Session ASECS March 2010, Albuquerque
The Dutch Association Belle de Zuylen / Isabelle de Charrière (Genootschap Belle van Zuylen) and the editorial board of the Belle de Zuylen Papers, together with the NEWW project, are convening a session about :
Cultural Identity and Cosmopolitanism:
the Dutch and European Reception of Isabelle de Charrière.
Since the publication of her Oeuvres complètes (1979-1984), Isabelle de Charrière has gradually become a major figure in the interdisciplinary and international field of eighteenth-century studies, a situation echoing her own varied interests and the international connections she maintained and developed throughout her life as we can see from her letters. First among those are the contacts with her own country, Holland, which she left when she was 30 but in which she kept a deep and vibrant interest, feeling always intellectually involved and responding with her pen to the cultural and political changes affecting it. But, for reasons that would also deserve to be addressed, Charrière’s relationship with her home country has received only little attention so far, a gap which this session proposes to remedy.
Source material recently uncovered from Dutch archives (Kees van Strien, Isabelle de Charrière-Belle de Zuylen, Early Writings, New Material from Dutch Archives, 2005) sheds new light on her literary training within the Dutch aristocracy and as such would deserve attention from scholars. Once married and living away from Holland, Charrière devoted several essays to the patriots’ revolution of 1787. These texts are interesting in more than one way: they would enable one to define Charrière’s political position in relation to the Dutch context but, on the other hand, it would be also interesting to see how they compare to the essays she devotes to the situation in France. Her letters exchanged with her Dutch family can deliver valuable information about her social network but they are also revealing of her attitude towards the Dutch language and of her attachment to the Dutch way of life.
As far as reception is concerned, we need to know more about the reception of her work by Dutch readers and about her relationship to her Dutch audience. The reception by German readers also needs to be investigated as they were sometimes her prime "target", especially in those years when she worked with the translator Ludwig-Ferdinand Huber. Equally some letters addressed to her from England bear witness to the enthusiasm with which her novels were received in London, while nothing to this date is known about her reception in England and while the first English translation of the Lettres écrites de Lausanne has received as yet no attention. Research about other cultural contexts of reception would also be welcome, especially where the history of publishing has identified the presence of translations and readers.
A selection of the papers presented during this session will be published in the Belle de Zuylen Papers.
Researchers who want to participate in this session are invited to send a proposal (300 words) to Suzan van Dijk, before 30 September 2009.
SvD, August 2009
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