Project

This project asks how individuals and society dealt with personal memories of the Dutch Revolt: narrating, writing, explaining, understanding, and coming to terms with what happened by first and following generations. When and why did people narrate or write their personal memories of episodes or experiences during the war? Why did some personal stories reach a wider public and become part of the historical canon while others remained private? How and to what extent did the medial context, existing narratives, social identity, self reflection, emotions and contemporary notions of meaning and truth determine the content of narrated memory? Do early modern war memories differ in content, meaning and function from today’s war memories? If so, what exactly are the differences and how can we account for them? 

These questions will be addressed through the study of personal documents like diaries, memoires, autobiographies, letters, but also judicial accounts, testimonies, and attestations, claims, requests and petitions sent to public institutions and authorities. In addition, texts with autobiographical content or cited witnesses accounts will be studied: histories and chronicles of the war; journals, family records and genealogies, biographies and necrologies of clergy, artists, men of learning, poets, heroes and heroines, soldiers; martyrologies and miracle books.

Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Share by WhatsApp Share by Mastodon