ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews three characteristic cases chosen from among authors from the Netherlands in the time of Erasmus: the poem Marias of Erasmus' friend Cornelius Aurelius from Gouda; the Dutch history of Reinier Snoy, also from Gouda; and the play Palamedes by the Walloon humanist Remaclus Arduenna. It begins with the historian as an example of scholarly dependence. Snoy is the author of the thirteen-book De rebus Batavicis, written between 1509 and 1519. In 1506-08 Martinus Dorpius reworked it into a scenic Dialogus for his arts students at Louvain. It is a dialogue of a life-weary Hercules, who must make a choice between Virtue and Venus seconded by her son, Cupid. It has often been thought that this dialogue gave Remaclus the idea for his own play. It is possible, indeed, that he had heard of it, or had even seen it in manuscript, since he was in Brabant in 1509.
