Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde

Lotte Jensen

Storm en romantiek in de negentiende-eeuwse Nederlandse letterkunde: een commentaar bij de chefs d’oeuvre van Marita Mathijsen en Wim van den Berg

Abstract -- Recently an issue of Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde (2004, 4) was dedicated to the question whether the study of Dutch literature still had any future as an independent academic discipline. Unfortunately the nineteenth century was not taken into consideration. Yet, the appearance of two major works, Een bedachtzame beeldenstorm (1999) by Willem van den Berg and Nederlandse literatuur in de romantiek (2004) by Marita Mathijsen provides us with sufficient material to take stand in the current debate. In this review article the approaches taken by the authors are contrasted: while Van den Berg tends to explore the ‘texts’ that surround the literary text, Mathijsen takes the literary text as a starting point to uncover the mentality of nineteenth-century Dutch society and its inhabitants. In spite of their many differences, there is one remarkable similarity between the two works: both authors refrain from any theoretical foundations. In this essay it is argued that, in order to maintain the study of Dutch literature as an independent discipline, future research should focus on the content of literary texts in combination with a more thorough role for methodological and theoretical assumptions.

TNTL 121-4 (december 2005), 356-373