Research
How does one survive in a changing world? The poetry of Maria Louiza Griethuizen-Carelius (1744-1813/18) offers a unique perspective on social change and family life in the last decades of the eighteenth century. The manuscript of her poetry has hardly been studied, although the poetry reveals a self-assured and Enlightened woman who continuously reflects on family life and the position of women at the turbulent end of the Dutch Republic. During this fellowship, Tim Vergeer pays scholarly attention to Griethuizen-Carelius’ emotional life regarding her position as a woman, the upbringing of her children, the Enlightenment, the Batavian Revolution, and the annexation of Holland by the French Empire. This research aims to explore Griethuizen-Carelius’ emotional self-positioning, how she relates to her writing contemporaries, and the ways in which world events permeate her family life and influence her as a writer. In these ways, her manuscript holds up a mirror to our current times.
Fellow
Tim Vergeer is an expert of Dutch historical literature. His dissertation examines the popularity of the Spanish comedia nueva in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. He specializes in emotions in literature and theatre of the early modern period. To this end, he combines insights from performance studies, postcolonial studies, gender and queer studies, and the history of emotions, to investigate how authors, by evoking emotions in their audiences, influenced them, entertained them, and encouraged them to participate in social debates.