Literature
Goethe, Shakespeare, Reve: How Politicians talk about literature in parliament

In an explorative study at the University of Oldenburg, for the first time, parliamentary debates from the Dutch, German and British parliament were systematically searched for references to writers using digital methods. The results of the dissertation project show which writers are frequently quoted by politicians and how literary references are used in political debates in neighbouring European countries.

By Lina L. Blank

Politics and literature are closely intertwined. Governments can actively promote the production of literature, for example through subsidies, cultural programs, or a fixed book price. But political decisions can also have a restrictive effect. Think of censorship or unfavourable tax policies (cf. Dorleijn et al. 2007: xv).

But what do politicians think about literature? Which conceptions of “good” and “subsidy-worthy” literature underlie their political decisions? A look at how writers are mentioned in the Dutch, German and British parliaments reveal astonishing first findings.

Literary references: Mentions as indicators

To analyse the parliamentary debates, a methodological approach was chosen that was developed by Swedish media scholar Karl-Erik Rosengren. In the 1980s, he proposed analysing author mentions in literary criticism as an indicator of a society’s shared literary frame of reference (cf. Rosengren 1985: 157). Regardless whether the authors are praised or criticized, what matters for the social frame of reference is: Who is mentioned and how often?

Rosengren’s technique was digitized and expanded to a European comparative perspective as part of the DFG funded project “Literary concepts of the juridical and political elites in the Netherlands in the 20th century”. The basis for this approach is the assumption that politicians use references to writers (consciously or unconsciously) firstly to show that they are acquainted with literature (cultural capital, cf. Bourdieu 2001: 362) and, secondly, to use this knowledge to support their political goals rhetorically and symbolically (cf. Dörner/Vogt 2013: 229).

Theoretically, the study is rooted in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of literature, which understands literature as the result of social and material processes of production (Bourdieu 2001). The theoretical model is combined with digital methods. A specially developed program automatically searches parliamentary debates for mentions of authors. The basis for the search is the dataset ParlSpeechV2, which contains around 2.9 million speeches from the Tweede Kamer, the Bundestag, and the House of Commons, held between 1994 and 2018: A total of over 520 million words (cf. Rauh/Schwalbach 2020).

The speeches were searched for 250 names of international literary authors and 100 names of Dutch literary authors, selected from the index of Harold Blooms The Western Canon (Bloom 1994) and the Dutch canon-enquete 2022 (Van Deinsen et al. 2022: 31). The selection of writers was focused on Dutch and on canonized authors and it has to be understood as exploratory rather than representative.  

Who is cited – and who is not?

The key findings are as clear as they are revealing: between 1994 and 2018, far fewer mentions were found in Dutch parliamentary debates than in German and British debates. Only 428 authors were mentioned in the Tweede Kamer, compared to 870 in the German Bundestag and as many as 2,139 in the British House of Commons.

Not only do the total numbers differ in international comparison, but so does the profile of the authors mentioned. The five most frequently mentioned writers in the Bundestag are solely German-speaking. Goethe tops the list with 263 mentions, followed by Brecht (132), Schiller (72), Thomas Mann (47) and Heine (39). Even though, the German Bundestag was only used as a control group for the Dutch Tweede Kamer. Only 14 German writers can be found in Bloom’s canon index, there was hardly any focus on the search for German-writing authors.

A similar pattern can be seen in the House of Commons, only here the focus is on anglophone authors. Unsurprisingly, the classic of English literature Shakespeare ranks first with 630 mentions, followed by Dickens (226), Wilde (101), Rushdie (69), and Carroll (60).

In the Netherlands, by contrast, the most frequently mentioned author is the German-speaking Kafka, with only 54 mentions. The majority of the mentions, however refer to the proverbial meaning of kafkaesk rather than to the writer himself. The Dutch author Gerard Reve (47) comes in second place. Shakespeare (31) is in third place, followed by the classic Plato (17) and finally the Dutch Multatuli (14).

Skepticism toward literature?

The results of the pilot study support the long-discussed thesis of a certain scepticism among Dutch elites towards modern Dutch literature, at least persisting until the 1960s (cf. Grüttemeier 2016: 178; Grüttemeier 2018: 79). The use of literary references within the political arena seems to be less established in the Dutch parliament than in Germany of the UK. The numbers also suggest that this scepticism does not only apply to Dutch literature (cf. Dirkx 1995:78), but also to literature in general – and that the scepticism continues into the 21st century.

This study is a relatively small pilot study that provides some promising initial insights. The trends observed should be viewed as tentative indications and should encourage further investigation. The results should not be used to reinforce simplistic stereotypes, but rather as a catalyst for more extensive and in-depth research that examines the findings in a broader and more nuanced context.

Literary status and strategic referencing

The quantitative observations are supported by an exemplary content analysis of references to Goethe, Shakespeare, and Reve. In contrast to Dutch politicians, German and British politicians not only use more mentions in parliament, they also quote more frequently and extensively and they make strong references to the literary content. The literary status of references to writers is emphasized much more prominently by politicians in Germany and the United Kingdom than in the Netherlands.

Furthermore, in references to the writer Reve, the author’s literary status is repeatedly not mentioned at all. Instead, the focus in a significant portion of the debates lays on a demand for a far-reaching freedom of expression. Reve is used first and foremost for the outcome of the famous donkey trial of the 1960s, in which he was charged and acquitted for blasphemy (cf. Blank 2025: 100).  

Outlook: Opportunity for critical reflection?

The research project not only studies examples of how literature is discussed the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. Another important outcome is the compilation of the results in the form of a so-called Mentions-Lexicon (soon available as Open Source).  The lexicon includes all speeches in which a writer is mentioned. The lexicon provides an excellent basis for reflecting on and conveying national differences and similarities in the usage of literary references and their literary status.