The past as a foreign country is a familiar concept, but although the idea seems simple and straightforward enough, it has more implications than may appear at first sight. In his soon to be published new book (April-May 2013) Mark Salber Phillips has developed a new approach to this idea: he focuses On Historical Distance. Historical distance, he argues, is not just physical distance in time and space, but also in ideology, affect, form, and understanding. On the basis of these six dimensions he presents a subtle new and innovative view on the analysis of history and historiography. In this analysis he also includes a whole array of historical genres, as diverse as history painting, contemporary history, and literary history.

During this colloquium we would like to focus on the importance of the concept of historical distance for literature and literary analysis. Focusing on examples from Dutch and German literature, we will explore the issue of historical distance in autobiographical writing, and we will trace the representation of the past in literary works, more specifically the representation of national history in early modern and romantic epic poetry. Epics about (episodes from) national history helped build a national identity, and in the Dutch context this involved either the construction of a mythological founding father in Antiquity (the Batavian myth), or a glorification of the historical founders of the Dutch Republic during the 16th and 17th centuries (William the Silent, the House of Orange, or Oldenbarneveld, the brothers De Witt). Similarly such glorifications were instrumental in distancing the Dutch from foreign threatening forces, such as Napoleon in the beginning of the 19th century. The turn to a glorious, yet distant past was a transnational phenomenon: in 18th-century German literature the genre of the epic produced heroes for generations to come.

The choices made in the representation of the national past had far-reaching consequences: all six dimensions of Phillips’ model come into play here, as close readings of specific case studies will show. Not only will these close readings provide an insight into the construction of historical distance (or the attempt to bridge it), they will also engage the question: what is specifically literary in these travels to the past.

PROGRAM

1pm Mark Salber Phillips (Carleton Univeristy, Ottawa), On Historical Distance

2:15pm Rob Naborn (University of Pennsylvania), Historical Distance in an 18th-Century Conversion Experience. The Affective Claims of a Dutch-American Pastor
Nick Theis (University of Pennsylvania), Heroic Enlightenment in the 1750s: A Heldengedicht for "der Deutschen Volk”

3:30pm Coffee

3:45pm Christophe Madelein (Ghent University, B), An epic dream of a future present. Time travelling in Maurits van Nassau by Joannes Nomsz (1789)
Lotte Jensen (Radboud University Nijmegen, NL), Dutch epic poetry as a weapon against Napoleon: representation of the past, national identity and collective memory

5pm Belgian beer and hapjes