English translation: Christopher W. Reid.
In 'Mytho-poetics at Work' Rengenier Rittersma offers an account of the posthumous fame of the Count of Egmont (1522-1568), whose public decapitation triggered the Dutch revolt. Drawing from numerous European sources – pamphlets, chronicles, and literature – this monograph tries to unravel why and how the alleged freedom fighter became an icon in European thought. It demonstrates that Egmont unfurled an evocative power over several centuries and cultural regions, as his name could be deliberately instrumentalized by different groups of people in order to corroborate their own confessional and political programs. In addition, this book offers the very first systematic study of the phenomenon of mytho-genesis and provides a conceptual model that can be applied to analogous historical myths.
Author(s): Rengenier C. Rittersma
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 266
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 430
City: Leiden
Preface to the German Edition
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1. To Order the Unprecedented: Egmont in Proto-historiography
Section 1. Prolegomena
Chapter 1. Preliminary Remarks on the Source Corpus
Chapter 2. Biographical Information on the Eyewitnesses and Authors
Section 2. The Various Layers of the Early Egmont Reception
Chapter 3. The Atavistic Layer
Chapter 4. The Particularistic Layer
Chapter 5. The Theocratic Redemptive-historical Layer
Chapter 6. The Religious-confessional Layer
Chapter 7. The Person-centered Layer
Intermezzo: The Sacred Layer
Continuation of the Person-centered Layer
Chapter 8. The Anti-Spanish Layer
Chapter 9. The Anti-Spanish Layer in the Early Foreign Egmont Reception
Concluding Remarks: On Dealing with the Quirks of History
Part 2. To Exploit the Anachronism: Egmont in Historiography
Chapter 10. Preliminary Remarks on the Source Corpus
Chapter 11. A Historiographical Subgenus: Herography
Chapter 12. The Struggle for Preponderance: Historiography in the Wake of Sectarian Wrangling
Chapter 13. The Target: The Supremacy of Northern Dutch Historiography
Chapter 14. In the Wake of Politics: Grotius’ Historiography as “Certification” of the Republic’s Birth
Chapter 15. In the Name of the Search for Truth: De Thou’s Historiography as an Irenic Manifesto
Chapter 16. Under the Spell of Prudentia: Strada’s and Bentivoglio’s Historiography as a Political Lesson
1. The Baroque: More than a Transitional Stage between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment
2. “Quell’Aiace e questo Ulisse.” Egmont and Orange in Strada and Bentivoglio
Chapter 17. In the Spirit of the Enlightenment: Wagenaar’s Historiography as an Empirical Analysis of the Past
Concluding Remarks: On Dealing with the History’s Latecomers
Part 3. To Eulogise the Unfeigned: Egmont in the European Age of Revolution
Section 1. The Dead End: On How the German Baroque Left Behind No Trace of Egmont
Section 2. “The Path to Glory:” Egmont’s Finest Hour in the Revolutionary Era
Chapter 18. Defining the Problem, Delineating the Theme
Chapter 19. The Development of the Chosen One: On Goethe’s Sources for His Egmont Tragedy
Chapter 20. The Development of the Chosen One: On Schiller’s Sources for His Egmont Treatment
Chapter 21. “Under Similar Constellations:” A Star Over Brussels, Rome, Weimar
Chapter 22. Egmont, or: The Excess of Noble Mindedness
Chapter 23. Egmont, the Man of Integrity, or: Praise for an Honest and Undisguised Man
Chapter 24. Synopsis: The Afterlife of Count Lamoral of Egmont since 1800
Concluding Remarks: Dealing with the Patterns of History
Afterword: On the Writhing Carcas and the Homo Amplificator
Appendix 1. The Element of Chess in Goethe’s Egmont
Appendix 2. Illustrations of the Mycorrhiza Process
Appendix 3. Textual Comparison between the Ypres Eyewitness Account and Pieter Christiaenszoon Bor’s Nederlantsche Oorloghen (…)
Appendix 4. Schematic Overview of the Transmission of the Egmont Material between the Proto-historiographical and the Historiographical Phases of the Egmont Reception
Appendix 5. Summary of the State of Research on Goethe’s Egmont in German Studies
Appendix 6. Complete Passages on Egmont’s Noble Mindedness
Appendix 7. Extensive Citation from Fugger-Zeitung
Published Primary Sources
Unpublished Primary Sources: Manuscripts and Pamphlets
Secondary Literature
Index of Names
