The Role of London and Other English Cities in the Development of Early Modern Dutch Language and Literature

Abstract

In accounts of the emergence of a standard language, linguists often adopt what Richard J. Watts terms a ‘tunnel view’ of language, in which those features of a language’s history which do not contribute to the story of the standard language are marginalized or even ignored. In this article, I argue that those who write general histories of Dutch language and literature are sometimes guilty of adopting this ‘tunnel view’. I take the case of London in the early modern period and look at how three developments in Dutch language and literature at this time — the publication of religious literature, the writing of the first Dutch grammar, and the writing of sonnets in Dutch — each owes something to the presence of Dutch speakers in London in the second half of the sixteenth century. In each case, I then consider how these developments are recorded in general histories of Dutch language and literature. I also describe a number of cases elsewhere in England and conclude by offering a model — that of the tree — which may be useful for those who write such histories.