Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Cultural Nationalism and the Rise of Dutch Studies
- 1 Matthijs Siegenbeek in Defence of Dutch
- 2 Barthold Hendrik Lulofs: A ‘Learned Dilettante’
- 3 Poet and Professor: Adam Simons
- 4 Johannes Kinker: A Kantian Philosopher Teaching Dutch Language, Literature, and Eloquence
- 5 Caught Between Propaganda and Science: Ulrich Gerhard Lauts, the Forgotten Father of Dutch Philology in Brussels
- 6 Pieter Weiland and his Nederduitsche Spraakkunst
- 7 Moralist of the Nation: Johannes Henricus van der Palm
- 8 ‘I am Revived as a Belgian’: The Work of Jan Frans Willems
- 9 Adriaan Kluit: Back to the Sources!
- 10 ‘Can Grander Skulls be Crowned?’: Jacob van Dijk’s Posthumous Literary History
- 11 Hendrik van Wijn: Pioneer of Historical Literary Studies in the Netherlands
- 12 The Founding Father of Dutch Literary History: Jeronimo de Vries
- Afterword: Gert-Jan Johannes
- Index
1 - Matthijs Siegenbeek in Defence of Dutch
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Cultural Nationalism and the Rise of Dutch Studies
- 1 Matthijs Siegenbeek in Defence of Dutch
- 2 Barthold Hendrik Lulofs: A ‘Learned Dilettante’
- 3 Poet and Professor: Adam Simons
- 4 Johannes Kinker: A Kantian Philosopher Teaching Dutch Language, Literature, and Eloquence
- 5 Caught Between Propaganda and Science: Ulrich Gerhard Lauts, the Forgotten Father of Dutch Philology in Brussels
- 6 Pieter Weiland and his Nederduitsche Spraakkunst
- 7 Moralist of the Nation: Johannes Henricus van der Palm
- 8 ‘I am Revived as a Belgian’: The Work of Jan Frans Willems
- 9 Adriaan Kluit: Back to the Sources!
- 10 ‘Can Grander Skulls be Crowned?’: Jacob van Dijk’s Posthumous Literary History
- 11 Hendrik van Wijn: Pioneer of Historical Literary Studies in the Netherlands
- 12 The Founding Father of Dutch Literary History: Jeronimo de Vries
- Afterword: Gert-Jan Johannes
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Matthijs Siegenbeek (1774-1854) was the first to hold a chair solely devoted to Dutch. While young at the time of his appointment in 1797, he would soon occupy a central position in many cultural networks of the Netherlands. He authored the first official spelling of Dutch (1804) and was one of the first historians of Dutch literature. This chapter discusses Siegenbeek’s activities in the field of Dutch studies, particularly his linguistic publications. These are interpreted within the framework of cultural nationalism, and against the background of the formation of the Dutch nation-state. Throughout his career, Siegenbeek was in defence of Dutch, where Dutch should be interpreted as a cultivated, normalised, and uniform variety modelled after the written language of well-known authors, symbolically representing the Dutch nation.
Keywords: Matthijs Siegenbeek, Dutch, Dutch linguistics, cultural nationalism, linguistic nationalism
Introduction
Matthijs Siegenbeek (1774-1854), who was inaugurated as an extraordinary professor of Dutch rhetoric at the University of Leiden in 1797, has long had the reputation of being the very first professor of Dutch. When his old acquaintance Johan Hendrik van der Palm passed away in 1840, Siegenbeek published a eulogy in which he introduced himself as the ‘oldest, that is, the first professor of Dutch language and literature in our fatherland’. Noordegraaf, however, shows that already in 1790 Everwinus Wassenbergh, who had been appointed professor of Greek at the University of Franeker in 1771, was granted the right to teach Dutch language and literature by the Franeker board of curators. It is unclear whether Wassenbergh actually taught these subjects in the following years, but he certainly did from 1797 onward, when the study of Dutch was officially added to his job responsibilities. When Wassenbergh passed away in 1826, he too was honoured by Siegenbeek in a brief biography, in which Siegenbeek commemorates the fact that Wassenbergh had combined the teaching of Greek language and literature with Dutch linguistics over the past 25 years, so only from 1801 onward. As discussed in the introduction to this volume, even before 1790 several academic professors were involved in the teaching of Dutch at universities across the Netherlands. Vis argues that Siegenbeek was still the first to hold a chair solely devoted to Dutch.
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- Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018