Department of German and Dutch
DUTCH COURSE INFORMATION. For full information about GERMAN courses and staff please CLICK HERE.
Paper Du 5
Introduction to the Language and Literature of the Low Countries
In 2013-14 this paper will be available to any Part IB candidate in MML.
An application form for the course beginning in October 2013 can be downloaded here.This course is an integrated part of the 4-year Honours Degree in Modern and Medieval Languages and aims to offer second-year MML students the opportunity to acquaint themselves with Dutch, the language spoken by circa twenty million people in the Netherlands, Belgium, and in the former Dutch colonies of the Antilles and Suriname. Dutch is taught on a large scale in Indonesia to students who wish to investigate their past since much of the documentation of, for instance, linguistic, literary, (art)-historical, archaeological and anthropological aspects of the archipelago is in Dutch.
Students taking this paper will therefore find that the Dutch language provides them with a tool to explore not only cultural aspects of two European countries but also aspects of cultures which are themselves connected to, respectively, Latin America and the Far East.It is true that in education, business and technology in the Netherlands and Belgium English is used extensively but there is, for instance, a great need for translators and interpreters from and into Dutch.
The visual arts of the Low Countries, in the Medieval and Renaissance period as well as in the seventeenth century, the Golden Age, are world famous and a knowledge of the language is enriching for the study, and the enjoyment, of these cultural aspects too.
In Avant Garde and Modernism, the Low Countries not only participated but often pioneered new ground, painters such as Mondriaan, but also poets, architects, printers and designers were influential in the development of early twentieth-century culture. Those interested in the Great War and the Second World War will find that a knowledge of Dutch offers them different perspectives from those gained through the medium of English and from a British viewpoint.
Language Acquisition
Before Term starts students may find it useful to acquire a basic level of Dutch. The following books and courses will be helpful:
Jane Fenoulhet, Dutch (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2003)
Jane Fenoulhet, Dutch (multimedial) beginners' CD language Course (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2003)
F.G. Renier, Dutch Dictionary: Dutch-English, English-Dutch (London: Routledge, 1996)
Our Department has participated in developing extensive online material and the following website will be very useful: Virtual Department of Dutch.
The Faculty Library has a large number of textbooks, grammars and dictionaries, amongst which the following will be particularly useful:
Carol Fehringer, A reference grammar of Dutch (CUP, 1999)
William Z. Shetter, Dutch: an essential grammar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Language Teaching
The language components of the DU5 course will be taught in intensive classes that will enable the participants to achieve A-level equivalent standard in one academic year. There will be two language classes per week throughout the three terms, one hour each for Use of Dutch and Translation into English.
The Literature Component
The literature lectures focus on three different and extremely creative periods in modern Dutch literature, and the texts are chosen for their intrinsic as well as for their representative value. Couperus is the most important the fin de siècle author whose work links the Netherlands with the colonial past. The Flemish author Elsschot was an iconic figure in Dutch Modernist literature and his work acquired a great following in the 'sixties. The oeuvre of the Dutch author Harry Mulisch spans the last forty years and his novel set in the Second World War and in the era of the great anti-nuclear demonstrations in the Netherlands was immensely successful, not least because it confronted a number of fondly maintained myths about Dutch behaviour in, and after, the period 1940 to 1945 and the famed Dutch tolerance.
Teaching for this component
There will be four lectures in the second half of the Lent Term:
Week 3-4: Urban living: literature and the visual arts in the Interbellum;
Week 5-6: The Aftermath of Suffering: the Second World War in Dutch literature;
and four supervisions - two in the Lent Term and two in the Easter Term.
Preliminary Reading
Paul Arblaster, A History of the Low Countries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
Norman Davies, Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) selected chapters.
E.H.Kossmann, The Low Countries, 1780-1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978)
William Z. Shetter, The Netherlands in Perspective (Utrecht, 1997)
Prescribed Texts
Louis Couperus, De stille kracht (Amsterdam: Contact, 2000)
Willem Elsschot, Kaas, in Verzameld Werk (Amsterdam: Querido, 1992)
Harry Mulisch, De Aanslag (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1983)
Secondary reading
F.Bulhof (ed.), Nijhoff, Van Ostaijen, De Stijl. Modernism in the Netherlands and Belgium in the first quarter of the twentieth century (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976)
Ben Schofield, 'Elsschot' in Dutch Crossing
William Z. Shetter, Contemporary Explorations in the culture of the Low Countries (Lanham Md: University Press of America, 1996)
Examination
The examination paper is divided into three sections: in the first section candidates will be asked to translate one passage from Dutch into English; in the second section they will be required to do three Use of Dutch exercises; in the third section they will have a choice of four questions - one commentary and three essay questions on a literary topic - from which they will have to choose one. Specimen paper.
