Introduction

Kooper, Erik

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511553967.003

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“…53 In 1994 Erik Kooper served the international scholarly community well by editing an unsurpassed collection of essays on Middle Dutch literature, including two articles on Arthuriana (Arturs doet and Walewein). 54 In the same year the proceedings of the Amsterdam colloquium on the development of narrative cycles in the chansons de geste and the Arthurian romances appeared. 55 In an often-quoted essay Frank Brandsma and I studied the first-person narrator in Lanceloet.…”

Section: Internationalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dutch Arthurian Literature

Besamusca¹

2006

A History of Arthurian Scholarship

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Ironically, the currently flourishing study of Arthurian literature in the Low Countries had a false start, as L.G. Visscher's 1838 publication of Ferguut, the thirteenth-century Middle Dutch rendition of Guillaume le Clerc's Fergus, was full of flaws. 1 The many inaccuracies in this first complete edition of a Middle Dutch chivalric romance not only confirmed the editor's self-characterization as an autodidact, they served unintentionally as a teething ring (to borrow Willem Kuiper's expression) for young philologists. 2 One of these critics, W.J.A. Jonckbloet, gave Middle Dutch literature the status of a scholarly discipline, byamong other things -writing a three-volume history of Middle Dutch literature and by publishing two groundbreaking editions of Arthurian texts. 3 In 1846 there appeared the editio princeps of the Roman van Walewein, a thirteenth-century indigenous romance written by the Flemish poets Penninc and Pieter Vostaert. This volume, containing the text of the poem only, was followed in 1848 by a book-length introduction and commentary of almost 350 pages. 4 Jonckbloet supplied his readers with a wealth of information on, for example, Walewein as a character, other romances featuring Arthur's nephew as their protagonist (for instance, Le Chevalier à l'épée and Le Chevalier aux deux épées), the estimated date and the literary merits of Penninc and Vostaert's romance. For more than a century, until G.A. van Es's 1957 edition of Walewein appeared, Jonckbloet's publication remained the standard edition. 5 Like the first part of the Walewein edition, the first volume of Jonckbloet's monumental edition of the Lancelot Compilation, an early fourteenth-century Brabantine cycle of ten Middle Dutch Arthurian romances, was published in 1846. The 47,255 lines of the compilation's second book -the first book is not 1 L.G. Visscher, ed., Ferguut. Ridderroman uit den Fabelkring van de ronde Tafel (Utrecht, 1838). 2 Willem Kuiper, Die riddere metten witten scilde. Oorsprong, overlevering en auteurschap van de Middelnederlandse Ferguut, gevolgd door een diplomatische editie en een diplomatisch glossarium (Amsterdam, 1989), p. 2. 3 For the literary history, see W.

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Section: Internationalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%