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oa De transnationale en transhistorische dialoog tussen en met achttiende-eeuwse dichtende patriotten
Bellamy, Kleijn & Ockerse, Gleim en Lavater
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Internationale Neerlandistiek, Volume 62, Issue 1, Jun 2024, p. 31 - 50
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- 01 Jun 2024
Abstract
Patriotic lyrical poetry in the 18th-century Netherlands flourished under the influence of the work of German examples such as Klosptock, Gleim and Lavater. This contribution discusses that exchange as a ‘dialogue’ between authors from the Dutch and German language areas. The concept is borrowed from the reception theory of Jauß and Gadamer, who consider reception as an ongoing transhistorical dialogue with these texts in confrontation with our own ‘horizon of expectations’. The article will focus on the reception of Prussian and Swiss patriot poetry by Jacobus Bellamy and minor poets Kleijn & Ockerse. The intertextual analysis of this transnational literary exchange shows that the patriotic poets also entered into dialogue with a broader political and military discourse that reveals striking faultlines in the texts. The tension between political freedom and military subjection shows this most clearly. This field of tension also potentially connects the 18th-century theme of ‘patriotic self-sacrifice’ with the contemporary horizon of expectations that is determined more and more by a creeping militarisation of Dutch society.