'In 't harte van Java' (1881): Exotiek en nationalisme in het Indische oeuvre van Willem Jacobsz. Hofdijk

Towards the end of his life, the Dutch poet Willem Jacobsz. Hofdijk wrote his ambitious verse epic In ’t harte van Java, set in seventeenth-century Indonesia. Two similar works soon followed. This article examines the various literary techniques used by the author to evoke the exoticism of a world he had never experienced himself. The received idea that Hofdijk started writing his Dutch East Indies poems when his son joined the colonial army is exposed as a fallacy. It is my contention that Hofdijk’s epics, deliberately distorting historical facts, were intended to strengthen the resolve of the Dutch against the rebellious province of Aceh.