Plaatsbepalingen: de Nederlanden in de wereld

The idea for this issue of Neerlandica Wratislaviensia arose from an interest in the Low Countries – their culture, literature, and language. This interest has translated into a number of various approaches to the concept of Nederlandsheid, seen not only through the eyes of the authorities on the Dutch language and literature from the University of Wroclaw, but also representatives of other scientific disciplines within the philology department of this university. Their focus, supplemented with a look at Low Countries from the perspective of Dutch and Flemish ‘insiders’, created an interesting mosaic presenting Low Countries in an exciting and accessible way. The articles of the 32nd issue of Neerlandica Wratislaviensia mention both the former Dutch colonies and the modern Low Countries seen through the eyes of Polish travelers; they describe authors’ auto-images and tools to make a literary work more attractive. Here we find fairy tales, non-fiction, and linguistic considerations. This number shows how small countries can strongly influence scientists’ knowledge.

Andrey A. Winius (1641–1716), vertaler van fabels

Andrey A. Winius (1641–1716) was born in Moscow in the family of Andrey D. Winius (1605–1662), Dutch merchant and manufacturer who lived in Russia from 1632 until his death. Winius junior was a high-ranking statesman who contributed a lot to Peter the Great’s reforms, which made Russia a Europe-oriented power. In 1674 he translated Vondel’s Vorsteliicke warande der dieren (1617) into Russian, supplementing this collection of fables with several texts from the Theatrum Morum by Aegidius Sadeler (1608). The Russian text, entitled The Theatre of Human Life, was distributed in handwritten form. In 1712, The Theatre was published in Moscow. In this article we analyze the Russian version of four fables in order to identify similarities with the sources and the changes Winius made. Besides shortening the original, he also sometimes supplemented the fables with his own moralistic thoughts. In these additions he urged readers to live honestly, respect each other, and not drink too much alcohol. In this way he tried to transfer humanistic ethical values that were common in Western Europe to the Russian society of the 17th century.

Zur Aussprache niederländischsprachiger Familiennamen aus dem Bereich des Sports durch polnische Muttersprachler – theoretische Grundlagen und exemplarische Analysen

The aim of the following article is to analyze the pronunciation of Dutch surnames by Polish native speakers. The research material consists of journalistic statements from the communicative-semantic area of sport that are present in public audiovisual mass media. The selected material guarantees the high frequency of its production and the associated perception within the real acts of communication. In particular, the examination includes Dutch sounds which either do not exist in Polish or occur in a different graphical-distributional context. The exemplary research results (the mode of phonetic integration of foreign speech sounds) represent mechanisms that are interpreted in relation to typical communication models. The study also analyzes the potential placement of such phonetic forms in the target language, i.e. Polish.

Het gebruik van “Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën” van François Valentyn door bewindhebbers van de VOC in de achttiende eeuw

This article discusses the circulation of information extracted from François Valentyn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1724–1726) during the eighteenth century, both with regards to the central organs of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Netherlands and the VOC establishments in the East Indies. First, three documents are analysed that were part of five VOC directors’ personal archives, with the aim to determine the way these directors made use of Valentyn’s book. It is concluded that for these directors Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën was probably the most important source of information about the VOC’s trading empire, while at the same time their epistemic interest was limited to matters of trade. Second, the usage of Valentyn’s book in various VOC establishments in the East Indies is assessed on the basis of correspondence between these establishments with the VOC central government in Batavia. Because of the fact that Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën was used simultaneously as a source of information by several actors, both in the Netherlands and in the East Indies, this might have resulted in standardising the operational knowledge of the East Indies within the VOC network.

Het tweedepersoonsperspectief als autobiografisch masker: verdichting van auteur, verteller, protagonist, en “narratee” in Herman Teirlinck, “Zelfportret of het galgemaal”

This article explores the novel Zelfportret of het galgemaal (The Man in the Mirror, 1955) by the Flemish author Herman Teirlinck, who planned it as a literary self-portrait. Its interpretation as an autobiography hinges on one’s understanding of the second-person point of view that makes up substantial parts of this novel. Multifocality of the “you” appears to be a key feature characterizing this little explored narrative mode in autobiography. Departing from structuralist narratology by Genette and Lejeune, I investigate reader-driven reading modes as elaborated by Fludernik, Bonheim, and Schmitt to explore how the deferred referentiality of the “you” blurs the traditional dichotomy between factual historical reality and the narrative world. The narrator involves the reader in interpreting the “you” to address both the narratee (Teirlinck) and the protagonist (Henri) at the same time.

Het geheimzinnige spijkerschrift van de doofstomme analfabete dichter: het beeld van mindervaliditeit in Kader Abdolahs proza

When commenting on his literary work, Kader Abdolah regularly links it to his biography, his novels and short stories becoming an important part of his self-representation as a writer. One of the prominent motives in this self-representation is the story of his deaf father, which appears repeatedly in interviews as well as in his literary work, the most significant example being the novel Spijkerschrift [Cuneiform, 2000]. The purpose of this article is to investigate how the deaf father is being portrayed here and what implications this image has for the way Abdolah presents himself to his readership. The analysis is anchored in the theoretical framework provided by disability studies, focusing on literary representations of disability.

Een schrijver verdwaald in het massamedialand

The mass media are a prominent actor in the current debate on literature. In many ways, they contribute to defining its terms and settings, including what is said, whose voice is deemed valid/legitimate, and how it is all done/expressed. The mass media no longer merely mediate; rather, they produce views on and assessments of writers and their work. In his book De literatuur draait door. De schrijver in het mediatijdperk (2019), Sander Bax discusses selected cases of the media presence of well-known Dutch authors and their books to offer an insightful and accurate exploration of the ways in which the mass media influence the debate on literature and literature itself.

Op reis met “Elckerlijc” en Stefan Mrożewski

This article deals with modern illustrations accompanying medieval text, with special attention to one publication – the modern edition of Middle Dutch Elckerlijc and the woodcuts made by Stefan Mrożewski. The article introduces the circumstances in which the book was published and in which the Polish artist prepared his prints. The main analysis discusses the choices made by Mrożewski and the many different ways in which he refers to the historic past in his work. In order to show a broader framework of the subject, the article also briefly sketches the Polish literary reception of the medieval morality play.

Tellegens dieren in het Poolse bos. De dubbele bodem en het visuele aspect bij Toon Tellegen in Poolse vertaling

This paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of two works by Dutch (children’s) author Toon Tellegen and their translations into Polish. The article focuses on the cultural context adaptation of the dual address for children and adults in his works on the one hand, the textual and visual cohesion on the other. The analysis will show that, while the translated text favors a foreignization approach, treating the child as a full-fledged reader and allowing the adult to find merit in these stories, too, the visual adaptations lean towards domesticating it for the Polish cultural context.

The eighteenth-century Dutch Republic and its inhabitants in the eyes of Teodor Anzelm Dzwonkowski

Teodor Anzelm Dzwonkowski was an average-educated nobleman who left Poland at the end of the 18th century in search of wealth. In Amsterdam, he enlisted in the army and, with the rank of corporal in the infantry, travelled to the Dutch East Indies (1787–1793) — the account of this expedition forms the main part of his memoirs written years later. The article shows how Dzwonkowski viewed the Netherlands, its people, and the way the Dutch East India Company (whose officials he considered to be an extension of the arm of the Republic’s government) operated. His remarks concerning them are present in a small part of his diary (and, in addition, not always expressed directly), because the author’s main interest was in the exoticism of southern Africa and the Far East, and in the Poles he met during his travels. Dzwonkowski was impressed by the management and wealth of the United Provinces, especially by the ease of making a career, although he could hardly be called uncritical: he also saw the dark sides of the local reality, including the loosening of moral norms and corruption. Interestingly, despite his noble background, he seems to be free of state and religious bias against the people of the United Provinces. His view of the Dutch does not differ from the way they were described by British tourists visiting the Dutch Republic during the Stuart Period.