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Article
The Dutch Black Legend
Modern Language Quarterly (2014)
  • Carmen Nocentelli, University of New Mexico
Abstract
English “Hollandophobia” is usually understood as a function or reflection of the rivalries that characterized Anglo-Dutch relations during the seventeenth century. Working against such a circumscribed understanding, this essay contends that Hollandophobia is best thought of as a “Dutch Black Legend”—that is, as a deliberate repetition of the Hispanophobic topoi known as the Spanish Black Legend. Only by acknowledging the intimate relationship between these two phenomena can we make sense of Hollandophobia’s peculiar features while discerning how this discourse helped construct what the English took to be proper Europeanness.
Publication Date
September, 2014
Citation Information
Carmen Nocentelli. "The Dutch Black Legend" Modern Language Quarterly Vol. 75 Iss. 3 (2014)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/nocentelli/7/