Queeste - Volume 28, Issue 2, 2021

Both in Die Riddere metter Mouwen (‘The Knight with the Sleeve’), a Flemish Arthurian romance written in the second part of the thirteenth century, and in Lodewijk van Velthem’s Fifth Part of the Spiegel Historiael (‘Mirror of History’), an early fourteenth-century continuation of Jacob van Maerlant’s voluminous world history (1284-1289), a frightening forest appears which is called Woud(e) sonder Genade (‘Forest without Mercy’). This correspondence is remarkable, for these Middle Dutch texts offer the oldest known occurences of a toponym not found in adjacent languages. Following the reasoning of Marijke Carasso-Kok, Thea Summerfield believes that Velthem has borrowed the name ‘Forest without Mercy’ from the Arthurian romance, which the chronicler may have known at the time: an adaptation of the story is inserted in the Velthem-owned Lancelot Compilation (c. 1320-1330). As Summerfield argues, Velthem presents the English King Edward I as a second King Arthur, not only by stating this explicitly and having Edward enact the role of his predecessor in Round Table festivities, but also, when narrating Edward’s feats, by reminding listeners and readers of Arthurian events from the past as described in romances. One of these romances, according to Summerfield, is Die Riddere metter Mouwen. After drawing his audience’s attention to this romance by using the singular name ‘Forest without Mercy’ again, Velthem in his chronicle – so Summerfield asserts – alludes to frightening incidents in the Arthurian Woud sonder Genade as told in the Flemish story. This narrative strategy, Summerfield concludes, served Velthem’s purpose to prove the historicity of the adventures King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table once experienced. The current paper aims to prove that Summerfield’s argument is not supported by evidence present in Velthem’s text: apart from the shared toponym, the chronicle contains no intertextual references to Die Riddere metter Mouwen. Therefore, its date of composition (1315-1317) is not valid as terminus ante quem for the creation of the Flemish romance.

In the second half of the fifteenth century the canonesses regular of the Brussels convent of Jericho produced dozens of manuscripts, both for their own community and, for payment, for wealthy lay people and religious institutions outside the convent walls. The accounts of the prioresses of Jericho, which contain a wealth of detailed information on manuscript production in the monastery, reveal that the lion’s share of the production process took place within the convent walls and was executed by the women: they prepared, wrote, and illuminated the quires. However, as they followed strict enclosure, the canonesses were dependent on others – mostly men – for the purchase of the raw materials they needed for their writing activities, for the binding of the books, as well as for the distribution of manuscripts to their buyers or commissioners. This article discusses the role that family members and servants, and especially the priests who governed the convent, played in the process of female monastic book production, and how they formed the necessary bridge between the convent and the world beyond the walls.

Literary historians have often noted the ‘conventional’ nature of the 14th-century Middle Dutch verse romance or ridderroman. While the corpus has long been depreciated as derivative, a mixture of older romance motifs amplified into sometimes grotesque proportions: ‘epic in decay’, this view has slowly been reconsidered. The complicated intertextuality of 14th-century ridderromans is now more understood as part of a literary game of recognition and surprise between creators and recipients. However, little comparative research has been done into the exact nature of such reworking strategies and the ‘game of romance’ in a larger 14th-century corpus. This research projects asks how adaptation as a compositional process is positioned with regards to the poetics of the 14th-century ridderroman. This will be done through an intra-textual analysis of the poetical markers and through a thorough review of the material, performance and socio-cultural contexts of the corpus texts. As such, it also reconceptualizes the corpus of 14th-century ridderromans in terms of 14th-century material production and reception, rather than purely textual composition.