Nicolaas ("Nico") Hendricus Johannes van den Boogaard (28 October 1938,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

– 25 December 1982, Heemstede) was a

medievalist The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

scholar, professor, and dean of the Faculty of Letters at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

Career

In addition to his work as a teacher and administrator, he published widely on

medieval French literature Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, Medieval literature written in Oïl languages (particularly Old French and early Middle French) during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century. The ...

. His doctoral dissertation,
Rondeaux et refrains du XIIe siècle au début du XIVe: Collationnement, introduction et notes
' (Paris: Klincksieck, 1969), continues to be cited. This dissertation built a corpus of

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...

lyric poetry Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...

that Van den Boogaard then put into a computer

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

. In 1970, he enlarged the database and generated statistical information about several genres of

. He was a pioneer in the field of digital humanities, as well as a scholar of Old French

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

and literature. With Willem Noomen, he co-edited the ten-volume
Nouveau recueil complet des fabliaux
' (NRCF) (Assen, Holland: Van Gorcum, 1983-2001), (volume 1) and (volume 1 paperback), (volume 2), (volume 3), (volume 4), (volume 5), (volume 6), (volume 7), (volume 8), (volume 9), and (volume 10). He did not live to see it published. He died unexpectedly of

cardiac arrest Cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. It is a medical emergency that, without immediate medical intervention, will result in sudden cardiac death within minutes. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and possib ...

at age 44, on Christmas Day in 1982. Paul Zumthor'
obituary of Nico H. J. Van Den Boogaard
was published in ''Cahiers de civilisation médiévale'' 26.103 (1983): pp. 279–281. Many of the medievalist articles that Van den Boogaard wrote between 1962 and 1982 were republished after his death in the anthology
Autour de 1300: Etudes de philologie et de littérature médiévales
' (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1985), / . A bibliography of his publications, listing two dozen articles as well as book reviews and collaborative papers, is included in the introduction to ''Autour de 1300'', pages xxi-xxiv. Van den Boogaard's style of academic writing was modern, modest,

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

, good-humored, and accessible to a broad audience. 1938 births 1982 deaths Dutch medievalists Dutch philologists Romance philologists University of Amsterdam alumni Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam 20th-century philologists {{Netherlands-academic-bio-stub