Project detail Title: Theodore Van Ryswyck (1811-1849) and Literary Romanticism in Antwerp. Duration: 01/10/2011 - 30/09/2013 Researcher(s): Principal investigator:  Couttenier Piet Fellow:  Ceulemans Adelheid Research Team(s): Institute for the Study of Literature in the Low Countries (ISLN) Abstract: This project focuses on the function of literature in the modern nation-building process from a literary perspective. The subject of research is the poetry of Theodoor Van Ryswyck: an important figure in the romantic school of Antwerp and a transition figure of a Belgian to a Flemish cultural nationalism. He''s the author of a various and, with respect to the content, predominantly political oeuvre. The methodological approach of this research is twofold: the corpus is textually analysed and is also situated in his historical, political, cultural and socio-institutional context. The hypothesis is that the poetry of Van Ryswyck contributed to the process of Flemish (sub)nation-building and identity-creation, e.g. by linking political issues to ethical and moral questions.-