Book Series Early European Research, vol. 19

Private Life and Privacy in the Early Modern Low Countries

Michaël Green, Ineke Huysman (eds)

  • Pages: 316 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:52 b/w, 24 col.
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2023

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  • ISBN: 978-2-503-60444-2
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  • ISBN: 978-2-503-60445-9
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This volume investigates the origins of one of the most important notions of the contemporary society: privacy. Based on case studies from the early modern Low Countries, privacy is explored from various historical perspectives: social and cultural history, as well as the history of art.

BIO

Ineke Huysman is a senior researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands/NL-Lab. She manages the digital editions of the correspondence of Constantijn Huygens, Johan de Witt, and stadholders’ wives.

Michaël Green is University Professor at the University of Lodz. He specializes in various aspects of early modern cultural, social and religious history, with an emphasis on notions of privacy

Summary

This volume investigates the origins of one of the most important notions of contemporary society: privacy. Based on case studies from the early modern Low Countries, privacy is tackled from various historical perspectives: social and cultural history, and the history of art and architecture.

The Dutch Republic is well known for its financial success, which went hand in hand with the development of a distinguished bourgeois culture and religious toleration. The accumulation of wealth among the urban population led to changes in various spheres, from daily life to art. Privacy, as a concept, started to develop in this period. Indeed, new ideas about housing with the invention of corridors, separate rooms that could be locked, and the separation of the ‘common’ and the ‘private’ space, all illustrate the growing importance of privacy in this geographical area. This volume traces perspectives on early modern privacy and private life based on primary sources in several domains: letters, diaries, and poems; genre painting in art; communal life as illustrated by the Jewish community; and finally, the homes of the Dutch elite.

The essays in this volume make a key contribution to the emergence of early modern privacy studies as a research field, and to the ongoing discussion of privacy in the Low Countries. Equally, these case studies can serve as models for the analysis of privacy in other European contexts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Low Countries, Private Life, and Privacy — MICHAËL GREEN and INEKE HUYSMAN

‘For My Personal Use’: Notions of Privacy in Egodocuments from Early Modern Amsterdam — MICHAËL GREEN

Inward Dignity. The Liberated House in Simon Stevin’s Architectural Knowledge System as Indication of his Early Modern Conception of ‘Privacy’ — HEIDI DE MARE

Privacy in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Cabinet Painting — JØRGEN WADUM

‘Au couvert, sans estre vues’. Aspects of Privacy in the Residences of Charles de Croÿ (1560-1612) — SANNE MAEKELBERG

Huygens at Home. Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) on Privacy in his Poem Dagh-werck (The Day’s Work) (1627-1638) — AD LEERINTVELD

Withdrawn and Secretive: Privacy among Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam — TIRTSAH LEVIE BERNFELD

Private Life in Wartime: Captured Letters from 1672 — JUDITH BROUWER

Bibliotheca Furliana, 1714. The Public Sale of a Private Book Collection — HANNA DE LANGE

Sociability and Privacy. Eighteenth-Century Extended Homes of the Amsterdam Elite — FREEK SCHMIDT

Balancing between Mother and Wife: The Private Correspondence of Stadtholder Willem IV of Orange-Nassau (1711-1751) — FAYROUZ GOMAA and INEKE HUYSMAN

Index locorum

Index nominum