An international network studying The Circulation of Dutch Literature

Op 3 en 4 juni 2016 hield de American Association for Netherlandic Studies zijn 18th Biennial International Conference on Netherlandic Studies aan de University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Het thema van de conferentie was ‘Imagining the Low Lands’. Op het programma stond onder meer een Special Focus Session over ‘The Dissemination and Reception of Historical and Modern Dutch Literature’. Ton van Kalmthout (Den Haag) kaderde de sessie in met een beschouwing over ‘Research into the Circulation of Literature’. Deze werd gevolgd door drie case studies. Orsolya Réthelyi (Boedapest) sprak over ‘Dutch Medieval Literature Remediated. Max Reinhardt and the Circulation of Literature’. Francesca Terrenato (Rome) had het over ‘Sara Burgerhart. Female Bildung in a Transnational/Translational Context Past to Present’. En Jack McMartin (Brussel) blikte vooruit naar de aanstaande Frankfurter Buchmesse, met een beschouwing over ‘Imagining the Low Lands at the World’s Largest Book Fair’.

Francesca Terrenato, Jack McMartin, Orsolya Réthelyi en Ton van Kalmthout

Praagse Perspectieven 10, Handelingen van het colloquium van de sectie Nederlands van de Karelsuniversiteit te Praag, 30 en 31 oktober 2014. Onder redactie van Ellen Krol, Jan Pekelder en Albert Gielen. Praag: Universitaire pers 2015. 184 blz.

Voor de zes letterkundige lezingen is aansluiting gezocht bij het internationale project over de circulatie van de Nederlandstalige letterkunde, CODL. Lezingen van vertegenwoordigers van een aantal werkgroepen belichten de verspreiding van Nederlandse teksten in binnen en buitenland. Zo beschrijft Orsolya Réthelyi in het kader van Elkerlijc-onderzoek de positie van Max Reinhardt en de receptie van Middelnederlandse literatuur in Hongarije. Jan van Coillie beantwoordt de vraag hoe Minoes van Annie M.G. Schmidt een klassieker werd, terwijl Pieter Boulogne vermakelijk verslag doet van de receptie in Rusland van De helaasheid der dingen van Dimitri Verhulst. Hoe de vis ook in Tsjechië duur betaald werd laten Lucie Sedláčková en Albert Gielen zien aan de hand van vertalingen en opvoeringen in Tsjechië van Op Hoop van Zegen.

Een indrukwekkende stapel boeken over de circulatie van Nederlandstalige literatuur en cultuur in Centraal Europa zag in 2015 het licht in Tsjechië. Ze bewegen zich voor een belangrijk deel op het terrein van CODL en zijn daar soms ook uit voortgekomen:

–          Wilken Engelbrecht et al., Dějiny nizozemské a vlámské literatury. Praha, Academia, 2015.

–          Jana Engelbrechtová (ed.), Dutch – Flemish – Central European Relations. Chapters from Cultural Relations between North-West and East-Central Europe. Proceedings of the International Conference for Cultural Studies (Searching for Culture – SEFOC) 16-17 October 2014, Palacký University in Olomouc, vol. 7. Olomouc: s.n., 2015.

–          Jana Engelbrechtová (ed.), De Nederlandstalige literatuur internationaal. Centraal-Europa en de Lage Landen. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2015.

–          Jana Engelbrechtová (ed.), De Nederlandstalige literatuur internationaal. Centraal-Europese blikken op de Nederlandstalige literatuur. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2015.

–          Jana Engelbrechtová (ed.), Sýr. Mezinárodní recepce novely Kaas. Ukázky první českého překladu. Olomouc: Vydavatelství Univerzity Palackého, 2015.

ANNOUNCES:

CALL FOR PAPERS

18^th Biennial International Conference on Netherlandic Studies

Conference Theme: Imagining the Low Lands

June 3-4, 2016 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Featuring:

Keynote speaker: Ton Broos

Carillon speaker: D.M. (Diederik) Oostdijk

Carillonneurs: Tiffany Ng and Sipkje Pesnichak

Workshop for Dutch Language Instructors: Peter Schoenaerts

Conference Date & Location

June 3-4 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Conference Theme

This conference focuses on images of Netherlandic culture, with image is broadly defined as any representation of the culture through language, literature, art or creative expression. Special encouragement is given to paper proposals in the following areas:

• Dutch literature and its international circulation
• Netherlandic art and in particular the collection of the Detroit Institute of Art
• Dutch linguistics

Topics of general sessions might include: History: Early-Modern, 19^th– & 20^th-Century Literature, 16^th-Century Art & Literature, Colonialism, Early-Modern Literature, 20^th-Century History, Early-Modern Art History, 17th-Century Art, Afrikaans, Linguistics, 20^th-Century Film, 19^th– & 20^th-Century Literature, and Local Dutch-American History.

You are invited to submit an abstract of a paper from your own field, as seen through the prism of the conference theme, Imagining the Low Lands.  Paper proposals on other topics or themes are also most welcome – an ICNS tradition. Select papers may be included in a conference publication to follow. Graduate students are especially encouraged to participate.

Please submit abstracts of 250 words, (accompanied by curriculum vitae) to toebosch@umich.edu with “ICNS Abstract” in the subject line by December 15, 2015. Acceptance notification will be given by February 1, 2016.

Registration

Information pertaining to registration, lodgings and other logistics will be available in January 2016.

AANS membership is required in order to attend the conference (the fees are $90 for standard membership, which includes electronic Dutch Crossings subscription; $50.00 for full-time graduate students; $50.00 for emeriti/retired).

Conference Coordinator:

Dr. Annemarie Toebosch, Senior Lecturer in Dutch, Dutch and Flemish Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

International Conference at the Eötvös Loránd University Budapest (ELTE),

10-11 March 2016

The Department of Dutch Studies and the Department of Scandinavian Studies at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), together with the Centre for Reception Studies (CERES) of the KU Leuven, are organising the conference ‘Small is Great. Cultural Transfer through Translating the Literatures of Smaller European Nations’ in Budapest on 10-11 March 2016. The con­fer­ence addresses questions of cultural transfer related to the translation and reception of literatures of smaller European nations, written in less well-known languages. Literary research has recently abandoned its national perspective to a significant extent. As a result of internationalizing tendencies and insights from field and systems theories national literatures are no longer considered as basically autonomous systems, but as parts of an international literary space largely dominated by literary works, authors and canons from a few nations and languages. Much has been published about the import of foreign literary works to minor linguistic areas, mostly by means of translations. In these studies, major literatures such as the English, French and German appear to play a mainly exporting role, while minor literatures represent the receiving party. On this basis, it is assumed that those importing literatures play a marginal role in the global literary system. During the con­ference we wish to challenge these views by investigating the role of translation of smaller languages, the contribution of smaller literatures to the international literary space.

We invite papers on the following main subjects:

1. The hierarchy of literary space: Is the concept of an internationalized/globalized literary space acceptable as the description of reality? Do languages define and sus­tain their own literary spaces? Can further levels of literary space be distinguished? If yes, is there a hierarchy or should concepts like hierarchy or dominance be abandoned?
2. The process of transferring literary works: How can the complex mechanism of bringing translated works of national literature into circulation in a transnational context be described? What is the role of institutions in the process of this transfer?
3. The process of translation of literary works: What are the relevant aspects of literary translation furthering the transfer of literature from smaller to larger literary spaces?
4. The transfer of culture: What role does the transfer of literary works play in creating and reinforcing national stereotypes, modifying cultural identity and collective memory, influencing attitudes towards the speakers of less known languages?
5. Translation and literary history: What can be the impact of the new focus on less known literatures, translators and cultural mediators on the practice of writing literary history? Is it important to make these actors visible? Are there examples of existing literary histories, which include these actors?

Papers may approach these questions from a variety of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives, including, but not limited to literary and cultural history and theory, sociology, psychology, cultural memory and translation studies, and may draw on the current or historical experience of one or more national literatures.

Keynote speakers of the conference include Gillis Dorleijn (University of Groningen), Andreas Hedberg (University of Uppsala), Hanne Jansen (University of Copenhagen), Ton van Kalmthout (Huygens ING, The Hague), Reine Meylaerts (KU Leuven), Mihály Szegedy-Maszák (ELTE Budapest), Jahn Holljen Thon (University of Agder).

There is no conference fee for the speakers. Lunches, coffee and tea, and a conference dinner will be provided. Participants are expected to cover their travel and accom­mo­dation costs. The organisers will invite selected speakers to revise their papers for inclusion in an edited electronic or paper based volume arising from the project.

In this first round we welcome both proposals for complete panels as well as individual proposals for papers. There is also a PDF version of this Call for Papers for download, so please spread the word to your colleagues.

Please send paper titles, abstracts (c. 300 words) – with specification on which of the above mentioned subjects areas you wish to address in your paper –, to the conference address International Conference Small is Greatsmallisgreatconference2016@gmail.comby October 15^th 2015.

The Conference Organizers

The Conference Organisers include: Judit Gera (ELTE Department of Dutch Studies), Péter Mádl (ELTE Department of Scandinavian Studies), Orsolya Réthelyi (ELTE Department of Dutch Studies), Zsófia Domsa (ELTE Department of Scandinavian Studies) and Elke Brems (Centre for Reception Studies – KU Leuven).

29-06-2015

Call for Papers

Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference

26 – 28^th August, 2016

We are pleased to announce that the 23^rd biennial conference of SASMARS will be held at Mont Fleur in Stellenbosch, South Africa on 26 – 28^th August 2016.

“Texts and Transformations: Medieval and Early Modern Cultures”

Medieval and Early Modern societies weathered various socio-cultural transformations, ranging from economic developments to religious conflicts, across a range of different geographies and in urban and rural spaces.  How did poetry, theatre, prose, visual art, architecture, and other forms of art respond to such changes?  How do we historically understand and assess various kinds of social transitions?

Topics for this conference can include but are not limited to:

– Adaptions of classical texts and artworks

– Translation of texts and ideas

– Contemporary readings of old texts

– Cross-cultural interactions and influences

– Historical transitions and periodisation

– Religious reform

– Urban renewal and development

– Medieval and Early Modern studies in contemporary education

– Appropriations of Medieval and Early Modern culture

– Cultural responses to economic change

– Representations of political dissent and rebellion

– Utopias and dystopias

– Gender, sexuality, and social change

Deadline:  A conference proposal and a short biography to derrick.higginbotham@uct.ac.za by 30 November 2015.  Any inquires can be directed to the same email address.

The CFP has been posted to our website at http://sasmarsnewsletter.blogspot.com/

‘Het is niet onopgemerkt gebleven.’ CODL’s official baseline – borrowed from the penultimate sentence of Gerard Reve’s acclaimed debut novel De avonden (an English translation of which will be published by Pushkin Press later this year, nota bene) – could just as well describe the many perspectives and discoveries shared over the course of our third ‘Circulation of Dutch Literature’ international conference, held on May 28-30 at the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague.

70 participants from 12 countries heard new research on the reception and circulation of Dutch literature covering a range of (inter)national and contexts and periods, all loosely organised around CODL’s 13 focus texts. The programme included six keynote lectures, 50 paper presentations, and two round-table discussions. (More on all this below)

Between sessions, participants were treated to a special exhibition compiled especially for CODL by National Library curator Ad Leerintveld. The permanent collection was also open throughout the conference for participants to browse. An evening programme at the Haagse Kunstkring on Thursday, featuring CODL focus texts performed by conference goers, and a conference dinner on Friday rounded out the schedule.

With an eye to disseminating the excellent work presented by researchers in the CODL network (cue that baseline again), CODL organisers will begin compiling a book of selected contributions from conference participants. A call for papers will be issued in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
But before we set our sights on the future, let us look back on a successful conference with the help of some of its more memorable quotes:

‘No one can change a man like Shirley Temple’

Deborah Cartmell

After warm words of welcome from the National Library’s acting director Lily Knibbler and CODL co-leader Ton van Kalmthout (Huygens ING), adaptation studies scholar and Hollywood buff Deborah Cartmell (De Montfort University, UK) took to the podium to deliver the first keynote, ‘Adaptations for Children – Pre- and post-code Hollywood’. (‘Code’ refers to Motion Picture Production Code, an industry-imposed set of moral guidelines in effect from 1930 to 1968 that spelled out what was and wasn’t acceptable content in Hollywood-produced motion pictures.)

Cartmell presented a penetrating analysis of gender representations in pre- and post-code Hollywood, zooming in on the figure of Shirley Temple and her overlapping status as wholesome morality figure and sex symbol, particularly to older men. Cartmell went on to relate this to female characters in Disney animated films (enter Snow White, whose charms could redden the cheeks of even the most crotchety of old men, Grumpy). Disney’s figuring of animated characters (Snow White) after real-life stars (Shirley Temple), Cartmell emphasised, can be seen as a deliberate strategy to exploit the duplicitous code-era visual politics of morality and male desire and, in so doing, beat Hollywood at its own game – and this in lieu of pursuing other, more modern, code-breaking avenues.

‘All but one of the authors being discussed at this conference are dead’

After parallel-running panels on youth adaptations of Conscience’s De leeuw van Vlaanderen and the reception history of Hermans’ De donkere kamer van Damocles, the full conference reconvened for a presentation by Arno Kuipers of the National Library and Marlies Hoff of the Dutch Foundation for Literature on digital databases of translated Dutch literature.

This was followed by a round-table discussion on the role of mediators in the worldwide circulation of Dutch-language literature. At the table were Koen Van Bockstal of the Flemish Literature Fund, Geert Joris of the Dutch Language Union, independent literary agent Tino Köhler, Ton Naaijkens of the Centre of Expertise for Literary Translation at the University of Utrecht, and Tiziano Perez of the Dutch Foundation for Literature. The discussion was moderated by Sigrid Bousset.

FLTR: Ton Naaijkens, Koen Van Bockstal, Geert Joris, Tiziano Perez, Tino Köhler and Sigrid Bousset

The back-and-forth gave way to a (periodically heated) dialogue with academics in the audience. How to promote Dutch and Flemish authors abroad and train competent literary translators at home in the face of dwindling public funding and the sometimes conflicting prerogatives of commercial viability and literary-historical relevance? What are the consequences of promoting and translating contemporary, living writers over the important (but often dead) Dutch-language writers of the past?

Conference goers perform during the evening programme at the Haagse Kunstkring

Rounding off Day 1 was an evening programme at the Haagse Kunstkring. Highlights: readings from Hadewijch and Minoes (performed in five languages!) by CODL conference goers.

‘Dutch literature is breaching the dikes’

Day 2 opened with a keynote lecture by Nico Wilterdink (University of Amsterdam) titled ‘Breaching the dikes: the international reception of contemporary Dutch translated literature (1980-2012)’. Wilterdink probed book reviews published about Dutch literature in German, French, British and American newspapers to gauge the reception of Dutch literature abroad.

His results show steadily increasing press coverage across the board, fueled by a growing number of translated titles. Germany stands out as the only national press with both a developed conception of and taste for Dutch literature, even occasionally holding Dutch writers up as examples to be followed by its own national writers. Alternatively, in French, British and American newspapers, a coherent image of Dutch literature in se has thus far failed to materialise – the French are well-meaning but superficial, the British preoccupied with their own writers, the Americans ignorant. When Dutch writers did make the papers, emphasis tended to be placed on their individual merits, removed from any connection to a Dutch literary tradition.

Nico Wilterdink

Wilterdink went on to describe changes in the literary and cultural world system resulting from the rise of English as the unrivalled world language after World War II, which shifted the centre of power in the global literary field away from Paris and toward the United States. This shift, in turn, gave credence to the United States’ centrist and universalist tendencies and tastes (if an international author is worth reading, his work will de facto find its way to the United States), which continues to have important consequences for the reception of Dutch literature today. One such consequence: many Dutch writers are stigmatised from the get-go due to their ‘funny’ names. For more on all this, see Wilterdink’s new book.

‘It doesn’t get much funnier than Joke‘

Joke van Leeuwen

Openly defying the Funny Name Rule, internationally-acclaimed Dutch-Flemish author Joke van Leeuwen took to the stage to present her keynote, ‘Why I cause my translators headaches’. With varying measures of pleasure and lament, she recounted a number of headache-inducing idiosyncrasies (iep!), including a tendency to pepper her children’s books with playful language, onomatopoeias and literal illustrations.

The conference then broke out for a second round of parallel-running panels: one featuring papers on the profiles, motives and strategies of Hadewijch mediators, another with papers on Haasse’s Oeroeg, Conscience’s De leeuw van Vlaanderen and Heijermans’ Op hoop van zegen.

‘We need to zoom back in on mediators’

Reine Meylaerts

After lunch, the conference reconvened for Reine Meylaerts’ (KU Leuven) keynote ‘Studying Cultural Mediators in Small Literatures: How and Why?’. Arguing for a change of focus away from collective schemes and structures (cf. Toury’s model for Descriptive Translation Studies), Meylaerts emphasised the importance of studying cultural transfer at the level of the individual mediator. She unpacked the idea of the (inter)cultural mediator, who is part author (often writing in multiple languages), (self-)translator, publicist, artistic/institutional mediator, collaborator and even plagiarist, all at the same time (e.g. Georges Eekhoud, Stijn Streuvels, Gaston Pulings). An actor- and process-oriented perspective, urged Meylaerts, is uniquely equipped to tease out these complex forms of transfer, which are especially active in small, linguistically fluid literatures.

Friday afternoon continued with two more rounds of parallel-running panels, including papers presented on Elsschot’s Kaas, Elckerlijc, Verhulst’s De helaasheid der dingen, Haasse’s Oeroeg, Couperus’ De stille kracht and a paper on the role of the literary translators as mediators. The day concluded with a conference dinner.

‘This is the resistant recycling of Walter Scott’

Ann Rigney

Ann Rigney (University of Utrecht) opened the third and final day of the conference with a morning keynote titled ‘Transnational Reception as Writing Back: Walter Scott in India’. She examined the profiles of two Walter Scott-inspired writers working in British-controlled India, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Abdul Halim Sharar, showing how Scott’s work was translated, adapted, and appropriated as an imaginative resource in formulating an anti-colonial counter-memory that Scott himself could not have anticipated – but might perhaps have welcomed.

Rigney’s lecture was followed by the conference’s second round-table discussion, this time addressing the topic of large-scale research projects focused on the circulation of literature. At the table were Cecilia Alvstad (University of Oslo), Petra Broomans (University of Groningen), Rajendra Chitnis (University of Bristol), Henriette Partzsch (University of Glasgow) and CODL’s own Orsolya Réthelyi (EötvösLorándUniversity), five researchers at the helm of ongoing or recently concluded projects.

FLTR: Orsolya Réthelyi, Rajendra Chitnis, Petra Broomans, Henriette Partzsch and Cecilia Alvstad

The panelists sketched their respective research projects and shared best practices: tailor your proposal to the call; frame cultural transfer and transmission in a compelling way (e.g. as a ‘survival strategy’ for small literatures); use the word ‘advocate’ as a synonym for ‘mediator’; create your own nonlinear pathways and approaches to literary culture; frame ‘small literatures’ in relative terms; define translation broadly to include adaptation (e.g. use ‘travelling texts’ as a synonym for translation); be transparent and clear about your methodological choices…

Participants then made their way to the two final, parallel-running panel sessions, with papers treating, inter alia, the emerging role of online book reviewers in the transmission of Dutch literature to the English-speaking world and the international reception of Annie M.G. Schmidt’s Minoes, Vondel’s Lucifer, and Heijermans’ Op hoop van zegen.

‘The international study of Dutch literature is thriving’

Frits van Oostrom

International. The word resonated throughout the sixth and final keynote by Frits van Oostrom (University of Utrecht), which doubled as a reflective stocktaking of the three-day conference. Looking to the future, van Oostrom called out three promising trends: the success of Dutch Studies programmes at universities abroad (astonishingly, van Oostrom pointed out, there are more first-year students of Dutch at Poland’s University of Wrocław then there are at the University of Utrecht); increasing internationalisation among scholars working in Dutch literature (hat tip CODL), and advances in digital humanities. Van Oostrom targeted technology as a crucial tool that must be leveraged if scholars in the humanities are to successfully counter the image that “we are all just ruminating old stuff”. He urged the audience to “create digital campfires” and embrace open access when disseminating research results. “Internationalisation has opened exciting new avenues of investigation and creativity,” concluded van Oostrom. “The international study of Dutch literature is thriving.”
And with that, all that remained was the formal closing of the conference. That task went to CODL co-leader Elke Brems (KU Leuven). “In the four years of CODL’s existence, we have formed and consolidated a collaborative network of researchers where there was none before,” she said. “Even as the project in its current form is coming to a close, I am confident that the network we built together will continue to bear fruits long into the future.”

Report by Jack McMartin. Jack is a Ph.D. candidate in translation studies at KU Leuven’s Centre for Reception Studies (CERES). His project, which was conceived under the auspices of CODL and is funded by KU Leuven’s Impulse Fund, aims to trace how translations and adaptations of Flemish literature written in the twentieth century have been brought into circulation internationally. He tweets via @jacksaidthat.

We kijken met veel plezier terug op uw deelname aan het congres An International Network Studying the Circulation of Dutch Literature (CODL). In totaal waren er ongeveer honderd deelnemers uit vijftien landen.

Veel dank aan degenen die ons congresfoto’s hebben toegestuurd. We hebben ze opgenomen in een digitaal fotoalbum. Gelijktijdig met deze mededeling krijgt u per mail een elektronische uitnodiging om het album te kunnen bekijken. Wie nog nieuwe foto’s wil toevoegen kan ze rechtstreeks opladen of ze verzenden naar het projectadres circulationofdutchliterature@gmail.com. In dat geval zorgen wij voor opname.

Jack Mc Martin heeft een verslag geschreven over het congres. Dat staat op de CODL-site: http://www.codl.nl/codl-conference-the-hague-28-30-may-2015. Mochten u nog andere reacties bekend zijn, dan houden we ons aanbevolen voor toezending of een opgave van de vindplaats. Sergei Tcherkasski heft ons gevraagd om deze twee links naar zijn studentenvoorstelling (St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy) van Op Hoop van Zegen rond te sturen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzKXQwDSBKc 22 min (Act 4 of the play) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0na8eT30540

Wij zijn blij te kunnen aankondigen dat er een Engelstalige bundel zal verschijnen met een selectie van de bijdragen aan het CODL-project. Die zal gepubliceerd worden onder de redactie van de CODL-coördinatoren.

De Call for Papers is te downloaden onder volgende link: Call for Papers (link)

We look back with great pleasure to the conference of the project An International Network Studying the Circulation of Dutch Literature (CODL) in The Hague, and wish to thank you once again for the part you played in making it a successful and inspirational event. More than a hundred people from fifteen countries attended the conference.

Many thanks to those, who have sent us photos of the conference. We have collected these in a digital photo album. You will soon receive an electronic invitation to join this album. If you wish to add photos you can upload these directly or send them to our conference address, so we can assist you with the uploading. (circulationofdutchliterature@gmail.com)

Jack Mc Martin has written a detailed report on the conference, which you can find on the CODL site http://www.codl.nl/codl-conference-the-hague-28-30-may-2015 . We would be happy to hear about any other reactions. Sergei Tcherkasski has asked us to share these two links of the Op Hoop van Zegen production by his students at the St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzKXQwDSBKc 22 min (Act 4 of the play) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0na8eT30540

We are pleased to announce that an English volume of selected articles from the CODL-project will be published, edited by the project coordinators.

Please find here the link to the Call for Papers in Dutch: Call for Papers (link)

Het derde internationale congres van het project An International Network Studying the Circulation of Dutch Literature (CODL) vindt plaats in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Den Haag op 28-30 mei 2015. Op het programma staan ruim vijftig lezingen, twee paneldiscussies, presentaties van hoogtepunten uit de KB- collectie en een avond in de Haagse Kunstkring. Het belooft een boeiend congres te worden.

Zie hieronder het voorlopige programma en klik hier (link) om het te downloaden. Klik hier (link) voor de abstracts van de lezingen.

Wil je het congres graag bijwonen? Vul dan via deze link het inschrijvingsformulier in. Iedereen is van harte welkom om te komen luisteren, ook als je geen deelnemer bent van CODL.

The international conference An International Network Studying the Circulation of Dutch Literature (CODL) will take place in The Hague from the 28th until the 30th of May 2015. There are more than 50 papers, two panel discussions and two presentations scheduled with a presentation of the highlights of the KB and evening programmes.

Please find below the provisional programme which you can also download here (link). The abstracts of the presentations you can find here (link).

If you want to visit the conference just fill in the registration form here. Everyone is more than welcome to come and listen to the presentations, also if you are not participating in CODL directly.

Abstracts

International conference: An International Network Studying the Circulation of Dutch Literature (CODL) | Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands | The Hague / Den Haag | 28, 29 and 30 May 2015

Kim Andringa (Université de Liege) A Silent Death: the reception of Couperus in France from 1880 to this day

Panel 6B (English)

The reception of Dutch literature is largely determined by a few mediators. This was even truer around 1900. Although a great many Dutch with a certain level of education spoke French, they lacked the network, the authority, and perhaps also the motivation needed to put their mastery of the language to use and introduce or spread Dutch literature in France.

On the other side, Dutch-speaking French were hard to come by. Still, the French literary climate of those years displayed an interest in foreign literature. Couperus benefits from this: translations of his writings are published both in magazines and as books, and in addition to these, untranslated works of his, among which De Stille Kracht (The Hidden Force), are commented upon by the press. There is some interest for the writer as a person as well. His death in 1923 seems to mark a change that will result in the opposite situation, where a few translations are still being published, but do not get discussed at all, except in their paratexts.

This talk will give an overview of the spreading and reception of Couperus’ writings in France, concentrating on De Stille Kracht. It will analyse the role of the various mediators and of course, pay attention to the part Couperus himself may have played in
this spreading as well. As a conclusion, I will try to offer an explanation for the silent death this reception has died.

Chiara Beltrami Gottmer (University of Amsterdam) Lucifer in the Sawah

Panel 5B (English): The Splendour of Vondel’s Lucifer 1654-2015: canonicity, cultural memory and cultural transfer

In Dutch East India Lucifer was actualized and frequently declaimed in Dutch for entertaining the Dutch community. In official celebrations of the ‘cultural icon’ Vondel, which were realised with the aid of both academics and professional actors, recitation was consistently reduced to the choruses. All of these acts of remembrance were kept well away from the indigenous cultural spheres. However, a recently rediscovered Javanese adaptation indicates that the play also has been accommodated to local
cultures of the ‘sawah’.

Pieter Boulogne (University of Leuven / University of Antwerp) Minoes als Russische femme fatale

Panel 5A (Dutch): The reception of Annie M.G. Schmidts Minoes in Central and Eastern Europe

After a literary-historical reflection on the non-reception of Annie MG Schmidt in Soviet Russia, the latest edition of the Russian translation Murli (1997) will be analyzed, with particular attention to the dilemma naturalization-exotization. The illustrations by
Sokolov, showing a Murli with diva-airs, are scrutinized. The adaptations seem to make the text more suitable for a Russian-style socialization. Finally, Murli’s popularity with the general Russian public will be assessed.

Elke Brems (University of Leuven), Stéphanie Vanasten (UCL) & Pieter Boulogne (University of Leuven / University of Antwerp) The novel De helaasheid der dingen as a film (in translation): some methodological considerations

Panel 4B (English)

The work of the Flemish writer Dimitri Verhulst, and especially his novel De helaasheid der dingen (2006), crosses the cultural and linguistic borders with ease and readily allows for translation, adaptation and acculturation. This contribution focuses on a few
of the different locations of the novel: Flanders and the  Netherlands, France and French-speaking Belgium and Russia and the various forms that the text assumes via e.g. criticism, translation, and especially film. As Rigney says, we want to look at ‘texts across time, but above all in their reappearance in new guises in different places and media; in their capacity to move, mobilize, and generate new cultural activities’ (Rigney, 2012: 12).
We focus our attention on the way you can approach the circulation of such a text ‘taking on new guises’: how to transcend the case study in a meaningful and convincing manner by using concepts from reception studies, adaptation studies and translation
studies?

María José Calvo González (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Elckerlijc versus Todohombre

Panel 6A (Dutch)

Het werk Todohombre o el Espejo de la Bienaventuranza is de enige bekende vertaling in het Spaans van Elkckerlijk die is verschenen in 1967 door de Spaanse filoloog Felip Lorda i Alaiz. Hij maakt gebruikt van de editie van Eslander uit 1962. Verder bestaat er
een hoorspel dat uitgezonden werd in Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, en waar een Spaanse bewerking angeboden wordt van de Spaanse vertaling van Elckerlijc verzorgd door Felipe Lorda. Er bestaan eveneens vertalingen van Everyman naar het Spaans die
tevens in de XXe eeuw zijn verschenen. Zoals Brugger, I. Cadacual. La moralidad inglesa de ‘Everyman’, Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1951. En nog een Spaanse vertaling die wordt verzorgd in het werk van N. Guglielmi, El teatro medieval, Buenos Aires, EUDEBA, 1980.
Bij mijn bijdrage wil ik me graag richten op de adaptatie en intermedialiteit als factor bij de verspreiding van literatuur. In principe wil ik nagaan hoe de tekst is overgebracht in
de Spaans tekst van Lorda. Bij het hoorspeel zou ik graag willen uitleggen hoe dit is bewerkt volgens de Spaanse versie en op welke manier en methode deze tekst beantwoordt aan de oorspronkelijke bedoeling van de produktie van de tekst: het voorstellen voor een publiek van toeschouwers of toehoorders. Bovendien tracht ik ook
een overzicht te geven van de receptie van de tekst in het Spaanstalig gebied. Voor zover het kan in de tijd van de produktie zelf, dus als oorspronkelijke tekst. Of onderzoek verrichten naar sporen, motieven en inhoud van de moraliteiten in de Spaanstalige literatuur. In het werk van Infantes, V. Las danzas de la muerte, (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1997, bz. 127-129) zegt men dan de moraliteiten een overeenkomst laat zien met het genre van de Dodendans, een genre die trouwens in talrijke voorbeelden voorkomt in motieven en werken uit de Spaanstalige literatuur van de XVIe eeuw (Infantes, 187).

Deborah Cartmell (De Montfort University, Leicester) Adaptations for Children: From Pre-to Post-Code Hollywood

Keynote 1 (English)

Adaptations, directed at children in the 1930s, are read in this paper in relation to growing concerns about the power of films to corrupt and the consequent threat of shrinking audiences and diminishing box office returns. Adaptations were, to a degree, reinvented in this period, as guarantors of safe, wholesome and educational
entertainment, in an attempt to rescue the movies’ sinking reputation as promoting idle and lascivious behaviour. This paper will look at the major adaptations for children in this period, from Little Women (1933) to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and the evolving reputation of adaptations in the new era of sound as unadventurous, conservative and backward looking, a reputation that persisted for most of the 20th century.

Daniel Cunin (Belgium) Translating Hadewijch in the wake of French-speaking translators of the 20th century

Panel 2A (Dutch): Profielen, motieven en strategieën van Franstalige Hadewijch-bemiddelaars (1897-2014)

In this talk, translator Daniel Cuninaan will discuss three previous translations of Hadewijch’s Liederen (from the edition of V. Fraeters/F. Willaert/L.P. Grijp, Groningen, Historische Uitgeverij, 2009) in light of his own translation of the work, which he is
currently finalising for Paris publisher Albin Michel.

French speaking readers have, all in all, discovered Hadewijch’s Liederen through three translations: that of François Closset (1900-1964), that of Jean-Baptiste Porion (1899-1987) and that of Rose Vande Plas (Love is All. Strophic Poems, Paris, Pierre Téqui,
1984). The latter is the only one to offer a French translation of the 45 ‘Liederen’. Nevertheless, the translation by Dom Porion, which remains partial, is still the most disseminated and discussed one.

Cunin’s contribution goes beyond a brief overview of the existing works and explains why the Porion edition is still eminent. He will also offer a first reflection on the choices made by each of the three translators in the light of his own work and progress.

Roberto Dagnino (Université de Paris 4-Sorbonne) ‘The Lion’ that arrived late. Textual and Contextual Aspects of the only Italian Translation of Hendrik Conscience’s De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (1946)

Panel 2B (English)

A recent volume on the translations of Hendrik Conscience’s novels has convincingly showed that the ‘father’ of the Flemish literature was largely appreciated by Italian publishers, particularly by the Catholic-oriented among them. It is therefore rather surprising that the novel that is currently considered as Conscience’s most famous one, De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (1838), was published only once in Italian, in 1946. Although this post-war translation appears to be unique, it nonetheless appears to be the result of a longer reception history. Selected by a Catholic publisher, translated by a woman, included in a series of ‘good readings’ for a large ‘unknown public’, Il Leone di Fiandra contains several elements fitting the broader picture of the reception of Conscience’s novels in Italy in the twentieth century. Although the book includes neither an
introduction nor a blurb exposing the motives and intentions of the publisher and the translator, the translation itself includes a sufficient number of elements allowing us to draw some conclusions. The following aspects will be discussed in this paper: ideological orientation of the publisher, translation strategies, probable source texts, and the (supposed) target readership. This contribution does not only aim at reconstructing De Leeuw’s long – and above all slow – path to Italy. It also attempts to provide a sample of the methodological advantages of combining textual and contextual features for historical research in the fields of translation and reception studies.

Michel De Dobbeleer (Ghent University) Down with Capitalism! Willem Elsschot’s Cheese in the Soviet Union

Panel 3A (Dutch): Kaas van Elsschot en zijn buitenlandse afnemers / Elsschot’s Kaas and its foreign consumers

Michel De Dobbeleer behandelt de lotgevallen van Kaas in Sovjet-Rusland, waar het werk in een behoorlijk prestigieuze Elsschotbundel uit 1972 voor het eerst en het laatst in het Russisch verscheen. De enthousiaste Sovjet-Russische neerlandici die daarbij
betrokken waren, moeten ongetwijfeld heel blij zijn geweest dat Elsschots thematiek – niet in het minst in Kaas – al bij al makkelijk kon worden voorgesteld als ‘de neergang van het kapitalisme en/of het failliet van de bourgeoisidealen.’ Zoveel bureaucratie vereiste de Sovjetliteratuurkritiek rond 1970 natuurlijk nog wel dat men die thematiek in een typisch lang(dradig)e inleiding afdoend moest duiden (o.a. via de obligate verwijzing naar Lenin). Voor het overige kon men de lezer zonder al te veel aanpassingen gewoon laten meegenieten van het buitenlandse werk in kwestie. Niemand verplichtte hem om de inleiding te lezen, laat staan die tot op de letter te geloven.

Dorien De Man (University of Leuven) An unpretentious story: The non-reception of three English translations of Willem Elsschot’s Kaas

Panel 3A (Dutch): Kaas van Elsschot en zijn buitenlandse afnemers / Elsschot’s Kaas and its foreign consumers

In 2002, nearly seventy years after the appearance of Willem Elsschot’s self-declared masterpiece Kaas, its first English translation was published. This is not so remarkable as
the non-English literature, even today, only covers 2% of the Anglophone market. Between 1933 and 1989, however, three English translations of Kaas were produced by three different translators. All three were translated directly from the original Dutch version, but none of them was published. These translations have barely been mentioned in the literature, let alone studied. In this paper, I pursue a close analysis of the genesis of these translations. The story begins with the British Anthony Gishford, a
friend of Elisabeth de Roos’s, who in 1930 wrote to Menno ter Braak: ‘I even translated [Kaas] into English, but at that time the idea of there being such a thing as contemporary Dutch or Flemish literature appeared nonsensical to English publishers.’

Thirty years later, new efforts were undertaken to publish Kaas in English, respectively by Professor Renier and father and son Van Riemsdijk, each employed at the National Fund for Literature. In 1949, Kaas ended up in the Bibliotheca Flandrica series of the Fund, which planned to publish twenty-five important works of Dutch
literature in English, French and German. Apparently, by then, the English market was not ready yet either. Finally, Vernon Pearce, father of the writer Joseph Pearce, made another translation of Kaas. He sent some fragments of his translation to Johan Anthierens who published them in newspaper De Morgen. Anthierens then called on experts to peer review and edit the translation, without response.

This translation history brings to the fore different factors ranging from the author’s choices, the publishers and the translators to deficiencies in the translation policy of the Belgian and Dutch governments in the 50s and 60s.

Małgorzata Dowlaszewicz (University of Wrocław) Sixteenth-century Poland and Elckerlijc

Panel 3B (English): The circulation of Elckerlijc

The research of the CODL-group shows that the reception of Elckerlijc in many countries, including Poland, becomes noticeable especially in two periods. The first period falls in the sixteenth century and is connected to the Latin translations of the text whereas the second one at the beginning of the twentieth century. I investigate whether apart from the literary reasons also the political and ideological ones can be found in the popularity of this text in the 16th century outside the Low Countries. This is the Golden Age of Polish culture and for the first time the Polish language plays a role in literature. To what extent would the popularity of the Latin translations of Elckerlijc (at least three prints in Krakow in the 40s of the 16th century) have played a role in the period of the
revolutionary work of Copernicus and the first Polish poet Rej (who also wrote Kupiec, a play based on Mercator)? It is also interesting to investigate what role played two printers -Ungler and Wietor? What was the target audience of these two printers and what other texts did they publish around that time? The answer to these questions puts the text into a political and ideological context of the mid-sixteenth century in Poland and can give possible reasons for the popularity of Latin translations of Elckerlijc in Poland.

Marijke Meijer Drees (University of Groningen) Linguistic Affinity and Memory: Lucifer in South-Africa

Panel 5B (English): The Splendour of Vondel’s Lucifer 1654-2015: canonicity, cultural memory and cultural transfer

Two adaptations of Vondel’s tragedy Lucifer have been produced and published in South Africa: one in the book series entitled Afrikaanse Vondel Uitgawe (1925) and the other in the series Vondel vir Suid-Afrika (1968). The contents of these adaptations as well as their institutional settings involve strong Dutch-‘Afrikaanse’ connections. This observation leads to the complex colonial past that South Africa shares with the Netherlands. Two pillars of this conjoint past will be taken in consideration: firstly, the linguistic affinity between Afrikaans and Dutch, and secondly, the remembrance of the so-called ‘stamverwantschap’ or kinship between the African Boers and the Dutch settlers who landed at the Cape in 1652.

Jane Fenoulhet (UCL London) & Jaap Grave (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Munster) Figuring literary translation: Oeroeg into English and German

Panel 4B (English)

In this presentation we look at Oeroeg by Hella Haasse and its English (The Black Lake, 2013) and German (Der schwarze See, 1994) versions. We aim to show how nomadic theory as explained by Rosi Braidotti (see Nomadic Theory. The Portable Rosi Braidotti,
2012) can be used to examine and shed new light on the process of transfer. In so doing we approach the translation of literature as a ‘nomadic practice’. This entails the following: application of the concept ‘rhizomatic’ to the process of transfer, including the dynamic relationship between the translator and her context. Earlier research on the two English translations (Fenoulhet, 2012) are ideologically far apart, revealing the translator as an ‘agent of metamorphosis’ and ‘powerful transformer’, ‘co-creator of a
translated literary text and even as a ‘pilgrim’ (Michael Cronin, 2000). With the inclusion of Der schwarze See we extend our nomadic figuration of the translation process.

Veerle Fraeters (Universiteit Antwerpen) De editie van de Liederen van Hadewijch (2009): laveren tussen wetenschap en cultuurbemiddeling

Panel 2A (Dutch): Profielen, motieven en strategieën van Franstalige Hadewijch-bemiddelaars (1897-2014)

Het initiatief voor een nieuwe editie met vertaling van de Liederen van Hadewijch ging uit van de Stichting Nederlandse Klassieken van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde. Het boek zou worden uitgegeven in de Deltareeks Nederlandse klassieken
en de aangezochte editeurs, Frank Willaert en Veerle Fraeters van de Universiteit Antwerpen, gaven het vorm volgens de voorschriften van die reeks, ook al verscheen het boek uiteindelijk, na de opheffing van de Deltareeks in 2007, als Deel 1 van Hadewijch,
Verzameld Werk (2009) bij Historische Uitgeverij in Groningen. Het beoogde doelpubliek van de Deltareeks – in de eerste plaats het bredere literair geinteresseerde publiek, en (pas) in de tweede plaats het onderwijs en de wetenschappen – plaatste de editeurs voor keuzes op het snijvlak van wetenschappelijke geplogenheden en culturele bemiddeling. In deze lezing worden de gemaakte keuzes op het vlak van editie, vertaling, commentaar en presentatie toegelicht, met aandacht voor de gevolgen die deze keuzes hebben gehad op de (voorlopige) impact van het boek in enerzijds het
wetenschappelijke veld en anderzijds het bredere culturele veld.

Judit Gera, (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) The Lion of Babel. Nationalism in adaptations for young readers of The Lion of Flanders in Dutch, German and Hungarian

Panel 1A (Dutch): De Leeuw van Babel. Nationalisme in jeugdbewerkingen van de Leeuw van Vlaanderen in het
Nederlands, Duits en Hongaars

Judit Gera’s paper will analyse the Hungarian translation of The Lion of Flanders (1924). The novel was published in a strongly abridged edition and in a series intended for young readers. The translated novel entered the culturally and literary ambivalent field
of the so-called Horthy era, in which Hungarian nationalism became more and more pervasive. The translation is placed and analyzed in this context. Parallels between the political and cultural situation in Conscience’s Belgium and Hungary in the twenties of
last century make this novel the meeting point of ideas about nationalism. Pedagogical principles of the Horthy era in Hungary are also examined and the question is put of whether certain elements of the translational strategies reflect these principles.

Jan Gielkens (Huygens ING) System and Sensitivity. A Proposition for a Research Attitude

Panel 6B (English)

At the very latest since the first decade of the twenty-first century, when the polysystem theory of Itamar Even-Zohar was often used in studies of the reception of foreign literature in the Dutch speaking countries, it is clear that scholarly research that deals
with the circulation of literature cannot be a single-minded activity. It also means that the heuristic aspects of this research, the search for and the use of the relevant source material, cannot be single-minded.

Whoever looks into the translation, reception, distribution etc. of Dutch literature abroad or of foreign literature in the Dutch-speaking countries has to deal with

-writers and their texts, their books, their position in the literary world, etc.;

-with texts, their genesis, the way they develop from text to books, etc.;

-with the production of these books, and the role of literary agents, publishers, editors and others, with their design, their marketing, their distribution, etc.;
-with translators, their translations, their authority, and their role in the choice of the authors and the texts they translate, etc.;
-with critics and their authority and influence, with the authority, the influence, the ideological angle, the distribution etc. of the media these critics write their reviews for, etc.;
-etc., etc.

The necessity of a multidisciplinary research attitude is obvious. Such an attitude, other than the theoretical method mentioned above, has not yet received a name in our field of study, but I would like to suggest one: polysensitivity, and I would like to illustrate my proposal with some examples from my own research (Willem Frederik Hermans, Willa Cather, Walter Scott). The basis for the proposed research attitude lies, in my opinion, in textual scholarship.

Christine Hermann (Universität Wien) Nationalism in German and Austrian adaptations of The Lion of Flanders for young readers

Panel 1A (Dutch): De Leeuw van Babel. Nationalisme in jeugdbewerkingen van de Leeuw van Vlaanderen in het Nederlands, Duits en Hongaars

In her paper, Christine Hermann will give an overview of the different German adaptations of The Lion of Flanders (De Leeuw van Vlaanderen) for young readers. Since 1846, nineteen different translations and adaptations of The Lion have been published in the German-speaking areas. Eleven among them were more or less explicitly intended for young readers. These adaptations appeared in different time periods with different political systems and different social, literary and pedagogical norms: during the German empire, World War I, the interwar period, World War II and in the post-war period different adaptations were made in Germany, Austria and the German Democratic Republic. The way in which the political and social context of the target culture influenced the way of translation and adaptation will be examined. The presentation will primarily focus on the ideological shifts regarding national consciousness and pride, the importance of ‘Flanders’, and the fight for one’s home country.

Irena Barbara Kalla (Univeristy of Wrocław) Ferdinand’s niece. The reception of Annie M.G. Schmidt’s Minoes in Poland

Panel 5A (Dutch): The reception of Annie M.G. Schmidts Minoes in Central and Eastern Europe

The classical position of a book assumes its timelessness. Minoes is a canonical text and as such has been translated into Polish, although this happened only 36 years after its publication in Dutch. However, the reception of the book was not a success in Poland. In

an attempt to explain this contradiction, I will focus on the fate of Minoes in Polish, paying attention to both text and context in the target culture.

Ton van Kalmthout (Huygens ING) The Vicissitudes of a Topical Work of Art. How De stille kracht by Louis Couperus Became both a Prophetic and a Historical Novel

Panel 4B (English)
De stille kracht (The Hidden Force) is a ‘colonial’ novel by Louis Couperus (1863-1923), one of the most cosmopolitan and most translated Dutch authors who still has a large readership and who enjoyed a certain international fame in his own days as well. My
paper tries to answer the question what the printing and editing history of De stille kracht reveals about the ways in which the book has been read and assessed in the course of time. I will discuss how the novel developed from a modern work of art to a piece of literary heritage requiring background information and other explanations.
Furthermore, I will show how De stille kracht has evolved in several other ways: from a contemporary novel depicting topical colonial issues to a historical novel and to a prophecy predicting the independence of Indonesia in 1949. A point of consideration is
also to what extent the novel’s 1974 adaptation for television played a role in the transmission history of the book.

Peter Kegel (Huygens ING) & Marc van Zoggel (Huygens ING & Vrije Universiteit Brussel) The most perfidious novel. Some preliminary remarks

Panel 1B (English): Gray Past, Black Poetry. Ideological elements in the reception history of some translations of Willem Frederik Hermans’ novel De donkere kamer van Damokles

In this paper we will outline the ideological-political aspects of the reception of the original novel in Dutch, thereby installing a point of reference for the other two contributions in this panel. In what ways have the novel’s views on occupation and resistance, and on humanity and morality been the subject of public debate over the last 70 years? In the historical sciences, for instance, De donkere kamer van Damokles played a vital role in paradigm shifts. War historians such as Hans Blom and Chris van der Heijden have indicated that their scientific views on the German occupation are heavily influenced by Hermans’s novel (Kieft 2012). The work is known to have contributed to the shift from the traditional black-and-white view on right and wrong to the nowadays-accepted image of a ‘grey past’ (Van der Heijden 2001).

Using Hermans’s correspondence, we furthermore aim to reconstruct the role the author played in the coming into being of some of the translations and to gain an impression of his evaluation of the results. Although Hermans was first and foremost
bothered with the linguistic aspects of translating (‘The writer who reads his own work in a bad translation will have the experience of a crumbled piece of paper being stuffed into his mouth’), we want to find out as well in what ways Hermans was concerned with the more ideological aspects of the cultural transfer of his works.

Arno Kuipers (KB) and Marlies Hoff (Nederlands Letterenfonds) Digital databases of translations of Dutch literature

Presentation (English)

Reine Meylaerts Studying Cultural Mediators in small literatures: how and why?

Keynote 4 (English)

This paper aims to give a deeper conceptual and methodological understanding of the figure of the cultural mediator, understood here as a cultural actor active across linguistic, artistic and geographical borders and as such the carrier of cultural transfer. I
will first give a state-of-the-art of the study of cultural mediators, focus on the problems and pitfalls of several approaches, and then present an alternative, more encompassing model for studying cultural mediators and for understanding their constitutive role in
cultural exchange and cultural construction. Finally I will draw some conclusions for literary studies, transfer studies and translation studies. I will illustrate my model by drawing on some specific examples of cultural mediators’ complex transfer activities in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Belgium.

Gheorghe Nicolaescu (University of Bucharest) Manieren om de onmondigheid van de lezer te verhelpen. Hoe de twee Roemeense vertalingen van Max Havelaar onder het communisme dienden te worden gelezen

Panel 6A (Dutch)

The first, almost complete, translation of Multatuli’s novel, Max Havelaar, into Romanian, appeared in 1948, the second, which was entirely complete, in 1967. Both contained a foreword in which the reader was presented with an interpretive framework.

In my talk, I will try to identify the aims of these accompanying texts and, depending on the answers found, to describe the resulting functions of the literature. In the first version, it is a case of pure communist propaganda, in which Multatuli’s novel is seen only as a possible weapon in the struggle against imperialism. In the 1967 edition, the ideological component becomes weaker. Now the novel is presented as a work dealing with personal life experiences, but in addition also as a product of literary reception. Multatuli is no longer seen as a social, but rather as a literary reformer.

The difference between the two approaches reflects the developments that took place in Romanian state ideology after 1964, when a relative thaw in the politicalcultural sphere made possible the resumption of the debate on ways of literary
reception. It will be concluded that the Romanian version of Max Havelaar published in 1967 is of value not only because it was translated directly from the Dutch, but also because the introduction demonstrates its triumph over the earlier simplistic
interpretation of the novel as a disguised ideological treatise.

Frits van Oostrom (University of Utrecht) Conclusion

Keynote 6 (Dutch)

Franco Paris (Universita ‘L’Orientale’) Bemiddeling als een vorm van engagement: de rol van de literair vertaler

Panel 4A (Dutch)

Vooral met een kleinere taal als het Nederlands, is de individuele
docent/vertaler/intellectueel meer geneigd – soms genoodzaakt – om een rol te gaan spelen als cultureel bemiddelaar en literair promotor, aangezien de buitenlandse uitgeverijen en media vaak geen directe toegang hebben tot de oorspronkelijke tekst.
Rekening houdend met de complexiteit van het literaire veld, wil ik de nadruk leggen op het feit dat zulke individuele initiatieven, mede door de Weltanschauung van de bemiddelaar, een fundamentele rol spelen bij de verspreiding en receptie van Nederlandstalige literatuur in het buitenland. Zoals zal blijken uit de twee gekozen case studies – Max Havelaar en Op hoop van zegen – bepalen de sociale visie en het politieke engagement van de bemiddelaars zowel de vertaalstrategieën als de houding ten opzichte van de bron-en doelcultuur. In beide gevallen, zal ik zowel vanuit mijn rol als
academicus als vanuit mijn rol als vertaler spreken. Ik zal derhalve de politiek-culturele benadering analyseren van vertalers uit verschillende landen van Couperus en Heijermans en de soms verrassende weerslag hiervan op hun vertaalstrategieën: lees:
subtiele manipulaties en toevoegingen.

Marco Prandoni (Universita di Bologna) Lucifer on Stage and as a National Icon: a Contentious Canonicity

Panel 5B (English): The Splendour of Vondel’s Lucifer 1654-2015: canonicity, cultural memory and cultural transfer

Banned from the stage after only two performances in 1654, Vondel’s Lucifer would remain unstaged until the beginning of the twentieth century, confined to the field of literature and, later, to academic departments of Dutch Studies. We will focus on the
question how this work could notwithstanding have an extraordinary persistence in the Dutch cultural memory: a shared national memory and, between the nineteenth and twentieth century, a Catholic cultural memory in the pillarized Netherlands. Then we will scrutinize how theatre makers – Willem Royaards and Hans Croiset in the first place – claimed back Lucifer’s performative dimension in the twentieth century, re-enacting the play as a medium of memory.

Marion Prinse (Universiteit Utrecht) Reception of De donkere kamer van Damokles in Germany, Norway and Sweden related to the state of Second World War processing

Panel 1B (English): Gray Past, Black Poetry. Ideological elements in the reception history of some translations of
Willem Frederik Hermans’ novel De donkere kamer van Damokles

Norwegian and Swedish editions of De donkere kamer van Damokles were published in 1962. Norwegian critics seemed confused: they desperately tried to grasp the meaning of this ‘intellectual nightmare with Kafkaesque effects’ (Morgenbladet). Reception in Sweden differed largely from that in Norway: the novel was positively reviewed and critics compared Hermans to similar, well-known Swedish writers like Lars Gustafsson and Artur Lundkvist. The relatively small impact of World War II on the country is likely to be responsible for this, as Sweden had in fact remained neutral in the War.

The hypothesis of a correlation between the impact of the War on a country and the reception of the novel receives more support when we examine the German reception history. In the 1960s the novel was not translated into German, due to a lack of interest in novels situated in the War. As late as 2001 the first German edition of De donkere kamer van Damokles was published. It sold well and received critical acclaim. A possible explanation is that the ‘grey’ depiction of wartime matched quite well with the progress in the on-going processing of collective trauma in Germany. Many reviewers mentioned the processing in the Netherlands and the disruptive impact the novel is said to have had on it. In this contribution the relation between the critical reception and the state of war processing in a country is further examined.

Suzanne van Putten-Brons (Huygens ING) & Peter Boot (Huygens ING) “June is Dutch Literature Month!” Online book reviewers and their role in the transmission of Dutch literature to the English-speaking world

Panel 6B (English)

Since the advent of the World Wide Web, online book reviewers are increasingly taking on the roles of traditional intermediaries between author and reader: agents, publishers, critics, and teachers. Sites where people discuss online books come in many varieties. Many book reviewers have their own weblogs, others submit their discussions on review sites like watleesjij.nu  (whatareyoureading.now) or goodreads.com, and online booksellers like Amazon have also become a popular platform for book reviews.

But most of these new book reviewers have in common that they have no background in the traditional literary field.

Online book reviewers also play a role in the transmission of Dutch literature abroad. In this paper we examine fifty English-language bloggers and other online book reviewers. A number of them are Dutch nationals blogging in English; one of them organised the online Dutch Literature Month, taken up by many others. A larger
proportion of the bloggers are native English speakers. Some of them have a large following through newsletters and Twitter; others see their blog more as a reading journal kept mostly for themselves. Through a survey, we collected data about, inter alia, their nationality, the reach of their discussions, their knowledge of Dutch and their background in terms of education and occupation. We also asked them about possible interaction with the traditional literary field. We will briefly discuss some of their sites. In our paper, we will also discuss the way in which some of the CODL case study authors were discussed by the online reviewers. These books will include Couperus’ The Hidden Force, Multatuli’s Max Havelaar, and various works (including Oeroeg) by Hella Haase.

Orsolya Réthelyi (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) Elckerlijc / Everyman / Jedermann in Hungary. Max Reinhardt and cultural transfer

Panel 3B (English): The circulation of Elckerlijc

In the first half of the twentieth century a large scale rebirth of medieval drama is discernable, caused partly by a wish to reform and revitalize old theatrical conventions.
In my paper I propose to discuss two block-buster productions by the Austrian theatre genius, Max Reinhardt. The year 1911 marks the premiere of both productions:
Jedermann: Das Spiel vom Sterben des reichen Mannes by the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal went into premiere on December 1st in Berlin under the direction of Reinhardt. Three weeks later, on the 23rd of December the opening night for Reinhardt’s pantomime by Karl Gustav Vollmoeller, The Miracle (Das Mirakel) took place in London.

There are a number of similarities between the productions. Both became enormously influential in both Western and Central Europe, inspiring film adaptations, translations and countless other derivatives. Both were directed by Reinhardt as arenaproductions,
the so-called “Theaters der Fünftausend”, in an artistic experiment to reintroduce the collective ritualistic theatre experience of the ancient Greeks for a modern public. Both made huge profit for the producers and were envied and imitated in many countries. Both were ‘remediations’ of medieval stories. It is, however, less known that both stories can be traced back to important Middle Dutch source texts through several steps of adaptation process: the Beatrijs, a fourteenth century legend of the Holy Virgin and the medieval Dutch play, Elckerlijc, which is the source text of the
English play Everyman.

In my paper I wish to explore the influence of these two productions in Westernand Central Europe. I wish to show the circumstances of emergence of these plays and compare the process of artistic and literary reception of Reinhardt’s productions in two
countries, The Netherlands and Hungary. I use the theories of cultural transfer and modern translation and reception studies as framework for my investigation.

Ann Rigney (Utrecht University) Transnational Reception as Writing Back: Walter Scott in India

Keynote 5 (English)

In this presentation, I reflect on transnational reception and ‘world literature’ by critically reviewing recent claims to the effect that Walter Scott (1771-1832) was the first writer to address a ‘global audience’ (Crawford 2013). Building on my earlier work on the afterlife of Scott in Europe and North America, I examine the productive reception of his work in British-controlled India. With reference to writers working in Bengali, Urdu and Gujarati, I will show how Scott’s work was translated, adapted, and appropriated as an imaginative resource in formulating an anti-colonial counter-memory that Scott himself could not have anticipated but might perhaps have welcomed.

Lucie Sedlackova (Charles University, Prague) Op hoop van zegen slechts een beeld van armzalige proletariërs? De Tsjechische receptie van het stuk ten tijde van het communistische regime

Panel 6A (Dutch)

The Good Hope (1900) by Herman Heijermans was translated at least three times into Czech and staged at least by eleven theatre companies (between 1901 and 1973). In the first three years, these were the leading theatres in the big cities (i.e. the centre of the
contemporary cultural field), whereas later, the play moved more and more in the direction of the periphery, geographically as well as culturally. Nevertheless, it is still impressive that the play was staged during three different regimes: the Habsburg monarchy (until 1918), the democratic Czechoslovakia (1918-1939) and the socialist Czechoslovakia (after 1948).

Especially the last period deserves attention as everything was subject to censorship. It is obvious that Heijermans was accepted thanks to his socialist orientation, but it is also interesting to explore to what extent the political ideology played a role in the reception of The Good Hope. One would suppose easily that the
critical note was the most dominant in all reviews and that it was the reason that three different theatre companies had chosen the play for new adaptations (1948, 1956, 1973). I want to research to what extent the available reviews of the play reflected the
socialist and communist ideology and to what extent the other aspects (the esthetic quality of the text and the quality of the staging) were taken into account. One of the questions I try to answer is: was it really only because Heijermans was a socialist that
The Good Hope was still staged after WWII although it had never become a box-office success in our country? To make the image complete, I will compare my findings about the period after 1948 with the reception before World War II, when the different
approaches towards the play were already reflected.

Rita Schlusemann (FU Berlin / University of Utrecht) The Splendour of Lucifer in Germany in the 19th century

Panel 5B (English): The Splendour of Vondel’s Lucifer 1654-2015: canonicity, cultural memory and cultural transfer

After some predecessors who wrote about Vondel in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century (e.g. A. Glaser on Lucifer), the year 1868 can be called the year of the German Lucifer breakthrough – Vondel’s masterpiece as it was called. Within two years, four Lucifer translations were published (by F. Grimmelt, M.W. Quadt, G.H. de Wilde and L. von Ploennies), followed by translations by W. Otto, A. Baumgartner, L. Schneider and Marie von Seydewitz. We will analyse the special implications of cultural transfer and cultural memory of this canonized work in a neighbouring country from nineteenthcentury Germany until the translation published by Insel Verlag.
Matthieu Sergier (Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles & Université catholique de Louvain) The occupied language’s black poetry. The ideological issues of heterolingualism in the French translation of W.F. Hermans’ De donkere kamer van Damocles (1958)

Panel 1B (English): Gray Past, Black Poetry. Ideological elements in the reception history of some translations of
Willem Frederik Hermans’ novel De donkere kamer van Damokles

Despite his appreciation for French culture and his desire to become part of it with his own oeuvre, Hermans was reportedly shocked by the first French translation of his novel, by the Fleming Maurice Beerblock. This story, however, has recently been
nuanced by Van de Sterre (2007) and Fransen (2005): after initial agreement, Hermans changed his opinion when he experienced his novel did nothing in France. In 2006, a second French translation appeared, this time by Daniël Cunin, and it seemed to do hardly better than the first one. With the exception of one positive review in the Swiss Le Temps, the novel remained unnoticed, until it was picked up by Milan Kundera, who praised this ‘oeuvre capitale, pourtant passée inaperçue’ late January 2007 on page two of the influential newspaper Le Monde.

In the reception of both the original Dutch novel and Cunin’s translation, it is striking that so many critics, despite the gap of half a century that lies in between, focus on the ideological aspects of the novel, often leading to similar conclusions. In this contribution
Kundera’s enthusiasm for Hermans’s novel is further examined by focusing on the translation of the heterolinguistic aspects of De donkere kamer van Damokles. To what extent does the translation of a text that is rooted in a literary discourse to which the text attributes a certain degree of otherness (Suchet 2014) inspire an ideologically based reading of the text, even decades later? In parallel, the representativeness of Kundera’s judgement in comparison to other reviews of the novel in ‘late postmodern’ France is scrutinized.

Cora-Lisa Sütő (Károli Gáspár Protestant University) Drie keer Sajt: enkele bijzonderheden over de verschillende Hongaarse vertalingen van Kaas en de vorm en context waarin ze verschenen

Panel 3A (Dutch): Kaas van Elsschot en zijn buitenlandse afnemers / Elsschot’s Kaas and its foreign consumers

Elsschots Kaas has been translated (partly or completely) into Hungarian no less than three times. What do these translations look like? What language did the translators use? Where and how were they published, edited, designed, promoted, described, read
and reviewed?

In 1962, a fragment of the novel, translated by Erzsébet F. Solti (who also translated Anne Frank’s diary and many more works into Hungarian), was published in an anthology of World Literature (Világirodalmi Antológia 6/2, A XX. század irodalma.
Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest).

The first one to translate the complete novel into Hungarian was Károly Dékány, who also published it himself in his one-man publishing house Forum in the Dutch town of Amstelveen in 1987. The Hungarian title of the novel was Sajt. Some people of the
Hungarian community in The Netherlands read it, but the response was minimal. In Hungary hardy anyone knew about the existence of the book.

Twenty years later, in Hungary, the whole novel was translated again by Szabolcs Wekerle. His Sajt appeared next to Judit Gera’s translation of the Elsschot novel Dwaallicht in the volume Sajt/Lidércfény (Gondolat Kiadó, Budapest, 2008). The volume
was part of a series of books containing masterpieces of Dutch literature in Hungarian translation: Akcentusok and its time of publication coincided with the Low Festival, a cultural festival in Hungary presenting contemporary Dutch and Flemish culture to the Hungarian audience. Some critics and bloggers wrote reviews about Sajt/Lidércfény in papers and on the Internet.

Sergei Tcherkasski (St. Petersburg Theater Arts Academy, Russia) Russian Op Hoop Van Zegen, 1913 and 2015

Panel 2B (English)

The most famous production of Op Hoop Van Zegen in Russian was directed by Richard Boleslavsky under supervision of Stanislavsky in 1913 at the Moscow Art Theatre’s First Studio. That production became a landmark in the history of Russian theatre – it marked
the public debut of Michail Chekhov, Vera Solovieva, Grigory Khmara, Sofia Giatsintova, Serfima Birman, Alexey Dikii, Lidya Deikun, all of whom subsequently became the prominent figures on the Russian and international stage. Op Hoop Van Zegen was in
repertoire of the First Studio for 23 years – throughout the periods of both Tsarist Russia and Soviet Russia – until the theatre was closed by the Stalinist government for political reasons in 1936.

This paper will give a glimpse of the rehearsal process of Op Hoop Van Zegen, which was of crucial importance in the development of the Stanislavsky System. It will also analyze the ideological and political aspects of Russian cultural and social life that made
the play appealing to audiences for such a long period and discuss the cultural transformation of Heijermans’s text in the work of Russian actors. Director Boleslavsky belonged to Polish, Russian and later American cultures; his role in adapting the Dutch
play to the Russian stage will be also revealed.

I will also illustrate my talk with previously unseen archival materials and rare photos collected in the course of my D.Sc. research. The paper goes beyond a purely historical scope. Op Hoop Van Zegen is currently in rehearsals at the St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy, where I am directing it with my actors-to-be-students of my Acting Studio. Students dug into the history and culture of the Netherlands and were challenged to adapt the twentieth-century Dutch play to the twenty-first-century Russian stage. That exiting and adventurous experience will also be
discussed in the paper.

Veronika ter Harmsel Havlíková (Palacký University, Olomouc) The Czech translation of Minoes

Panel 5A (Dutch): The reception of Annie M.G. Schmidts Minoes in Central and Eastern Europe

The Czech translation of Minoes was published in 1999, in a context that was dominated by two popular cat stories about the male cats Mikes and Blauwoogje. In addition to the reception in the press and the role of the translator and publisher in introducing Schmidt’s work, I want to pay attention to the relation between Minoes and the other two cats stories every Czech child knows before ever learning to read.

Veronika ter Harmsel Havlíková (Palacký University, Olomouc) Dimitri Verhulst in Czech language in the light of advanced institutionalisation and commercialisation in the Czech literary field

Panel 4A (Dutch)

Van Dimitri Verhulst zijn tot nu toe twee fragmenten en een boek in het Tsjechisch vertaald. Het in 2007 gepubliceerde fragment uit De helaasheid der dingen heeft om diverse redenen niet tot een publicatie van de roman geleid. De reden waarom De helaasheid der dingen in Tsjechië ongepubliceerd bleef is niet de omstreden kwaliteit van de vertaling van het fragment, maar veel eerder de ontbrekende verankering van de moderne Vlaamse letteren in het Tsjechische literaire veld en het gebrek aan institutionele druk in de vorm van een stelselmatige stimulans.

In 2009 heeft het Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren wel een campagne onder de Tsjechische uitgevers gevoerd, wat direct daarop tot publicatie van enkele Vlaamse auteurs leidt. Daaronder ook Verhulst. De Tsjechische uitgever van Verhulst laat zich
naast de institutionele aansporing ook sturen door markteconomische indicatoren in zijn keuze van de titel. Daarom verschijnt in 2011 niet De helaasheid der dingen, maar Godverdomse dagen op een godverdomse bol. Hoe werd het boek in Tsjechië ontvangen? Vielen de verkoopcijfers mee? En in hoeverre is de Tsjechische ontvangst met die in andere landen vergelijkbaar? Dat zijn vragen waaraan ik in mijn bijdrage
aandacht wil besteden, waarbij ik naast mijn eigen onderzoek gebruik wil maken van de onderzoeksresultaten van de hele Verhulst-groep in het kader van de CODL.

Nick Tomberge (Universiteit Leiden) The making of a morality play: Elckerlyc performances in the 20th century

Panel 3B (English): The circulation of Elckerlijc

This contribution discusses the international twentieth-century performance history of the Middle Dutch play Elckerlyc from its first modern performance staged in Laren in 1907 onwards. The question of how professional Dutch theater makers used this late
medieval morality tale after its rediscovery in the nineteenth century to promulgate new theater ideals, new ideas about performativity, is central to this contribution. Numerous
Dutch theater troupes played this allegory in the Netherlands and Flanders, but also in South Africa, the Dutch Indies, Venezuela, and Surinam. In this research, which is concerned primarily with Dutch theater history, I study the reception history of medieval
narrative materials in the modern age (medievalism). In what way did the avant-gardist theater use the Elckerlyc as possibility to bring new theater ideals into practice with medieval narrative material? I also use an intermedial and intertextual approach. Every
Elckerlyc adaptation entered into a dialogue with, referred to, and literally used other Elckerlycs, such as an edition of the Middle Dutch text itself or a twentieth-century adaptation. From this it follows that research into modern productions of this late
medieval morality play moves into the field of media studies. This field incorporates the medial and material aspects of a performance, trying to discover how these aspects affect the way in which a text is received within a specific social-historical context.

Yves T’Sjoen (Universiteit Gent/Universiteit Stellenbosch) & Renée Marais (University of Pretoria), Oeroeg in South Africa

Panel 2B (English)

In 1987, as part of the series ‘Literatuur van die Lae Lande’ [Literature of the Low Countries], Academica (Pretoria/Cape Town) published an edition of Oeroeg with an introduction and glossary by Tony Links and Wium van Zyl. This scholarly edition was
aimed at tertiary-level students, and therefore appeared on the prescribed reading lists of students of Afrikaans and Dutch at South African universities.

In Seuils (1987), Gérard Genette presented an overview of peritexts belonging to modern literature. If paratext is a combination of epitext and peritext, as Genette proposes in the introduction to his systematic overview, introductory texts and glossaries would belong to the category ‘discursive peritexts’. This paper investigates, from a paratextual perspective, the image of Oeroeg that emerges from these constructs by the said literary scholars Links and Van Zyl. Which words were explained and/or translated? Were historical references indicated, and how? What image of Oeroeg does the introduction conjure? Et cetera.

Academica’s annotated edition is no translation, but provides (educated) Afrikaansspeaking readers with information relevant to the Dutch text. From a cross-cultural and postcolonial vantage point certain conclusions can be drawn about the choice of this
text within the context of (postcolonial) South African society, amongst others with regard to the publication list of the aforementioned academic publisher. Ideological and political factors underlying possible selection principles will also be considered. These and related issues will be investigated using a paratextual approach.

Jan Van Coillie (University of Leuven)

Nationalism, adventure and romance: adaptations for young readers of The Lion of Flanders in Dutch

Panel 1A (Dutch): De Leeuw van Babel. Nationalisme in jeugdbewerkingen van de Leeuw van Vlaanderen in het
Nederlands, Duits en Hongaars

In his paper, Jan van Coillie will examine the three adaptations of The Lion of Flanders in Dutch from 1952, 1979 and 1983. First he answers the question why it took so long for Conscience’s classic to be adapted for young readers in Dutch. He then examines how
the national theme was dealt with in the paratexts and at the macro and micro levels. Finally he attempts to interpret the findings on the basis of developments in juvenile literature in the Netherlands and in the socio-cultural and political context, paying
particular attention to the changing position of the Flemish Movement.

Jan Van Coillie (University of Leuven) How Minoes became a canonized cat

Panel 5A (Dutch): The reception of Annie M.G. Schmidts Minoes in Central and Eastern Europe

In his introduction Jan Van Coillie focuses on the canonization of Minoes and the interaction of this process with the work’s international reception. He will present a dynamic model for analyzing this process, which takes into account both text and
context. He discusses the classical features of Schmidt’s work and studies how these are in constant interaction with the context. That context includes both production, distribution and reception, crystallized in particular actors and institutions within the
literary field. Particular attention will be paid to translations and adaptations that convert the text into another language or form. Researchers like Linda Hutcheon (2006) suggest that adaptations can both confirm and strengthen the status of a classic by
reviving it. Translations (of the book or of adaptations) can ensure that a literary work enters the international canon. To what extent this occurs will depend on the impact of the reception in the specific cultural contexts? Precisely this process of reception will be dealt with by the different speakers.

Vic van de Reijt (Amsterdam) Chewing on Cheese

Panel 3A (Dutch): Kaas van Elsschot en zijn buitenlandse afnemers / Elsschot’s Kaas and its foreign consumers

Vic van de Reijt, a biographer of Elsschot, will talk about the unusual genesis of the novel Kaas (1933) after a long period in which Willem Elsschot did not write or publish. He will also give a survey of Elsschot’s own attempts to translate his oeuvre in France and Germany and his non-cooperation with translators who were trying to publish his novels in the United States.

Annette van Dijk (Enschede) Hadewijch in Flanders and The Netherlands between 1920 and 1950

Panel 2A (Dutch)

Between 1930 and 1950 Hadewijch was differently appreciated in The Netherlands and Belgium in spite of the influence of the Flemish medievalist J. van Mierlo in both countries.

After the years of Albert Verwey and his followers, in which Hadewijch and her works were frequently described both in scholarship and in art in the Netherlands, followed a period in which she was studied mainly in scholarship. M. van der Zeyde
(Utrecht 1934) studied Hadewijch as a personality and writer, whereas M. van der Kallen (Nijmegen 1934) and E. Allard (Nijmegen 1936) focused on linguistic aspects of her works. In poetry Hadewijch was hardly described in those years.

In Flanders, however, Hadewijch became a model of a militant woman. This can be demonstrated by several lectures of Cyriel Verschaeve. Hadewijch’s role in the development of vulgar speech (Diets) got also more attention in Flanders than in The
Netherlands.

Political and ideological facts played a part in that difference. The Vlaams Nationalistisch Verbond (VNV) pursued the foundation of a Diets state with German supremacy; another radical reform movement wanted Flanders to merge into a Großdeutschland state. To enforce their ideology, people in this organization used
mystic texts of Ruusbroec, Eckhardt and Hadewijch. Hadewijch, being a woman, attained a special status.

These differences and their backgrounds will be illustrated with a number of text fragments.

Joke van Leeuwen (author) Why I cause my translators headaches

Keynote 3 (Dutch)

I will talk about my adventures with translators. I will show examples of what I have written that is difficult to translate because of the other language compared with Dutch, or because of the way I use my mother language. I will compare the solutions translators
have found and why I think some solutions are so wonderful. I will compare the different titles my books have been given in different languages and why I sometimes make new drawings for a better translation of the text.

David Vermeiren (Universiteit Antwerpen) The Franco-Belgian reception of Hadewijch during the interwar period

Panel 2A (Dutch): Profielen, motieven en strategieën van Franstalige Hadewijch-bemiddelaars (1897-2014)

The first French translations of Hadewijch’s work were accomplished during the interwar period. The symbolist writer Maurice Maeterlinck made an early attempt when he
translated part of a Vision for Revue Encyclopédique in 1897. Between 1924 and 1942 nine more publications appeared in which parts of Hadewijch’s oeuvre were translated to French. With the exception of Frenchman Jean-Baptist Porion, all translators were
Belgian.

In this lecture all translators will be inventoried through paratextual and archival research that will reveal their motivations and ideological views as well as their network and publication strategies.

Janina Vesztergom (ELTE Budapest) Hoeveel levens heeft een kat? De Hongaarse adaptatie(s) van Annie M. G. Schmidts Minoes

Panel 5A (Dutch): The reception of Annie M.G. Schmidts Minoes in Central and Eastern Europe

The Hungarian translation of Minoes was published in 2001 and since then the book has
enjoyed huge popularity in Hungary. In my lecture, I will analyze the Hungarian translation from the perspective of translation theory, focusing on the translation of proper names and puns. In addition, I will discuss how Schmidt’s children’s book has been popularized by the Hungarian stage adaptation.

Geert Warnar (University of Leiden) The many returns of Elckerlijc

Panel 3B (English): The circulation of Elckerlijc

The Elckerlijc owes its sixteenth-century international circulation primarily to the two Latin translations (Homulus and Hecastus). Both Latin versions were in turn adapted, translated and commented. Perhaps unexpectedly, a number of these reworkings
returned in Dutch before the end of the sixteenth century. This contribution looks at the ways the Elckerlijc material returned in Dutch, attempting to provide an answer to the question ‘At what point we should no longer speak of the circulation of a text, but rather of motifs?’ When is it no longer acceptable or useful to speak of a return of Elckerlijc?

Nico Wilterdink (University of Amsterdam) Breaching the dikes: the international reception of contemporary Dutch translated literature (1980-2012)

Keynote 5 (English)

This paper presents the main results of a broad investigation into the reception of contemporary Dutch translated literature, inferred from book reviews, interviews and other articles in a number of German, French, British and American newspapers in the years 1980-2012. It describes changes in the degree of attention to Dutch
literature in this period (indicated by numbers of articles); perceptions of the relative success (or lack of success) of Dutch literature abroad; variations in the reception – attention, interpretation, appreciation – between Germany, France,
Britain and the USA; and various definitions of Dutchness in relation to Dutch literature among the reviewers. To explain salient variations in the reception, several causal factors are suggested, related to the notion of a literary world-system characterized by relations of inequality between nationally and/or linguistically
bounded literary fields. This macro social level will be connected with the micro level by entering into the question how to explain differences in international success (in terms of numbers of translations, book sales, public recognition and literary prestige) between individual authors.

Het derdejaarscollege Nederlandse letterkunde dat Matthieu Sergier geeft aan de Université Saint-Louis (Brussel), staat dit jaar volledig in het teken van CODL. Na enkele inleidende sessies buigen de studenten zich tijdens een reeks werkcolleges over het internationale traject van twee literaire teksten : Minoes (1970) van Annie M.G. Schmidt en W.F. Hermans’ De donkere kamer van Damokles (1958). Daarbij mogen ze rekenen op de medewerking van enkele deelnemers aan het CODL-project. Elke Brems zorgde op 10 februari voor een inleidend college over CODL en zijn uitdagingen. Op 4 maart vond o.l.v. Jan van Coillie een Minoes-workshop plaats waarbij canonisering van jeugdliteratuur en de vertaling van Schmidts tekst in de kijker stonden. De studenten raakten gefascineerd door de vertaalcomplexiteit van de op het eerste gezicht simpel ogende tekst van ‘de ware koningin van Nederland’.

Ook voor Hermans’ klassieker staan nog speciale ontmoetingen op het programma. Op 17 maart komt Marc van Zoggel spreken over de rol van de auteur bij de totstandkoming van zijn vertalingen. En over de Franse vertaling van De donkere kamer van Damokles wordt gereflecteerd tijdens een workshop met vertaler Daniel Cunin, op 31 maart.