Half Title; Series Information; Title Page; Copyright Page; Preface to the new edition; Contents; Introduction; The uses of myth and history; The past as illumination of cultural context; Historiography in focus; Part I The uses of myth and history; 1 The uses of myth and history in the ideological politics of the Dutch Golden Age; 2 The past in a foreign country: Patriotic history and New World geography in the Dutch Republic, c. 1600-1648; 3 A noble courtier and a gentleman warrior: Some aspects of the creation of the Spinola image.

4 The cult of the seventeenth-century Dutch naval heroes: Critical appropriations of a popular patriotic traditionThe first critical appropriation: The invention of the cult; The second critical appropriation: The cult as patriotic propaganda; The consequences of the Hein monument: Subsequent appropriations of the cult; The third critical appropriation: the cult as legend; The consequences of the Patriotten appropriation: The veneration of Speyk; 5 Patriotism in Dutch literature (c. 1650-c. 1750).

6 Groen van Prinsterer's interpretation of the French Revolution and the rise of 'pillars' in Dutch societyBiographical sketch; From interpretation to action; Anti-modern, postmodern and pre-modern; Twentieth-century reception; 7 Memories and identities in conflict: The myth concerning the battle of Courtrai (1302) in nineteenth-century Belgium; Introduction; The story of the Golden Spurs as a national myth; The story of the Golden Spurs as a local myth; The story of the Golden Spurs as a Flemish myth; The battle of 1302 between the ideological camps; Conclusion.

8 The concept of nationality in nineteenth-century Flemish theatre discourse: Some preliminary remarksPart II The past as illumination of cultural context; 9 Sinte Lorts bewaer u. Sinte Lorts gespaer u! Paradox as the key to a 'new morality' in a late medieval text; The church and the state; The social climate; Satire, parody, irony and allegory; Sot and marot; The characters as instruments of class criticism; 10 The Bible in modern Dutch fiction; 11 The antiquity of the Dutch language: Renaissance theories on the language of Paradise; The antiquity of the Dutch language; The ideal language.

Becanus and Heidanus12 Maarten van Heemskerck's use of literary sources from antiquity for his Wonders of the World series of 1572; 13 The legacy of Hegel's and Jean Paul's aesthetics: The idyllic in seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting; Part III Historiography in focus; 14 The rhetoric of narrative historiography; 15 The disciplinization of historiography in nineteenth-century Friesland and the simultaneous radicalization of nationalist discourse. Source: De Friesche Volksalmanak (1836-1899).

This edited collection explores the ways in which our understanding of the past in Dutch history and culture can be rethought to consider not only how it forms part of the present but how it can relate also to the future. Divided into three parts - The Uses of Myth and History, The Past as Illumination of Cultural Context, and Historiography in Focus - this book seeks to demonstrate the importance of the past by investigating the transmission of culture and its transformations. It reflects on the history of historiography and looks critically at the products of the historiographic process, such as Dutch and Afrikaans literary history. The chapters cover a range of disciplines and approaches: some authors offer a broad view of a particular period, such as Jonathan Israel's contribution on myth and history in the ideological politics of the Dutch Golden Age, while others zoom in on specific genres, texts or historical moments, such as Benjamin Schmidt's study of the doolhof, a word that today means 'labyrinth' but once described a 17th-century educational amusement park. This volume, enlightening and home to multiple paths of enquiry leading in different directions, is an excellent example of what a past-present doolhof might look like.-- Provided by Publisher.

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