Jaargang / Volume 23 (2016)
Nummer / Issue 1
Bram Caers & Pieter Verhoeven
Sint Rombout in een Mechelse stadskroniek
Laatvijftiende-eeuwse devotie geprojecteerd op het verleden
1-21
Bram Caers (University of Antwerp), Universiteit Antwerpen, Departement Letterkunde, Prinsstraat 13, S.D.214, B-2000 Antwerpen, België, [email protected]
Pieter Verhoeven (University of Antwerp), [email protected]
In a Mechelen urban chronicle written around 1500 by Mechelen citizen Jan de Wilde, much attention is devoted to the city’s patron, Saint Rumbold. The author based his chronicle mainly on Brabantine historiography, but added passages on Rumbold from various sources. Among these are not only an older vita describing Rumbold’s life and miracles, but possibly also archival sources which are still kept in the city archives today. The article shows that Jan de Wilde was true to his sources, but at the same time consciously increased the importance of Rumbold in his narrative. His version of Mechelen’s history, infused with Rumbold’s vita, fits within a broader context of intensified devotion towards the city patron in the late fifteenth century that increasingly associated the Saint with the city’s urban identity.
Wouter Haverals
Heraldisch vakmanschap in De Grimbergse oorlog
22-36
Wouter Haverals (University of Antwerp), Universiteit Antwerpen, Instituut voor de Studie van de Letterkunde in de Nederlanden, Prinsstraat 13 B-2000 Antwerpen, [email protected]
This article explores the use of heraldry in the Middle Dutch rhymed epic De Grimbergse oorlog (The War of Grimbergen). An investigation of the heraldic evidence that is amply present in this text supports the claim that it is a product of the fourteenth century. Especially the use of a well thought-out system of cadency shows us that the coats of armor originate from a period during which the heraldic practice has already ripened and improved on many levels. This being said, it has also become apparent that the author made the effort to present some coats of armor in a more archaic way. By diminishing the number of heraldic marks of cadency, the author has tried to give several weapons a more primitive look. This is, for example, apparent from the weapons of such noble families as Vianden, Leefdaal and Trazegnies.
Simon Smith
Moest Miraudijs wijken voor Moriaen?
Over de inpassing van Die Riddere metter Mouwen in de Lancelotcompilatie
37-51
Simon Smith (VU University Amsterdam), [email protected]
The Lancelot Compilation (The Hague, Royal Library, ms 129 A 10), compiled in Brabant c. 1325, includes adaptations of seven Arthurian romances in Middle Dutch, inserted between Flemish translations of the Lancelot en prose, the Queste del Saint Graal and the Mort le Roi Artu. The text supposed to be incorporated last into this huge cycle is Die Riddere metter Mouwen (‘The Knight with the Sleeve’). Narrative inconsistencies and characteristics of the main scribe’s handwriting, however, suggest that the adaptation and copying of this romance may have started before the decision was made to enlarge the cycle with yet another text, Moriaen. This romance had to precede the Flemish Queeste, forcing the compiler to relocate Die Riddere metter Mouwen. Originally intended to precede the Queeste as well, Die Riddere metter Mouwen now had to be inserted after the Grail Quest. This caused a discrepancy, for the appearance of Percheval, alive and well, in the story contradicts this knight’s death in the Queeste. The current opinion in research, according to which Die Riddere metter Mouwen appears to have been added to the compilation in its final stage of production, is questioned by such an inconsistency. Further research is required, but unless proven otherwise it may have been Moriaen, not Miraudijs, whose story was added last to ms 129 A 10.
Naar aanleiding van ... / A propos of ...
Janet van der Meulen
Zedeloze dwaasheden in beeld. Over de handschriften van de Franse Cassamus
52-54
Janet van der Meulen (VU University Amsterdam), Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, [email protected]
Lianne van Beek
Een bovenaardse vrouw. Zes eeuwen verering van Liduina van Schiedam. Charles Caspers
54-57
Lianne van beek (University of Groningen), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Sectie Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis, Oude Boteringestraat 23, NL-9712 GC Groningen, [email protected]
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Register op jaargang 22 (2015) / Index for Volume 22 (2015)58-59
Nummer / Issue 2
Themanummer / Special Issue
Between Stability and Transformation. Textual Traditions in the Medieval Netherlands
Editors: Renée Gabriël & Johan Oosterman
Texts are subject to transformation, especially during the Middle Ages. The medieval textual culture was a manuscript culture, characterized in a unique way by variance. At the same time, both authors, scribes, and readers seem to have valued the faithful transmission of texts. This brings us to the question of what motivated people to rewrite a work more thoroughly. A contextual shift may have evoked textual changes, for the text had to be adapted to new readers’ frames of reference. In this Special Issue of Queeste contributors investigate how changing circumstances led to adaptations within a text and how the notion of stability relates to the idea of the open text.
Renée Gabriël
Between Stability and Transformation. Textual Traditions in the Medieval Netherlands
61-70
Renée Gabriël (Radboud University Nijmegen), [email protected]
Stephen G. Nichols
Mutable Stability, a Medieval Paradox
The Case of Le roman de la Rose
71-103
Stephen G. Nichols (Johns Hopkins University Baltimore), Dept. of German and Romance Languages, Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218-2687, United States
The medieval codex fostered textual mutability as opposed to the ‘fixed text’ made possible by print. Yet, the Middle Ages resisted change in and for itself. This paper explores the delicate balance between stability, on the one hand, and transformation, on the other in medieval vernacular literature. Only a culture that saw no contradiction in promulgating an omnipotent, unchanging divinity, which was at the same time a dynamic principle of construction and transformation could have managed the paradox of ‘mutable stability’. While this principle operates in a number of domains – not least in the myriad art forms known as ‘Romanesque’ – this paper focuses on manuscript transmission of vernacular literature. In particular, it examines the concepts of ‘sameness’ and ‘resemblance’ that shaped the concepts of vision in the Roman de la Rose, and thus manuscripts transmission. Using the idea of generative or regenerative transformation of the text, the paper illustrates a basic principle of stability, namely, ‘the ability of an object to adjust to load changes without any reduction in performance’.
Geert Warnar
Literature, Law and Late Medieval Textual Culture in the Low Countries
104-122
Geert Warnar (University of Leiden), Universiteit Leiden, Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, P.N. van Eykhof 3, NL–2311 BV Leiden, [email protected]
The variety of recent work on texts and their transmission in Dutch medieval literature raises new questions on the interaction and cross-influences of philology (old and new) and literary studies within the broader framework of cultural history. Is the study of medieval Dutch literature being redefined in an analysis of medieval textual culture? If so, what does it mean for our scholarly interests in medieval Dutch literature?
Adrian Armstrong
‘Imprimé en la ville marchande et renommée d’Anvers’
Antwerp Editions of Jean Molinet’s Poetry
123-137
Adrian Armstrong (Queen Mary University London), School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London EI 4NS, United Kingdom, [email protected]
Two works by the prolific Burgundian rhétoriqueur Jean Molinet (1435-1507) were published posthumously in Antwerp, by printers whose output covered various languages. Willem Vorsterman printed La Recollection des Merveilleuses Advenues, a verse chronicle begun by George Chastelain and continued by Molinet, in c.1510; Martin Lempereur printed La Complaincte de la Terre Saincte, a version of Molinet’s Complainte de Grèce, in 1532 for Jean de la Forge of Tournai. Both editions differ very significantly from other witnesses. This study demonstrates how the editions legitimate the texts’ ideological content in new ways in response to changing socio-historical circumstances, and considers the influence of their publishing context on the process of textual transformation. More generally, it reflects on the role of ‘masterplots’ in the adaptation of topical literature, and on wider processes of Franco-Dutch cultural exchange in the Burgundian Netherlands.
Rebecca Dixon
Adaptation and Lifestyle Aspiration in the Burgundian Fille du comte de Pontieu
138-153
Rebecca Dixon (University of Liverpool), Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Liverpool, Cypress Building, Chatham Street, Liverpool L69 7ZR, United Kingdom, [email protected]
The fifteenth-century Burgundian mises en prose have not always enjoyed the best press. As recastings of earlier Francophone sources, they have been traditionally, and dismissively, seen by critics as insipid examples of intralingual translation. More recent scholars have countered this unfavourable view, examining more closely the passage from verse to prose, and suggesting ways in which adaptation of the earlier narrative functions as cultural appropriation – ‘acculturation’ –, for the new Burgundian audience. But in this literary genre, and in this courtly milieu, such transformation goes further. Those studies which have looked at its cultural importance in the mises en prose do so on a purely textual level, without accounting for the investment in lavish material production evinced by the works’ manuscript presentation, and without accounting for the narrative preoccupation with certain types of episode at the Burgundian court under Philip the Good. Using the Paris manuscript of La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu (BnF, ms fr. 12572; before 1468) as a limit case, this chapter aims to redress the balance. Focussing on scenes of travel, combat and ceremony in both text and paratext, I show how the transformed prose work invests more heavily in such episodes than does its source, revealing an ideology of conspicuous consumption. Further, these scenes’ importance for the plot is subsidiary to their role in underlying the customary excess with which Burgundy conceived and expressed this distinctive ideology. Textual transformation in Fille provides the narrative articulation of lifestyle aspirations encoded in the book’s physical presentation as consumable luxury object.
Bram Caers
Layered text formation in urban chronicles
The case of an Early Modern Manuscript from Mechelen
154-170
Bram Caers (University of Antwerp), Universiteit Antwerpen, Instituut voor de Studie van de Letterkunde in de Nederlanden, Prinsstraat 13, S.D. 214, B–2000 Antwerpen, [email protected]
As a rule, chronicles are never finished. Chronicle texts were continued, expanded and altered, and are in this way the very essence of text variation. Chroniclers could and did mould existing text material, altering historical narratives to better fit into their present needs and those of their intended audience(s). The chronicle material from Mechelen is no exception to this rule. This paper focuses on a sixteenth-century manuscript in which a fifteenth-century chronicle text, the ‘Cronike van die scone ende heerlijke stadt van Mechelen’, has been continued and heavily altered by two contributors. The manuscript seems to have functioned for both as a type of ‘work in progress’, and is the autograph of their alterations and additions. The aim of this essay is to disentangle the complex text formation process within this manuscript. Doing so provides an improved insight into early modern authorship.
Antheun Janse
The Scribe as Partisan
Local Markers in Regional Chronicles
171-187
Antheun Janse (University of Leiden), Universiteit Leiden, Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Doelensteeg 16, NL–2311 VL Leiden
In dit artikel worden de overgeleverde handschriften van het Goudse kroniekje onderzocht. Deze kroniek werd in 1478 gedrukt door Gerard Leeu in Gouda en werd daarna verspreid in zowel handschrift als druk. Hoewel de naam anders suggereert, is deze kroniek geen stadskroniek, maar beschrijft hij de geschiedenis van het graafschap Holland. De aanvullingen die in sommige handschriften zijn geschreven, geven aanwijzingen (local markers) over de plaats van ontstaan van die aanvullingen. Hieruit wordt geconcludeerd dat het Goudse kroniekje een grote verspreiding kende.
Naar aanleiding van ... / A propos of ...
Holger Kahle
Wigamur für Komparatisten. Zur Neuedition des Wigamur von Joseph M. Sullivan
Wigamur. Edited and translated by Joseph M. Sullivan. Joseph M. Sullivan (Hg.)
188-192
Holger Kahle (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fakultät für Philologie, Germanistisches Institut, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany, [email protected]
Charles-Louis Morand Métivier
Une mise en émotion de l’analyse arthurienne: approches protéiformes
Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature. Body, Mind, Voice. Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington & Corinne Saunders (réd.)
Charles-Louis Morand Métivier (The University of Vermont), The University of Vermont, Dept. of Romance Languages and Linguistics, 85 S. Prospect St, Waterman 511, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. [email protected]
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Register op jaargang 23 (2016) / Index for Volume 23 (2016)
195-196