‘daar in het laagland van peppels en petrochemie’: The Great Acceleration in Nederlandstalige poëzie 1958-1975

Abstract

The aim of this article is twofold. It tries to assess if and to which extent Dutch language poetry engaged with the Great Acceleration during 1958- 1975, an era of substantial growth and transformation of the rural and urban environment. In order to make this assessment, this article presents and evaluates a topical reading methodology, combining a quantitative analysis of 100 poetry volumes by 100 different poets and a qualitative reading of a selection of poems from these volumes. Contrary to what has been suggested earlier, Dutch language poets wrote extensively about the indicators of the Great Acceleration. A combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis proves fruitful for this type of research