Thomas Vaessens
Thomas Vaessens
is Professor in Dutch literature and Chair of the Dutch Department at the University of Amsterdam, and Academic director of the Netherlands Graduate School for Literary Studies (OSL). His publications in Dutch literature include monographs about Modernism, Postmodernism, poetry and intermediality, and Late Postmodernism. He is a (founding) member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Dutch Literature. Current research-interests:Contemporary literature, Interdiscursivity (literature and politics, literature and popular culture, literature and ethics…), Adaptation, Globalization, Functions of literature, Literarity, the Novel, Digital heritage.
Complete List of Publications:
6 books, 7 edited volumes, 62 academic publications (articles, book chapters) and 58 professional publicationsPublications Thomas Vaessens
Book Publications:
Reconsidering the Postmodern
Together with one of my colleagues at the University of Amsterdam,Yra van Dijk, I edited the volume Reconsidering the Postmodern: European Literature Beyond Relativism. The idea behind the book was simple: now that we have reached the point in which postmodernism, rightly or wrongly, has been declared defunct, it is time to critically evaluate itsliterary legacy. What has been the effect of postmodernism? Have we gone beyond it in literature, and why would we want to go beyond it? What criticisms have been leveled against it in the last decennia by writers and critics? What have they put in its place? To what extent do they rely for this on (conceptions of) literature that postmodernism had consigned to history?
Blurb
Website Yra van Dijk
An article in the Journal of Dutch Literature related to the topic of the book
Prospectus AUP
De revanche van de roman [The Revenge of the Novel]
My monograph De revanche van de roman; literatuur, autoriteit en engagement [The Revenge of the Novel; Literature, Legitimacy, and Commitment] was published by Uitgeverij Vantilt in 2009. The book, that turned out to be one of the most talked-of scholarly publications in Dutch literature ever (more than 50 reviews, a stir in Dutch literary journalism, reprints in 2010 and 2011), is about (what I call) late postmodernism and the novel. I describe literary postmodernism as a medicine against the liberal humanist conception of culture, a medicine that, in the course of the eighties and ninetieths appeared to have unpleasant side effects, such as relativism, cynicism, noncommittal irony. I try to explain the tendency towards engagement in Dutch novels, not as a late in the day rejection of postmodernism, but as a late postmodern reaction to these side effects.
Blurb
Website Vantilt
Women's Writing
In 2009 Amsterdam University Press published the anthology Women's Writing from the Low Countries 1880-2010 that I edited with my colleagueat the VU Amsterdam, Jacqueline Bel. This anthology offers English-speaking readers a chance to become acquainted with the leading Dutch and Flemish women writers since the 1880s. The book covers a representative range of public and private genres, from poetry, critical essays, travel literature, and political commentary to diaries and journals.
Blurb
Website Amsterdam University Press
Ongerijmd succes [Poetry in an Unpoetic Age]
My book Ongerijmd succes; poëzie in een onpoëtische tijd [Remarkable Success; Poetry in an Unpoetic Age], published by Uitgeverij Vantilt in 2006, is about contemporary poetry and about poets crossing the borders of poetry as we know it. One of the keywords for the contemporary poetry scene is intermediality: we see performance, poetry on the Web, poetry in art or even in public space. Where my other books are mostly focused on literary text and discourse, this one is more sociologically focused. It was published a few months after my appointment as a full professor at the University of Amsterdam and it marked, in a way, my formal leave as a journalistic literary critic (due to increased busyness I had to stop with my non-academic side activities). However, for some of my esteemed positivistic colleagues it may well be my most ‘academic’ book, because of the sociology and the statistics in it…
Blurb (in Dutch)
Full Text Ongerijmd Succes (UvA Dare)
Website Vantilt
Het boek was beter [Literature Between Autonomy and Massification]
When I was appointed as a professor at the University of Amsterdam in 2005 I held my inaugural lecture Het boek was beter; literatuur tussen autonomie en massificatie [The Book Was Better; Literature Between Autonomy and Massification]. By tradition, Amsterdam University Press published an extended version of the lecture. The small book is about the cultural transformations in the second half of the 20 th century that changed our perception of literature thoroughly. My case was J.J. Voskuil’s Bij nader inzien (a novel about a group of students in Dutch literature at the University of Amsterdam in the late 1950s) and it’s Wirkungsgeschichte (criticism, film adaptation).
Blurb (in Dutch)
Full Text Het boek was beter
Website Amsterdam University Press
Postmoderne poëzie in Nederland en Vlaanderen [Postmodern Dutch Poetry]
Together with my friend and colleague Jos Joosten, professor of Dutch literature at RU Nijmegen, I wrote Postmoderne poëzie in Nederland en Vlaandereren [Postmodern Dutch Poetry], published by Uitgeverij Vantilt in 2003. In this much-cited book we attempt to reconsider the Dutch and Flemish poetical production since the 80’s in the light of ‘postmodernism’. The conception of postmodernism that we have developed first of all wants counter the (Dutch) communis opinio that there has been no avant-garde since the 1960s. The fact that also the non-mainstream contemporary poets have been co-opted bythe commercialliterary circussurely indicates that as an institute, the avant-garde has fundamentally changed its nature since the beginning of the last century, but that fact does not reduce the ‘alterity’ and ‘foreignness’ of the texts of the contemporary avant-garde. Second, we want to resist the (Flemish) tendency in the debates around postmodernism and literature to have extra-poetical authorial statements and intentions participate in the conceptualizationof ‘postmodernism in poetry’. Finally we want to reduce the divide between Dutch and Flemish poetical discourse by studying poets from both countries, such as Robert Anker, Astrid Lampe and Tonnus Oosterhoff on the Dutch side, and Dirk van Bastelaere and Peter Verhelst on the other.
Blurb(in Dutch)
Website Jos Joosten
English article based upon Postmoderne poëzie in Nederland en Vlaanderen
De verstoorde lezer [The Unsettled Reader]
In 2001, De verstoorde lezer; over de onbegrijpelijkepoëzie van Lucebert [The Unsettled Reader; Lucebert’s Incomprehensible Poetry] was the first book I did with my current Dutch publisher: Uitgeverij Vantilt in Nijmegen. The book analyses how the early postmodern Dutch poet and painter Lucebert (1924-1994) frustrates the classical reading strategies of new criticism end early structuralism, even before new criticism reached Dutch literary criticism.
De verstoorde lezer turned out to be the pilot for another book: Postmoderne poëzie in Nederland en Vlaanderen (see above).Blurb (in Dutch)
Full Text De verstoorde lezer
Website Uitgeverij Vantilt
Circus Dubio & Schroom [Dutch Poetry and the Mentality of Modernism]
In 1998 Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers published my PhD thesis Circus Dubio & Schroom; Nijhoff, van Ostaijen en de mentaliteit van het modernism[Circus Waver & Hesitance; Dutch Poetry and the Mentality of Modernism]. In this book I challenge the idea of the (alleged) disinterestedness of modernism. I focus on the work and the poetics of two icons of Dutch literary modernism: the Dutch poet, critic and translator M. Nijhoff (1894-1953) and the Flemish poet and critic Paul van Ostaijen (1896-1928). I read their work against the light of classical social theory of Modernity (Max Weber, Theodor Adorno, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Ernest Gellner: the idea of rationalization and disenchantment).
Blurb (in Dutch)
Full Text Circus Dubio en Schroom
E-versions of some older publications (articles):
On Chaplin and the literary avant-garde (1993)
On M. Februari (2009)
On Paul van Ostaijen and Asta Nielsen (1997)
On Education in Literature (2007)
On Arnon Grunberg (2010)
On the Reading Encouragement Policy in the Netherlands (2004)
On the Culture of Reading (2005)
On Writing Literary History (2005)
On Lucebert (1999)
On New Criticism in the Netherlands (2004)
On Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (2009)
On Dutch Postmodernism (in German) (2002)
On Mustafa Stitou (in French) (2005)
On Mustafa Stitou en Darwinism (2005)
On Peter Verhelst (2003)
On Paul van Ostaijen (1996)
On Postmodern Poetry (2006)
On Studying Poetry (2008)
On Postmodern Poetry and Authenticity (2003)
On Postmodern Narrative and Reading Strategies (2002)
On Dutch Novelist and the Postmodern Heritage (2011)