IN ’T HARTE VAN JAVA (1881) | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online
2004
Volume 2, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2588-8277
  • E-ISSN: 2667-162X

Abstract

IN THE HEART OF JAVA (1881)

Towards the end of his life, the Dutch poet Willem Jacobsz. Hofdijk wrote his ambitious verse epic , set in seventeenth-century Indonesia. Two similar works soon followed. This article examines the various literary techniques used by the author to evoke the exoticism of a world he had never experienced himself. The received idea that Hofdijk started writing his Dutch East Indies poems when his son joined the colonial army is exposed as a fallacy. It is my contention that Hofdijk’s epics, deliberately distorting historical facts, were intended to strengthen the resolve of the Dutch against the rebellious province of Aceh.

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