The Spanish comedia nueva was one of the most popular theatrical genres in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. The adaptations of these plays were performed in Dutch and Flemish theatres. This... Show moreThe Spanish comedia nueva was one of the most popular theatrical genres in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. The adaptations of these plays were performed in Dutch and Flemish theatres. This study aimed to explain the popularity of this genre. The conclusion is that the emotional effects were responsible for the popularity of these plays that were translated from Spanish. These tragicomedies by Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio and Pedro Calderón de la Barca offered a drastic alternative for the emotional prescriptions found in the oeuvre of Jacob Cats, Joost van den Vondel, and Pieter Cornelisz Hooft. This way, comedia nueva offered Dutch and Flemish spectators a refuge from emotional and social expectations. Show less
Caspar Coolhaes was a controversial, tolerant, Spiritualist, Reformed preacher in Leiden in the late sixteenth-century. He has been called "the forerunner of Arminius and the Remonstrants."... Show moreCaspar Coolhaes was a controversial, tolerant, Spiritualist, Reformed preacher in Leiden in the late sixteenth-century. He has been called "the forerunner of Arminius and the Remonstrants." Coolhaes criticised the stricter Calvinist clergy of his day and, in, fact, found all confessions wanting. This dissertation presents an updated biographical sketch, which expands and collates what is known of Coolhaes' life. Then, it defines his ecclesiology from a detailed study of his own works, asking the question: "If Coolhaes could have designed a church for the new Dutch Republic, what would it have looked like?" Specifically, areas which concerned Coolhaes the most are laid out: his views of the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical government, his requirements for good preachers, and his concepts of diversity and Christian freedom in both the visible and invisible church. Show less
In the National Archives in Kew, London, a treasure is kept which is of great importance for the history of the Dutch language: a collection of seventeenth-century letters written by men and women... Show moreIn the National Archives in Kew, London, a treasure is kept which is of great importance for the history of the Dutch language: a collection of seventeenth-century letters written by men and women from various social backgrounds. Given the fact that much of the linguistic research of seventeenth-century Dutch has been perforce based on printed texts and linguistic data produced by a relatively small number of upper-class __ usually male __ writers, not much is known with certainty about the everyday Dutch of seventeenth-century lower- and middle-class people. The letters hidden in the National Archives can change this. In this dissertation, a corpus of 595 letters written between 1664 and 1672 is examined from a sociolinguistic perspective. The topics treated are: forms of address, reflexivity and reciprocity, negation, schwa-apocope, diminutives, and the genitive and alternative constructions. The case studies show that there was still a lot of variation in seventeenth-century Dutch and that some linguistic changes had not progressed as far in the everyday Dutch of __ordinary__ people as previous research has suggested. Furthermore, it is shown that gender and social class are important factors of influence on the seventeenth-century language use, especially when interpreted in terms of education and writing experience. Show less
