Animals in Dutch Travel Writing

Apart from humans, animals play a pivotal role in travel literature. However, the way they are represented in texts can vary from living companions to metaphorical entities. Existing studies mainly focus on the representation of conventional or unconventional roles that are assigned to animals from around the Napoleonic age until now, roles that have been subject to change and that tell us a lot about human reflections on encounters with non-human creatures and the position of man in this rapidly changing world. In this edited volume, scholars from the Netherlands and abroad analyse the roles that animals play in Dutch travel literature from 1800 to the present. In this way, we aim to provide new insights into the relationships between man and animals, in textual expressions and real life, and to add the ‘Dutch case’ to the flourishing international field of travel writing studies.

Rick Honings is Scaliger-hoogleraar aan de Universiteit Leiden. Momenteel werkt hij aan zijn NWO Vidi-project Voicing the Colony. Travelers in the Dutch East Indies, 1800-1945. In 2019 verscheen zijn samen met Lotte Jensen geschreven boek Romantici en revolutionairen (Bert Bakker).

Esther Op de Beek is an assistant professor in Modern Dutch Literature at Leiden University. She obtained her PhD at Radboud University Nijmegen, within the NWO-funded research project The Best Intentions, Literary Criticism in the Netherlands 1945-2005. Her research examines modern Dutch travel literature, literary criticism, and the circulation of happiness narratives in literature. She is a member of the editorial board of Nederlandse Letterkunde and delivered Cees Nooteboom. Avenue – 15 jaar wereldliteratuur (2013) and, together with Jos Muijres, Op de hielen: Opstellen over recente Nederlanse en Vlaamse literatuur (2014).