%0 Journal Article %A Smeets, Marc %T ‘Ter verdediging van den Franschen bekeerling’ %D 2016 %J Nederlandse Letterkunde, %V 21 %N 3 %P 235-255 %@ 2352-118X %R https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDLET2016.3.SMEE %K reception %K De Katholiek %K conversion %K J.-K. Huysmans %I Amsterdam University Press, %X Abstract ‘To the defence of the French convert’: the reception of J.-K. Huysmans in De Katholiek Until recently very little was known about the reception in the Netherlands of the French novelist J.-K. Huysmans (1848-1907), an “inexplicable amalgam of a Parisian aesthete and a Dutch painter” as he called himself. When scholars referred to this question, they did so in a very circumstantial way and hence created several misunderstandings: in the Dutch Catholic press for example, critics hardly showed any interest in J.-K. Huysmans’ later, post-conversion writings. This article seeks to rectify this impression and, to this end, uses a case study to clarify this issue: De Katholiek, one of the major Catholic journals in the Netherlands at the turn of the century, almost systematically reviewed the latter part of Huysmans’ oeuvre. %U https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/NEDLET2016.3.SMEE