Historiography in the Low Countries since the Renaissance

The Historiography course focuses on the ways historians write about the past and practise their profession. In addition, it deals with the changing perception of the concept of history (i.e. the relationship between the present and the past), in the Netherlands and in Belgium from the Renaissance until today. It consists of three components: a textbook, a sourcebook and a workbook.The course will show, by means of essays, source texts and assignments, how, in the Low Countries, the way of dealing with the past since the Renaissance constantly took on new forms: the chronicle, the erudite treatise, the pamphlet, the national epic, the historical monograph, the newspaper article, and the essay. These are all examples of genres that historians (among others) have developed and employed. Through these changes in form, historiography was able to react to the needs of the time and was also closely connected with the characteristics of successive cultural waves such as humanism, the Enlightenment, romanticism, modernism and post-modernism.
(Course C39211 from BA-Programme)