'The Most Ancient and the Finest Poets' Naturalness in Dutch Golden Age poetry

The most ancient and the finest poets are the most natural and direct, opined Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679). This might seem a remarkable statement in an age of imitation and stylistic ornamentation. Similar insights, provided by contemporaries such as Hugo Grotius and Gerardus Johannes Vossius, refer to a primitive (early Greek) era in which philosophers and poets were the same people, and expressed their philosophy in invented stories that they included in poems. In this Greek mythological context, Homer represented the archetype of natural poetry, from whom all poets should take their origin, as Jan Baptist Houwaert put it. This article focuses on the veneration of this semi-mythological period – an age that inspired Renaissance authors to an ideal poetical discourse of plainness and unpretentiousness. It argues that some ‘illiterate’ Dutch Renaissance poets, such as Gerbrand Adriaensz. Bredero and women writers, preferred a pure, natural poetry. Bredero’s verses enchanted through ingenious inventions and originality rather than artistry or artistic skills.