Book excerpt: This volume contains a selection of essays presented at the international conference of Cultural Crises in Art and Literature, held in Groningen in November 2002, in special sessions concerning modern Dutch literature. The recent decennia have shown a gradual transition in Netherlandic Studies towards new scopes: a contextual orientation of literature and the reception of 'Theory'. The contributions to this volume touch upon the theme of cultural crises from the perspective of these frameworks, approaching topics like the interrelation of literary representation and historical and medical discourse concerning the obsession by dirt, contamination, and dust; the impact of nationalism and humanism (in the political field) on literary education; the decline of modernism, resulting in the changing position of women authors, the rise of children's literature and the reassessment of 'low' genres like melodrama. A brief outline of the development of the study of modern Dutch literature opens this volume, the presentation of a general theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualizing the notion of cultural crisis concludes it.