Cats, Jacob

Cats, Jacob(us)

 known as Father Cats

(born Nov. 10, 1577, Brouwershaven, Zeeland, Spanish Netherlands—died Sept. 12, 1660, Zorgvliet, near The Hague) Dutch poet. A magistrate and high official, he was enormously popular as a writer of emblem books, consisting of woodcuts or engravings with verses possessing a moral. His Mirror of Old and New Times (1632) contains many quotations that have become household sayings in the Netherlands, and he used it to express the ethical concerns of Dutch Calvinists, especially about love and marriage.

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Cats, Jacob 

Born Nov. 10, 1577, in Brouwershaven; died Sept. 12, 1660, in Zorgh-vliet, near The Hague. Dutch poet; lawyer by profession.

Cats’ literary career began at the age of 40. His principal works—Marriage (1625), Mirror of Old and New Times (1632), Betrothal Ring (1637), Old Age, Rural Life, and Thoughts on Farming in Zorgh-vliet (1656), and the autobiographical Eighty Years of My Life (1657)—are didactic and reflect a strict Calvinist morality. Cats depicts manners and customs within the framework of everyday concerns and bourgeois virtues and vices.

WORK

Aile de werken van Jacob Cats, vols. 1–2. Dordrecht, 1880.

REFERENCES

Korsakov, P. Iakov Kats, poet, myslitel’ i muzh soveta. St. Petersburg, 1839.
Duinkerken, A. van. Het tweede plan, Jacob Cats. Amsterdam, 1945.
Brachin, P. La Littérature néerlandaise. Paris, 1962.