Identiteiten van adolescenten in de vroegmoderne liedcultuur: het studentenlied als casus

Abstract

Songs aimed at the Dutch youth became a booming business in the Dutch Republic. In contemporary Western culture, such popular songs constitute an important vehicle for expressing youth identities. With regard to the Low Countries, it is this article’s hypothesis that in the booming business of songs composed by and for youngsters – loosely defined here as ‘unmarried young people’ – early stages of these modern processes of identity formation are visible. By exploring this vast and unique corpus and its functionality in the context of the NWO research project ‘Dutch Songs On Line’, this article aims to contribute to the international debate on youth identities, more specifically to the much debated question when ‘adolescence’ as a category was discovered: in the 19th century, or in the early modern era? Building on several trends in the existing literature the first part of this article will offer a framework for the analysis of the identity formation function of the songs for the early modern Dutch youth. The second part is dedicated to a case study: focusing on songs about and for students the potential of this type of research is explored.