Dr. J.F. (Jan Frans) van Dijkhuizen

Position:
  • Lecturer
  • Post-doctoral researcher
Expertise:
  • English language and culture


Telephone number: +31 (0)71 527 2147
E-Mail: j.f.van.dijkhuizen@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department: Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Institute for Cultural Disciplines, Oude Britse letterkunde
Office Address: Witte Singel-complex
P.N. van Eyckhof 4
2311 BV Leiden
Room number 105A

Fields of interest

Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen is interested in early modern English literature and culture (especially in relation to religion); cultural history of the body.

Research

I am currently working on a VENI research project funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). My project focuses on perceptions of physical pain in theological, medical and literary texts published in England during the early modern period (roughly 1550-1700). The project proceeds from the idea that the experience of pain is powerfully mediated by cultural belief systems. Modern Western culture often conceives of pain as a strictly medical problem. This view of pain is in part the product of nineteenth-century developments in medical science, but the origins of modern Western attitudes are also to be found in the Reformation era, when Protestant theologians attempted to redefine and circumscribe the spiritual meaning of physical suffering, and rejected late medieval assumptions about pain. I investigate these shifts in theological attitudes towards pain, but also look at changing medical notions of physical suffering. These shifts in early modern views on pain provide a context for my analysis of the role of physical suffering in early modern literary texts. Literary texts formed a cultural laboratory in which the repercussions of emerging theological and medical views on pain were addressed, in which rival conceptions of pain were confronted, and in which new ways of attaching meaning to pain were constructed. The aim of the project is to produce a book on this subject.

Curriculum Vitae

1988 - 1994
English language and literature (Utrecht and Sheffield).
1996 - 2003
PhD in English literature, University of Leiden.
2001 - 2004
Junior lecturer in English Literature at Leiden. Since 2004 Lecturer in English Literature at Leiden.
Since September 2006
NWO research fellow at Leiden (see above for the research project).

Teaching activities

In the next few years, I will focus mainly on research, but will be teaching an MA course on literature and religion in early modern England (together with Lieke Stelling), as well as a BA course on early modern English literature.  

Publications

Books:

Perceptions of Pain in Early Modern Culture (Leiden, 2008). Edited with Karl Enenkel

Devil Theatre: Demonic Possession and Exorcism in English Drama, 1558-1642 (Cambridge, 2007). Book version of my PhD thesis (Leiden, 2003).

The Reformation Unsettled: British Literature and the Question of Religious Identity, 1560-1660 (Turnhout, 2007). Edited with Richard Todd.

Living in Posterity: Essays in Honour of Bart Westerweel (Hilversum, 2004). Edited with Paul Hoftijzer et al.

Articles:

'Partakers of Pain: Teresa of Ávila, Luis of Granada, Ignatius of Loyola and John Calvin in Early Modern English Translations', in Perceptions of Pain (see above)

“‘In Thy Passion Slain’: Donne, Herbert and the Theology of Pain”, in The Reformation Unsettled (see above).

(with Richard Todd) “Gebruik je verbeelding: Over het vertalen van Shakespeare”, NRC Handelsblad, 2 September 2005.

“Demonic Possession and Selfhood in The Comedy of Errors”, in François Laroque & Franck Lessay (eds.), Enfers et délices à la Renaissance (Paris, 2003).

ICD Web Editors
Last Modified: 19-10-2009