetry, plays and military treatises

Dutch war poems and siege plays of the Eighty Years’ War often confront us with questions about military leadership. Some authors describe the army as an agile moving front of fighters under full control of its commander, other touch upon the emotional implications, such as the emotional encouragement and guidance that is also needed on the battlefield. This chapter considers two examples of ‘military speech’ in particular: the emotional effect or implications of short commands and orders on which seventeenth-century drill practices are based and the allocutio or harangue, the military speech before battle, as an ancient tradition that is rediscovered in early modern military treatises. By discussing drill and allocution as emotional practices this chapter investigates the emotions that have to be suppressed and those that would provide the conditional mental framework the early modern soldier needed to carry out military commands and to risk his life on the battlefield

Imagineering violence

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe