Liberale en katholieke toe-eigening van een middeleeuws epos: Dants Divina Commedia in het negentiende-eeuwse Nederland

The concept of appropriation, popular among cultural historians, ethnologists and scholars in the fields of Translation Studies and Adaptation Studies, signifies a focus on the recipient instead of the producer of culture. Using this concept one distances oneself from a fidelity discourse in which the original occupies centre stage and in which reception is associated with trivialising the source text. Especially when dealing with the reception of classical epic poems appropriation turns out to be a fertile concept. This article illustrates
this by looking at two very diverse Dutch examples of creative responses to Dante’s Divina Commedia, dating from the second half of the nineteenth century: a liberal view regarding Dante (Potgieter’s epic poem Florence) and catholic appropriations (by Alberdingk Thijm and Schaepman) of the Divine Comedy.