The Nobel Prize and the European Dream. Harry Mulisch’s European Authorship from a National and an International Perspective

Authors

  • Sander Bax

Keywords:

European Literature, Central Europe, Public Authorship, Public Intellectual, Literary Celebrity, Nobel Prize, Harry Mulisch

Abstract

There is a great difference between Harry Mulisch’s international reputation as a politically committed public intellectual with a European focus and his national reputation as a well-known literary celebrity. The public intellectual should be taken quite seriously, for he even has a certain political influence. The literary celebrity, on the other hand, can be considered a harmless figure who is there just to entertain us. This different classification of Harry Mulisch’ authorship therefore points at an important schism in the evaluation of the importance of his authorship. The complexity of this problem comes to the fore when we consider his proclaimed candidature for winning the Nobel Prize. Although this candidature was a reality, it soon turned into a gimmick in the Dutch media. In this article I will try to show how this ambivalence in reception and evaluation is the result of Mulisch’s own postures. Furthermore, this case study brings to the fore some essential problems of public authorship.

Author Biography

Sander Bax

Sander Bax is Assistant Professor of Cultural History, Literary Studies and Didactics of Dutch Language and Literature at the Department of Culture Studies of Tilburg University. He published his PhD-thesis De taak van de schrijver. Het poëticale debat in de Nederlandse literatuur, 1968-1985 (Den Bosch: Next Academic) in 2007. His current research deals with the literary writer as a public figure (public intellectual, literary celebrity) and authorship in the context of literary commitment and the autonomy of literature. He is currently finishing a monograph on Dutch literary writer Harry Mulisch, which has as its working title De Mulisch Mythe [The Mulisch Myth].

Downloads

Published

2013-12-02

How to Cite

Bax, S. (2013). The Nobel Prize and the European Dream. Harry Mulisch’s European Authorship from a National and an International Perspective. Journal of Dutch Literature, 4(2). Retrieved from https://journalofdutchliterature.org/index.php/jdl/article/view/42

Issue

Section

Articles