Karel Broeckaert wrote dialogues modeled on Joseph Addison’s Spectator essays in a spirit of rational liberalism, creating a literary figure, “Gysken,” the ironic representative of the ancien régime; he also wrote the first Flemish prose story, Jellen en Mietje . The poet Pieter Joost de Borchgrave embodied the transition from Classicism to Romanticism, and Jan Baptist Hofman, a prolific playwright, introduced middleclass sentimental tragedy, or drame bourgeois. The writers grouped around Van Nu en Straks helped to bring about a revival and…
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