Introduction

One of the most influential literary historians of the Netherlands is Jeronimo de Vries (1777-1853). This clerk, who lived and worked his entire life in Amsterdam, was the first to publish a complete overview of Dutch literary history, starting in the thirteenth century and ending around 1800. In this book, entitled Assay at a History of Dutch Poetry (‘Proeve eener geschiedenis der Nederduitsche dichtkunde’, first published in 1808-1809), Dutch literature is portrayed as reaching its peak in the seventeenth century, while the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century are considered as inferior eras in literary history. This view prevailed for a long time in schools and handbooks on Dutch literature until it became seriously contested in the 1980s by mediaevalists and dix-huitèmistes. The remnants of this ‘standard discourse’ are, nevertheless, still visible today.

Jeronimo de Vries is hardly ever mentioned in Dutch literary histories because he did not produce any literary work of his own of real significance. However, in studies about the professionalization of Dutch language and literature as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century his pioneering role is widely acknowledged. Although de Vries was inspired by the works of many others, especially Hendrik van Wijn, Pieter Huisinga Bakker, Bernardus Bosch and Matthijs Siegenbeek, he was the first to present an integral and coherent vision of Dutch literary history.