Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Centre for the Study of the Renaissance

Dr Esther van Raamsdonk

I am a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-24) at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick. This project examines the politics of seventeenth-century biblical translation and adaptation in the Dutch Republic and England with a monograph, entitled The State Bibles: The Politics of Anglo-Dutch Translation and Adaptation, forthcoming with OUP/BA in 2025.

Previously, I was an AHRC-funded postdoctoral researcher for ‘Networking Archives’ at Queen Mary University, London, and the University of Oxford, a digital humanities project that performs networking analysis on the Tudor and Stuart State Papers in the National Archives. I completed a Ph.D. at the University of Exeter on Milton, Marvell, and Anglo-Dutch Relations.

My first monograph is entitled Milton, Marvell, and the Dutch Republic (Routledge, 2021).

Esther.van-Raamsdonk@warwick.ac.uk 

Interests:

Anglo-Dutch relations; English and Dutch Republican writings; Arminianism; Political propaganda; Biblical narratives; John Milton; Andrew Marvell; John Dryden; Constantijn Huygens; Joost van den Vondel

British Academy Project:

Title: The Politics of Biblical Narrative in a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Dutch Context

This study explores the influence of political thought on the production of vernacular versions of the Bible in England and the United Provinces during the seventeenth century, and contemporary literary adaptations of biblical narratives in these countries. The diverse ways in which biblical narratives were depicted, allegorised, adapted, and published, reveal much about the aims, fears and tensions defining this seminal period in both nations’ history. As well as underpinning further development of a transnational critical methodology, the project will produce new readings of canonical literary works, establish the importance of the period’s transnational cultural sphere, and re-evaluate the sociocultural impact of scriptural texts.

 

Selected Publications

Monographs:

  • The State Bibles: The Politics of Anglo-Dutch Translation and Adaptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, British Academy Series, forthcoming 2025).
  • Milton, Marvell, and the Dutch Republic, in the series Renaissance and Early Modern Studies in Worlds of Knowledge (Routledge: 2021), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003056218Link opens in a new window

Edited Collections:

Edited Special Edition of a Journal:

  • With Yann Ryan, Ruth Ahnert, and Philip Beeley, Network Analysis and the Early Modern Archive, Huntington Library Quarterly, 86.2 (June 2024).

Articles:

  • 'The Politics of Sixteenth-Century Anglo-Dutch Bible Translation', in The Literary Heritage of Anglo-Dutch Relations, c. 1050-1600 (Oxford University Press, British Academy Publications, 2023).

  • ‘Maritime Mirrors: Littoral Rhetoric in Marvell’s Dutch Satires’, Andrew Marvell: The Poet at 400 (Oxford University Press, British Academy Publications, 2022): 149-165.

  • ‘Nicholaas Heinsius en Isaac Vossius: Een gedeelde vijand’, De Zeventiende Eeuw: Cultuur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief (Jaarboek Werkgroep De Zeventiende Eeuw, 2022): 61-72.

  • With Ruth Ahnert, ‘Milton’s Correspondence Network’, Renaissance and Reformation, 44.3 (2022): 81-110. https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v44i3.37991
  • ‘Milton’s Dutch Satan and Vondel’s English Lucifer’, Renaissance Studies, 36.1 (2022): 65-84.
    https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12740
  • With Alan Moss (Radboud University of Nijmegen), ‘Across the Narrow Sea: A Transnational Approach to Seventeenth-Century English and Dutch Travelogues’, The Seventeenth Century, (online 2018), 35.1 (2020): 105-124. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2018.1487877
  • ‘Creation in Milton’s Paradise Lost and Vondel’s Adam in Ballingschap (1660)’, Milton Quarterly, 51.2 (May 2017): 96-110. https://doi.org/10.1111/milt.12209.
  • ‘Did Milton Know Dutch?’, Notes and Queries, 63.1 (March, 2016): 53-56.
  • https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjv242

Book Chapters:

  • With Sjoerd Levelt and Michael D. Rose, ‘Most Ancient Allies and Familiar Neighbours’, in Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Early Modern World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023): 1-19, DOI: 10.4324/9781003049180-1.  

  • With Michael D. Rose, ‘Plockhoy’s Portable Utopia: Bridging Radical Circles in England and in The Netherlands’, in Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Early Modern World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023): 235-245. DOI: 10.4324/9781003049180-27.  

  • With Yann Ryan, ‘What is Dutch in the Stuart State Papers’, in Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Early Modern World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023): 133-143. DOI: 10.4324/9781003049180-15.

  • ‘Lisa Jardine: An Explorer in Anglo-Dutch History’, in Anglo-Netherlands Society Centenary Publication 1920-2020 (commissioned by the Anglo-Netherlands Society, 2020): 99-108.

Funding:

  • British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (2020 – 2024).
  • AHRC Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Networking Archives, Queen Mary University, London and University of Oxford (2018-2019).
  • AHRC doctoral studentship, University of Exeter (2013 – 2016).
  • University of Exeter Activity Award (Dec 2015).
  • AHRC Research Support Training Grant (Apr – Jun 2015).
  • Harting Scholarship, Bangor and Utrecht University (2011 – 2012).

 

Qualifications:

Ph.D., University of Exeter.

Masters in English Literature 1500-1700, Bangor University.

Bachelor in English Language and Culture, Utrecht University.