Beyond nostalgia. The exile publications of the Antwerp schoolmaster Peeter Heyns (1537-1598)

Samenvatting

In 1585, the famous Antwerp schoolmaster Peeter Heyns fled from his hometown. After resettling in Haarlem, he published eight texts in the four years that he spent there. In all of them, the Antwerp background of the texts and their author is strongly emphasised. This article argues that the stress on Heyns’s roots as well as his hometown was part of a publication strategy designed to create both financial and emotional value by appealing to an interest in Antwerp shared by fellow migrants and the host community. This way of dealing with the past, using nostalgia not just as an emotional asset but also as a commercial one, sheds new light on the possible uses of nostalgic representations of the lost hometown by migrant authors.