Moral literacy: The pleasure of learning how to become decent adults and good parents in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century

This article is about the most fundamental analogical literacy in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, namely moral literacy, or the practice and knowledge of how to behave according to moral rules. The question asked is why the style of using pleasure and frivolity in learning educational and family virtues turned out to become popular, this notwithstanding the fact that in the Dutch Republic, dominated by Calvinism, tension was present in learning the pursuit of these very virtues through the pursuit of pleasure. The success of the winning moralist style can be explained by three different reasons. First, the orthodox Calvinists did never succeed in the domination of Dutch civilisation; second, there existed a well-functioning market that brought together producers and consumers; finally, a belief existed in the effectiveness of combining morality with fun: funny messages were the strongest ones according to the most successful moralists.