The Destruction of Amsterdam: Flood Allegories in Contemporary Dutch Literature

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Abstract

This article examines representations of urban destruction and of rising
waters in Pieter Boskma’s Tsunami in de Amstel (2016) and in Guido van
Driel’s De ondergang van Amsterdam (2007). It foregrounds the ways in which
these texts reflect productively on visualisations and narrative frames of catastrophe, and how they propose alternative temporalities (in the case of Boskma) and alternative visual perspectives (in van Driel) for imagining possible urban endtimes. At the background of this article is an increased tendency in ecocritical approaches to read representations of destructive climate change (in prose literature, in particular) in terms of their implications for understanding real-world radical climatological and environmental change. Such perspectives are complemented here with an examination of allegorical readings of flood in a poetry collection and graphic novel.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)224-243
JournalTIJDSCHRIFT VOOR NEDERLANDSE TAAL-EN LETTERKUNDE
Volume136
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Publication forum classification

  • Publication forum level 2

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