Crossroads of Cultures. Multilingual Diversity in Dutch Literature from Late Medieval Flanders

Abstract

During the late Middle Ages, the County of Flanders was an international crossroads of cultures where Dutch, French and Latin were used for everyday communication, official contact in cities, churches and courts. But how did these languages interact with each other when used together in literary texts and manuscripts, and what does the use of these languages tell us about how these works functioned and about the multilingual dynamics of the literary culture of medieval Flanders as a whole? This dissertation addresses these questions by analyzing the multilingual diversity of Dutch literature from late medieval Flanders and the functions of multilingualism as a literary tool, cultural phenomenon and sociolinguistic feature. This diversity is illustrated through six different case studies, in which different multilingual texts and manuscripts are centered. These works range from well-known classics such as the trilingual Van den vos Reynaerde and the Gruuthuse song codex from Bruges to lesser known books such as the medical Hattem C5 manuscript and the moral-theological Leeringhe van Salichede by Jan Praet. Attention is also paid to specific literary forms, such as parallel text translations, and the literary practices of specific regions, such as the Flemish border city Geraardsbergen. All of these works are studied through specific methodological lenses that shine light on different dimensions of literary multilingualism: in chapters 2 and 3 concepts from sociolinguistics are implemented, chapters 4 and 5 make use of concepts from the material philology, and chapters 6 and 7 work with insights from translation studies. Based on these case studies, writers used multilingualism for aesthetic enrichment of the text, to add structure and to express social criticism. They also used it as part of a literary game and as a means of knowledge production. This wide variation suggests that some Flemish authors were part of a broader literary discourse within which French and Latin were considered accepted aspects of Middle Dutch literature and that these languages could be deployed to enrich the work.