Journal of the International Arthurian Society, 2015

Arthuriana, 2005

Journal of the International Arthurian Society 1.1 (2013), 3-28, 2013

The intent of this essay is to survey the critical work on Arthurian literature in the North over the last twenty years or so. As the Norse heritage of the matière de Bretagne is gaining increasing interest and recognition among scholars, it nevertheless remains fairly obscure among scholars working on the other linguistic branches of Arthurian legend. Our hope is thus to provide an overview of the current scholarship on the Norse transmission, to reveal its relevance to the larger context of the European transmission of the Arthurian matter and to encourage cross-linguistic engagement with the legend as the most promising venue to gain an understanding of Arthur’s place in European literary history.

Queeste

This long-awaited volume by Middle Dutch specialists Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma offers a survey of the Arthurian material that circulated in the medieval Low Countries and of its afterlife. Situated between the Kingdom of France and the German Empire, the Low Countries covered a set of territories that roughly corresponds to modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands. Although politically an imagined territory, the area was unified by the spoken vernacular of Middle Dutch (and French in the southernmost regions). In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, stories about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table flourished in this region, taking on various forms. The unique corpus that survives today consists of translations and adaptations of Old French verse and prose romances, alongside original compositions. The Arthur of the Low Countries is the newest addition to Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, a series of volumes known for its comprehensive and accessible overviews of Arthurian literature across Europe. In nine chapters, preceded by the Series Editor's preface (ix-x) and an editorial introduction (1-6), the volume takes survey of the Arthurian stories of the medieval Low Countries, their manuscript production and their reception by contemporary as well as post-medieval audiences. The volume closes with an ample bibliography (217-238), an index of manuscripts cited (239-240), followed by a general index (241-249). Bram Caers and Mike Kestemont's opening chapter (7-30) takes on the difficult task of outlining the complex geographical, cultural and political context of the medieval Low Countries. The chapter conveys useful insights into the different regions and dialects of the area and explicates with exemplary clarity the cross-connections with Arthurian literature in French and German. The counties of Flanders, Holland/Zeeland and Hainaut,

Anglia, 2013

quium sponsored by the University of Aberystwyth, the headquarters of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary team, and subsequently published by the Anglo-Norman Online Hub, the collection is primarily aimed at scholars of historical lexicology as well as compilers of electronic lexicographical resources and historical dictionaries. However, whilst the Anglo-Norman language is the primary focus, a number of articles (by Merrilees, Rothwell and Howlett, for example) deal specifically with literary aspects of insular French. The collection might have benefitted from the addition of an introduction by the editor, perhaps explaining further the purposes and outcomes of the colloquium and setting out the organising principle behind the arrangement of articles. However, it is clear that Trotter has arranged the offerings with a careful editorial eye, as topics discussed and questions raised follow clearly from each article to the next in complementary fashion. This is truly a comprehensive snapshot of the 'state-of-play' of current Anglo-Norman language scholarship, recommending many intriguing directions for future research.

2014

My dissertation addresses a significant gap in Arthurian scholarship and calls for the study of Arthurian literature as a transnational phenomenon. Inspired by postcolonial and translation theory, my dissertation research offers a new perspective on medieval Arthurian texts in the peripheries of Europe (also called "second-tier" Arthurian texts). Instead of concentrating on the canonical texts (French, English, and German), I analyze materials from the Celtic (Irish and Welsh), Scandinavian (Norwegian and Icelandic), and Iberian (Castilian and Catalan) traditions, demonstrating how these Arthurian texts played different roles in each culture and how they were shaped by, and in turn shaped, their environments. Chapters II and III introduce the ways that Celtic texts present a delicate balance between praising kings for their amazing deeds and chastising them for ultimately leading to the downfall of their people and the lands they should have protected. Thus, the Celtic texts concentrate on both Arthur and his knights as a unit. Chapter IV shifts the analysis to a transnational perspective by comparing the Arthurian texts of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chrétien de Troyes, among the most viii canonical Arthurian texts, pointing out the ways in which their uses of Arthur and his knights fit with their own historical and cultural contexts. Each text creates a different Arthur that has family resemblances to the other Arthurs. The Arthurian texts from the Iberian Peninsula concentrate on the knights, but turn them into kings, a very different interpretive move from the Arthurian texts discussed above. Chapter V discusses how Iberian courtly ideals were intertwined with ideas of chivalry and knighthood. Arthurian literature served as an example for the nobles of the Castilian and Catalan courts. The kings in these tales emulated Arthurian journeys and jousts and even imitated the behaviors of Arthur's knights. The obsession of the Iberian courts with Arthurian ideals is the subject of one of the most important critiques made by Cervantes in Don Quixote. By contrast, in Scandinavian Arthurian texts the knights take center stage. Chapter VI explores how the Arthurian texts relate to the characters of the Icelandic sagas such as Egils saga skallagrímssonar. The sagas depict Icelandic settlers interacting with the kings of Norway. A close comparison of the Icelandic sagas with the Nordic Arthurian tales reveals parallels between the relationship of Arthur to his knights and the relationship of the kings of Norway to the Icelandic Vikings. The primary parallel exists in the exaltation of those that travel (knights and Icelandic Vikings) over the kings (Arthur and the Norwegian kings). I conclude that this correlation between the sagas of the Icelanders and the Arthurian texts clarifies why Scandinavian Arthurian texts were first translated in Norway but only survive thanks to copies made in Iceland. Chapter VI also addresses the fact that the Icelandic Tristan is Spanish and fights "heathens" that pray to Mohammed, exposing the ways in which Spaniards were constructed in the north. ix My work demonstrates the transnational qualities of Arthurian tales, emphasizing the ways in which the peripheral cultures take the Arthurian motifs and transform them, while still presenting King Arthur and his knights. Moreover, my research reveals that our notions of the canonical Arthurian texts (emphasizing the English, French, and German texts) are not shaped by the literary reality of medieval texts, as Arthurian literature was present throughout the entirety of Europe. A scholarly comparison between the Arthurian material of the Iberian Peninsula and Scandinavia has not been undertaken to date. This dissertation calls for the study of Arthurian literature as a transnational phenomenon that moves beyond nationalistic points of view reflecting the perspectives of the culturally dominant modern European nations. x

2014

Olifant, 2004

The popular genre of the chansons de geste came to the Low Countries from France at an early stage. The oldest Middle Dutch texts, like the Roelantslied, the Renout van Montalbaen, and the Limburg Aiol, probably date back as far as the twelfth century. About twenty of the more than one hundred known chansons de geste have come down to us in Dutch. These were composed not in laisses but in rhyming couplets and do not, therefore, correspond to the French poems in form. Independent of the French epic tradition at the same time that it relies heavily upon it, Dutch chivalric literature is a striking example of the powerful way in which French culture radiated to the north. In most cases the Middle Dutch texts can be regarded as versions, though not literal translations, of their French counterparts. The inquiry into the true nature of the relations between the French and Dutch texts has been occupying Dutch specialists for more than a century and a half now.

D.S. Brewer eBooks, 2014