Vermakelijkheid en bezorgdheid. De representatie van het vrijheidsbegrip in Ironiesch Comiesch Woordenboek (1797–1798) van Arend Fokke Simonsz

Was it possible in the eighteenth-century Netherlands to ridicule a very serious thing such as the Dutch sense of liberty? In my article I analyse the way the Dutch satirist Fokke Simonsz (1755–1812) defined freedom in one of his bestsellers: Ironiesch Comiesch Woordenboek (1797–1798). I research how his attitude towards freedom affected the public debate in the Netherlands at the end of the eighteenth century. The analysis of the book of Fokke Simonsz is an important element of my research project, which focuses on various representations of freedom in Dutch political journals from the late Enlightenment. Fokke Simonsz in his ‘dictionary’ demonstrates a different concept of freedom than the one that is presented in journals. Thanks to him the image of freedom in the eighteenth-century Netherlands appears to be much more nuanced than it seems at first glance.