Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Map
- Introduction
- PART I COURT AND CITY
- PART II THE WORLD OF CHIVALRY
- 5 Middle Dutch Charlemagne romances and the oral tradition of the chansons de geste
- 6 The prologue to Arturs doet, the Middle Dutch translation of La Mort le Roi Artu in the Lancelot Compilation
- 7 The Roman van Walewein, an episodic Arthurian romance
- PART III REYNARD THE FOX
- PART IV THE LITERATURE OF LOVE
- PART V RELIGIOUS LITERATURE
- PART VI ARTES TEXTS
- PART VII DRAMA
- Appendix A Bibliography of translations
- Appendix B Chronological table
- Index
6 - The prologue to Arturs doet, the Middle Dutch translation of La Mort le Roi Artu in the Lancelot Compilation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Map
- Introduction
- PART I COURT AND CITY
- PART II THE WORLD OF CHIVALRY
- 5 Middle Dutch Charlemagne romances and the oral tradition of the chansons de geste
- 6 The prologue to Arturs doet, the Middle Dutch translation of La Mort le Roi Artu in the Lancelot Compilation
- 7 The Roman van Walewein, an episodic Arthurian romance
- PART III REYNARD THE FOX
- PART IV THE LITERATURE OF LOVE
- PART V RELIGIOUS LITERATURE
- PART VI ARTES TEXTS
- PART VII DRAMA
- Appendix A Bibliography of translations
- Appendix B Chronological table
- Index
Summary
Around 1320 a codex was made in Brabant which centuries later would prove to be of extraordinary importance to the study of Middle Dutch Arthurian romances. The collection of texts that has survived in this codex, at present preserved in the Royal Library of The Hague (MS 129 A 10), is better known as the Lancelot Compilation. The compiler of this codex has brought together no fewer than ten Middle Dutch Arthurian romances into an ordered sequence. This new compositional form, characterized by the arrangement of different romances into one comprehensive structure, probably marks a specific stage in the evolution of Arthurian literature. After all, the development of Arthurian romances into summae of Arthurian material is also attested by other European literatures. The Lancelot Compilation as a cycle of Arthurian romances is, for example, to a large extent comparable with the collection of Arthurian material preserved in MS fonds franfais 112 of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. This compilation, which dates from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, includes almost all important Old French Arthurian prose romances, such as the Lancelot en prose and the Tristan en prose.
The core of the Lancelot Compilation consists of a metrical translation of the Lancelot en prose, La Queste del Saint Graal and La Mort le Roi Artu.
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- Information
- Medieval Dutch Literature in its European Context , pp. 96 - 112Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994