The Arthur of the Low Countries

Description

In the medieval Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands), Arthurian romance flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Middle Dutch poets translated French material (like Chrétien’s Conte du Graal and the Prose Lancelot), but also created romances of their own, like Walewein. This book provides a current overview of the Dutch Arthurian material and the research that it has provoked. Geographically, the region is a crossroads between the French and Germanic spheres of influence, and the movement of texts and manuscripts (west to east) reflects its position, as revealed by chapters on the historical context, the French material and the Germanic Arthuriana of the Rhinelands. Three chapters on the translations of French verse texts, the translations of French prose texts, and on the indigenous romances form the core of the book, augmented by chapters on the manuscripts, on Arthur in the chronicles, and on the post-medieval Arthurian material..

Preface
Acknowledgements
The Contributors
Abbreviations
Guidelines for the Reader
Introduction - Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma
1 The Cultural and Historical Context of the Low Countries -Bram Caers and Mike Kestemont
2 French Arthurian Literature in the Low Countries - Keith Busby and Martine Meuwese
3 The Manuscripts - Bart Besamusca
4 King Arthur in the Historiography of the Low Countries - Thea Summerfield
5 Translations and Adaptations of French Verse Romances: Tristant, Wrake van Ragisel, Ferguut, Perchevael, Torec - Marjolein Hogenbirk and David F. Johnson
6 Indigenous Arthurian Romances: Walewein, Moriaen, Ridder metter mouwen, Walewein ende Keye, Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet - Simon Smith and Roel Zemel
7 Translations and Adaptations of French Prose Romances, Including the Lancelot Compilation - Frank Brandsma
8 Arthurian Literature of the Rhineland - Jürgen Wolf
9 The Arthurian Legacy - Geert van Iersel
General Bibliography
Index of Manuscripts
General Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Medieval
• Países Bajos
• Netherlands
• Belgium

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786836847
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE ARTHUR OF THE LOW COUNTRIES
ARTHURIAN LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
X
THE ARTHUR OF THE LOW COUNTRIES
THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND IN DUTCH AND FLEMISH LITERATURE
edited by
Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma
© The Vinaver Trust, 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683-682-3
e-ISBN 978-1-78683-684-7
The right of the Contributors to be identified separately as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Cover image: The battle of Salisbury Plain (left part of the image) and King Arthur, critically injured, who is transported from the battlefield (right part of the image). Miniature on folio 163v of MS The Hague, Royal Library, KA 20 (Jacob van Maerlant, Spiegel historiael ).
PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH
THE VINAVER TRUST
The Vinaver Trust was established by the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society to commemorate a greatly respected colleague and a distinguished scholar
Eugène Vinaver
The editor of Malory’s Morte Darthur. The Trust aims to advance study of Arthurian literature in all languages by planning and encouraging research projects in the field, and by aiding publication of the resultant studies.
ARTHURIAN LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Series Editor
Ad Putter
I The Arthur of the Welsh , edited by Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman and Brynley F. Roberts (University of Wales Press, 1991)
II The Arthur of the English , edited by W. R. J. Barron (University of Wales Press, 1999)
III The Arthur of the Germans , edited by W. H. Jackson and S. A. Ranawake (University of Wales Press, 2000)
IV The Arthur of the French , edited by Glyn S. Burgess and Karen Pratt (University of Wales Press, 2006)
V The Arthur of the North , edited by Marianne E. Kalinke (University of Wales Press, 2011)
VI The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature , edited by Siân Echard (University of Wales Press, 2011)
VII The Arthur of the Italians , edited by Gloria Allaire and F. Regina Psaki (University of Wales Press, 2014)
VIII The Arthur of the Iberians , edited by David Hook (University of Wales Press, 2015)
IX Arthur in the Celtic Languages , edited by Ceridwen Lloyd- Morgan and Erich Poppe (University of Wales Press, 2019)
X The Arthur of the Low Countries , edited by Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma (University of Wales Press, 2021)
CONTENTS
Preface
Dedication
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Abbreviations
Guidelines for the Reader
Introduction
Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma
1 The Cultural and Historical Context of the Low Countries
Bram Caers and Mike Kestemont
2 French Arthurian Literature in the Low Countries
Keith Busby and Martine Meuwese
3 The Manuscripts
Bart Besamusca
4 King Arthur in the Historiography of the Low Countries
Thea Summerfield
5 Translations and Adaptations of French Verse Romances: Tristant , Wrake van Ragisel , Ferguut , Perchevael , Torec
Marjolein Hogenbirk and David F. Johnson
6 Indigenous Arthurian Romances: Walewein , Moriaen , Ridder metter mouwen , Walewein ende Keye , Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet
Simon Smith and Roel Zemel
7 Translations and Adaptations of French Prose Romances, Including the Lancelot Compilation
Frank Brandsma
8 Arthurian Literature of the Rhineland
Jürgen Wolf
9 The Arthurian Legacy
Geert van Iersel
Illustrations
Notes
General Bibliography
PREFACE
The Arthur of the Low Countries is an important addition to the series Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages. The purpose of the series is to provide a reliable and comprehensive survey of Arthurian writing in all its generic and linguistic diversity. For many years, the single-volume Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History , ed. Roger Sherman Loomis (Oxford, 1959) served the needs of scholars and students of Arthurian literature admirably, but it has inevitably been overtaken by advances in scholarship and by changes in critical perspectives and methodologies. The Vinaver Trust recognised the need for a fresh and up-to-date survey, and knew that a series of volumes would be required to do justice to the distinctive contributions made to Arthurian literature by the many different cultures of medieval Europe.
In the multi-volume series as originally planned by the late W. R. J. Barron, Middle Dutch Arthurian Literature was allocated a single chapter, ‘The Medieval Dutch Arthurian Material’, in The Arthur of the Germans , edited by Silvia Ranawake and Harry Jackson (2000). Considering the richness and the diversity of medieval Arthurian literature from the Low Countries, this chapter, however good, could hardly do more than scratch the surface, and in 2015 the Vinaver Trust took the decision that a book-length treatment was needed. Two leading Arthurian scholars, Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma, were invited to oversee this new volume, The Arthur of the Low Countries . As the title indicates, the book, while focusing on Dutch-language Arthurian writings, also adopts a broader cultural perspective than the chapter in The Arthur of the Germans . Since French was a living vernacular in the Low Countries and since there was (and still is) no sharp linguistic border between Dutch and German, the book includes consideration of French-language and Low-German Arthurian writings. It also examines the influence of medieval Arthurian literature on post-medieval literature from the Low Countries.
The series is mainly aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students and at scholars working in the fields covered by each of the volumes. The series has, however, also been designed to be accessible to general readers and to students and scholars from different fields who want to discover what forms Arthurian narratives took in literatures and languages that they do not know, and how these narratives influenced the linguistic and literary traditions that they do know. Within these parameters, the editors have had full control over the shape and content of their individual volumes.
Ad Putter Professor of Medieval English, University of Bristol (General Editor)
DEDICATION
We dedicate this book to the memory of Willem Pieter (Wim) Gerritsen (1935–2019). He is the giant on whose shoulders Dutch and Flemish Arthurian scholars stand.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Compared to other fields of research in Dutch and Flemish medieval studies, Arthurian scholarship is not the largest area, but it is productive and rich, because the individual scholars know each other and work well together, also across the Belgian-Dutch border. This collaborative book is ample proof of that and we have greatly enjoyed cooperating with our colleagues.
It did take a bit longer than expected, due to all kinds of circumstances, to complete this book and we are grateful to the University of Wales Press for its patience and its readiness to accommodate the amended time frames we were forced to propose.
We would like to thank Imke de Gier (Academic Language Services) for correcting the chapters in this book that were written by non-native English authors and Karen Pratt for commenting on our introduction. We are grateful to our research assistant Roos Brands for her invaluable assistance in the preparation of the volume and to Harry Armstrong for compiling the first version of the General Index.
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Vinaver Trust and the Utrechtse Stichting voor Literatuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek (USLO), which made it possible to publish this volume.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Bart Besamusca is Professor of Middle Dutch Textual Culture from an International Perspective in the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies at Utrecht University.
Frank Brandsma is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature (Middle Ages) in the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies at Utrecht University.
Keith Busby is Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Bram Caers is a Postdoc (NWO-Veni) in the field of Medieval and Early Modern Dutch Literature at the University of Leiden.
Marjolein Hogenbirk is Lecturer in Middle Dutch Literature and the History of the Book at the University of Amsterdam.
Geert van Iersel is Senior Lecturer at the Fontys University English Teacher Training Programme in Tilburg.
David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University.
Mike Kestemont is Assistant Research Professor in Digital Text Analysis at the University of Antwerp.
Martine Meuwese is Lecturer in Art History (Middle Ages) in the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies at Utrecht University.
Simon Smith is Independent Researcher in Medieval Courtly Culture and Arthurian Romance.
Thea Summerfield is former Senior Lecturer in Old and Middle English in the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies at Utrecht University.
Jürgen Wolf is Professor of Old German Philology (Middle Ages) at the Philipps-Universität Marburg.
Roel Zemel is forme