Doing Double Dutch The International Circulation of Literature from the Low Countries

– The importance of a minor language in the field of world literature –

Dutch literature is increasingly understood as a network of texts and poetics connected to other languages and literatures through translations and adaptations. In this book, a team of international researchers explores how Dutch literary texts cross linguistic, historical, geophysical, political, religious, and disciplinary borders, and reflects on a wide range of methods for studying these myriad border crossings. As a result, this volume provides insight into the international dissemination of Dutch literature and the position of a smaller, less-translated language within the field of world literature.

The title Doing Double Dutch evokes a popular rope-skipping game in which two people turn two long jump ropes in opposite directions while a third person jumps them. A fitting metaphor for how literature circulates internationally: two dynamic spheres, the source culture and the target culture, engage one another in a complex pattern of movement resulting in a new literary work, translation, or adaptation formed somewhere in the middle.

‘Doing Double Dutch: An Interview with Marc van Oostendorp’. Watch the interview here.

More information: www.huygens.knaw.nl

(Lees op Historici.nl ook het verslag terug van de projectlancering “Eastbound. The distribution and reception of translations and adaptations of Dutch-language literature, 1850-1990“)