Abstract
AbstractIn this article, I track the reception of Gustavus Adolphus, Swedish king and hero of the Thirty Years War, across the borders of Northern Europe. I argue that writers in England, the Dutch Republic, and the German territories consciously participated in a ‘pan‐Protestant literary field’, united by shared ambitions, beliefs, and cultural stock. Typology was particularly important in uniting Protestants in the celebration of Gustavus, and it shaped how English and Dutch writers read the war and identified with their suffering co‐religionists. At the same time, terms within the celebration varied radically by context, and I trace the variant understandings of Gustavus's mythic role, ‘Defender of the German Liberty’. German liberty, in both England and the Dutch republic, assumed republican signification only latent in the German materials. I thus suggest that a transnational approach to early modern literature requires a recognition of early modern identifications to better understand how tropes, images, and ideas circulated in the period.
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