Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture


Book Description

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.







The Invention of Tradition


Book Description

This book explores examples of this process of invention and addresses the complex interaction of past and present in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism.







Ville-Marie


Book Description




The Beckoning Hand, and Other Stories


Book Description

Grant Allen was born in Canada, educated in France and the United Kingdom and worked in many places including Jamaica, during his lifetime. He was primarily a scientist, turning only to literature in later life. This is a collection of stories full of melodrama and intrigue.