Early modern reader management: begin+infinitive as a discourse marker in P. C. Hooft’s Dutch prose

Abstract

This article combines linguistic, rhetorical and material perspectives on early modern reader management in order to investigate how the Dutch historian P. C. Hooft (1581–1647) guided his readers through a new genre: humanist history written in the vernacular. Central to this paper is the linguistic construction begin+infinitive, which is known to have text‐structuring functions in several historical varieties. Study of this construction in historical Dutch, however, is currently lacking. Although the Roman historian Tacitus, Hooft’s classical writing model, largely avoided the begin+infinitive construction, Hooft used it in his translations of Tacitus’s prose and in his own magnum opus, the Nederlandsche Historien (Dutch Histories, first edition 1642). More specifically, Hooft employed the construction as part of his humanist tempo‐changing style, using begin’s durative semantics in combination with rhetorical devices to slow the narrative pace and to alert the reader to an upcoming main event. Such main events were highlighted not only by linguistic and rhetorical guidance but also by material devices, i.e. printed marginalia.