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At a time when the world, Europe especially, is once more threatened by murderous conflicts between groups of people claiming ethnic and national identity as a basis for sovereignty over specific territories, it is timely to consider the part that literature has played and is playing in the creation of ethnic and national stereotypes. What role do such stereotypes have in literature? How are they created? From what materials are they constructed? What purpose do ethnic and national stereotypes serve? Can it ever be a useful one? Are they avoidable? Can we live without them? What can be done about the deleterious effects they may be thought to produce? Stereotyping is worldwide — is there a tribe, race and nation in existence which escapes being stereotyped by its neighbours? In what sense are these stereotypes accurate? How are these stereotypes reflected in and reinforced by literature? Should and can literature do anything about them? In Beyond Pug's Tour: National and Ethnic Stereotyping in Theory and Literary Practice, literary scholars, as well as academics engaged in sociological and psychological research, consider these and other questions by examining the work of specific authors and the circumstances in which stereotyping plays such a crucial part.
The study is an imagological analysis of Dutch immigrants in the United States, giving insights into stereotyping, identity formation, and the marketing of ethnicity. Tracing Dutch-American literary images through four centuries of writing in America, the study emphasizes the continuity of Dutch-American history. The assessment of images in their socio-cultural context reveals the disparity between literary and socio-cultural perception, the latter of which often evokes Dutch ethnicity in the United States as a mere means to an end. While the study ascertains which images of Dutch Americans have dominated public perception, it also investigates the origins of such images, their persistence irrespective of time and location, and the reasons for their fluctuating interpretations.