Situated at the crossroads of important trade routes, the bustling seaports of the Low Countries not only traded cargoes of grain and timber, silk and spices, woollen cloth and splendidly executed altarpieces, but also manuscripts and books, news, information, ideas and gossip. Thus the Netherlands were touched by the evangelical Reformation movement at an early stage and played an increasingly important role as a crossroads for religious and philosophical ideas, serving as an intermediary between different parts of the world. The third volume of Intersections is devoted to this aspect...

In the early modern period, deceit and fraud were common issues. Acutely aware of the ubiquity and multiplicity of simulation and dissimulation, people from this period made serious efforts to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon, trying to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable, pleasant and unpleasant, wicked and virtuous forms of deceit, and seeking to unravel its principles, strategies, and functions. The twelve case-studies in this volume focus on the use of deceit by several groups of people in different spheres of life, as well as on its representation in literary and...