Introduction

In the cultural history of the Netherlands, Hendrik (or Henrik) van Wijn is known as an historian and literary scholar, as the founding father of Dutch literary history, as the co-founder of the Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde (‘Society of Dutch Language and Literature’) and as the first National Archivist. He was highly respected in all of these capacities. In 1809, Willem Bilderdijk, secretary of the Koninklijk Instituut van Wetenschappen, Letterkunde en Schoone Kunsten (‘Royal Institute of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts’) addressed him as ‘our oldest, most famous and worthiest fellow member, a man that every one of us honours, appreciates, and esteems as our Leader, Teacher and Adviser’. Some years later, Bilderdijk declared that a letter from Jacob Grimm had also made him aware of ‘how much your profound linguistic, historical, and archaeological studies and great literary knowledge are valued in Germany’. And in 1822, Bilderdijk urged the now elderly van Wijn: ‘Continue, my Noble and Severe Gentleman! and continue to grace our language and history with your vast investigations, causing everyone to admire you more and more […].

To a great extent, the admiration that van Wijn drew concerned his groundbreaking work in the field of historical literary studies. In this chapter, I investigate how, and on what literary-historical grounds, he gained his reputation as a founding father.