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Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678) staat vooral bekend als de eerste vrouwelijke universiteitsstudente in de Nederlanden. Gedurende haar jongere jaren houdt ze zich bezig met de studie van verschillende talen en wetenschappen. Zo heeft ze een uitstekende kennis van onder andere het Latijn en het Grieks. Ook op artistiek vlak laat van Schurman duidelijk zien dat ze talent heeft. Ze produceert namelijk een groot aantal portretten en zelfportretten. Men kan vaststellen dat van Schurman voor een groot stuk van haar leven geprezen wordt als een symbool van vrouwelijke geleerdheid. Na het overlijden van haar moeder trekt van Schurman in bij de labadisten. Die groepering onder leiding van de charismatische sekteleider Jean de Labadie heeft een radicale vernieuwing van de Kerk voor ogen. Volgens van Schurman staat het labadisme voor een oprechter geloof dan de Gereformeerde Kerk. Die religieuze ommezwaai lokt veel kritische reacties uit. Deze masterproef probeert op basis van auteursrepresentatie te onderzoeken welke impact van Schurmans bekering heeft op haar publieke beeldvorming. Enerzijds gaat het over het beeld dat ze van zichzelf naar voren brengt. Daarvoor wordt haar autobiografie, de Eucleria, bestudeerd. Anderzijds gaat het over het beeld dat andere auteurs hebben van haar. Daarvoor wordt een exemplarische tekst van een tijdgenoot bestudeerd, namelijk van Constantijn Huygens.

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Maria de Wilde (1682-1729) was an eighteenth century engraver and playwright. Her theatrical work consisted of two plays: the classical tragedy "Abradates en Panthea" ("Abradates and Panthea", 1710) and the comedic play "‘t Swervende portret" ("The wandering portrait", published posthumously in 1742). According to the historiographical research, these plays are based on French textual sources. "Abradates en Panthea" is supposedly modelled after François Tristan l’Hermite’s "Penthée" (1639) and a French translation of the "Cyropaedia" by the Greek author Xenophon. The main textual source of "‘t Swervende portret" is cited to be "Le portrait" by Pierre-François Godard de Beauchamps (1727). This thesis intends to formulate a response to two questions relating to De Wilde’s plays. One of them is whether or not her plays are connected to the sources cited by the historiographical research. Are they strict translations, or loose adaptations of the original texts? Secondly, if they can be regarded as adaptations, is De Wilde’s own authorial voice present in her texts? What decisions has she made to make the textual material her own? A profound analysis of her theatrical oeuvre, compared to its original sources, is to provide some responses. The introduction to this thesis contains an overview of the life and complete works of Maria de Wilde. From the beginning, it becomes clear that her oeuvre has been defined in many ways, some researchers attributing more theatrical works to her name than others. After solving this historiographical question, the situation of women writers in the eighteenth century is briefly discussed, as well as De Wildes own position in her era’s literary landscape. The introduction ends with an outline of the questions mentioned above. The first chapter then turns to the analysis of her first play. Abradates en Panthea is confronted with and compared to its supposed sources of inspiration. Similarly, the second chapter is devoted to the comparison between ‘t Swervende portret and Beauchamps’ Le portrait. The thesis concludes with an overview of the results of the analysis presented in the chapters, so as to provide responses for the questions posed in the introduction. It becomes clear that De Wilde’s plays are indeed affiliated to the texts mentioned in the historiographical research. However, her works are not meant to be strict translations of the original sources. While she has incorporated certain key elements of these sources in her own oeuvre, De Wilde has not taken to word-by-word translation. Therefore, her plays are characterised as loose adaptations rather than translations of the original texts. Her plays are also influenced by eighteenth-century French classicism as introduced in the Dutch Republic. Furthermore, De Wilde has inserted her own authorial voice in her theatrical work. She has done so by accentuating character development in her first play, as well as elaborating on storylines and characters in her second play. More so than the original texts, De Wilde focuses on the roles of and relationships between her female protagonists. Her authorial voice is especially palpable in the second play. There, she allows herself to divert more from the original textual material, in order to create a story of her own. In this way, she claims authorship over her theatrical work. The development of her authorial voice throughout her works proves the growing presence of an authorial conscience in De Wilde’s mind.

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In 1911 publiceerde de Vlaamse schrijfster Virginie Loveling haar laatste roman Een revolverschot, die het verhaal vertelt van twee zussen die het slachtoffer worden van hun passie voor dezelfde man. Virginie Lovelings biografie wordt gekenmerkt door een gevoel van vrouwelijke inferioriteit, en ook in haar fictie neemt ze die bezorgdheid over. In Een revolverschot verzet het hoofdpersonage, Marie Santander, zich tegen de bekrompen verwachtingen die het publiek aan vrouwen als zij en haar zus stelt, maar als gevolg daarvan wordt ze als een zottin beschouwd. In de daaropvolgende jaren werd het boek vijf keer heruitgegeven. In 1983 paste Karel Jonckheere het boek aan de veronderstelde verwachtingen van de moderne lezer aan. Annelies Verbeke deed hetzelfde in 2021, maar toonde daarbij meer respect voor Lovelings oorspronkelijke tekst. Na een uitgebreide inleiding over Virginie Loveling en haar roman Een revolverschot, onderzoekt en vergelijkt deze masterproef de oorspronkelijke tekst van de roman en de hertaling door Karel Jonckheere op het vlak van 1) vertelperspectief; 2) stijl en taalgebruik en 3) de weglatingen - in vergelijking met de oorspronkelijke tekst telt de hertaalde tekst in totaal 65 pagina's minder. Ten eerste blijkt uit de analyse dat Loveling, in vergelijking met Jonckheere, met het vertelperspectief speelt, bijvoorbeeld door de introductie van een ik-verteller. Ten tweede schrapt Jonckheere bijvoorbeeld Lovelings gebruik van beeldspraak en het merendeel van de dialogen in het dialect. Ten slotte, en belangrijker nog, laat Jonckheere niet alleen woorden weg, maar ook zinnen en hele passages, en deze elementen kunnen worden ingedeeld in de volgende typologie van weglatingen: 1) innerlijke belevingswereld; 2) taal; 3) de positie van de vrouw in de samenleving en 4) klassenverschillen. In deze masterproef wordt tenslotte betoogd dat het verhaal bij het hertalen van Een revolverschot veel van zijn emancipatorische belang heeft verloren.

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The position of women in the academic sphere is a significant topic of debate that still pertains its relevance today. Especially the lack of space for women intellectuals to portray themselves as equal representatives of credible academic discourse remains a poignant problem. Only more recently, feminist critics have been starting to battle the unjust marginalisation of women writers and intellectuals. The early modern period has been essential to this development of individual claim to authority, which is why Early Modern women writers have been increasingly incorporated in feminist recovery projects. Although recent critical voices bring to the fore several textual and visual elements that indicate the women’s significance, they often limit themselves to a detailed account of the woman intellectual in question. This dissertation, however, aims to dissect the mechanisms that are involved with the construction of a public image as a woman intellectual through a comparative case study of two fascinating female intellectuals, namely Frances Burney and Anne Damer. In the exploration of the mechanisms of image building of both women, three specific research questions will be addressed through a triple structure. The personal evolution of the female intellectual in question in relation to the development of the female intellectual as a collective will be featured in exploration as to how they actively model images of the female intellectual. Burney’s creation process of her debut Evelina (1778) will be featured while in Damer’s case her initial sculpting career will be highlighted, including works such as Self-Portrait (1778) and Shock-Dog (1782). This will be followed by an analysis of the artist’s visual representations in analysis of how their visual portraits capture the period’s ideas on female intellectual authority, to end with a comparative view of both intellectuals as to how they constructed their female ‘self’ in challenge of the stereotypical (male) image of the intellectual. As a result, it has been discovered that there is such a great variety of manners with which women intellectuals manifested themselves in the public sphere that one may speak of a spectrum of self-fashioning mechanisms, ranging from systematic reconciliation of old views and newly emerging views of femininity represented by Burney to radical manifestations of a newfound femininity, embodied by Damer. This dissertation aims to recover the woman intellectual’s strategies of self-fashioning as a first attempt to highlight the true authoritative character of women intellectuals, as the long-forgotten accomplishments of the women intellectuals are foregrounded through the concept of the spectrum of self-fashioning.

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In this master thesis the focus is on the poems of Willem Bilderdijk and Katharina Schweickhardt about their children. Both parents were overwhelmed by misfortunes: six of their eight children died at a young age. Only Lodewijk Willem, who was born in 1812, would survive his parents. They wrote one or more poems about each dead child. Specifically, I explored how these two authors deal with the loss of their children in their poetry. Is a man’s poetry very different from a woman’s when it comes to emotions? In addition, in a separate chapter, I discussed their joyful poems that they wrote on the births and birthdays of their children, among other things. In particular, my attention was drawn tot the way they use these different emotions. Katharina's poetry is less distant and contrived than her husband's, making her poems simpler, more intimate and more emotional. Compared to his wife's poetry, Willem's is more distant and less emotional. The poems a father wrote in the nineteenth century were more restrained in terms of emotions and written in a more literary form. He often emphasizes the mental abilities and duties of his children, but his poetry also removes the taboo of the crying man, because he often lets his emotions resonate clearly. From this research we notice a certain evolution in their mourning poems, both parents seem to become more and more desperate and emotional. By writing poetry together about their deceased children, they found comfort in each other, but in the end nothing helped them to get over their grief. Their sadness also invades more and more in their joyful poetry. There is certainly room for joy in their poems, but the death of their children has had such a big impact on their lives that Bilderdijk and Schweickhardt have never been able to deal with it. Even in their poems about births and birthdays, they sometimes think back to their deceased children they will have to miss, and because of that, those poems sometimes take on a more somber tone.