The Middle Dutch Tradition

AS WE have seen, the influence of medieval Dutch literature on the formation of Middle Low and Middle High German Charles narratives was far from negligible, and can be traced well into the sixteenth century and perhaps even beyond. But the connections between the Dutch and the German language areas are not well known, even by some experts, although this situation is gradually changing thanks to some invaluable contributions by Dutch scholarship especially. Too many linguistic hurdles stand in the way for most Germanists to engage easily or at all with medieval Dutch literature, and perhaps also vice versa. Some major scholars – such as Johannes Franck, Theodor Frings, Kurt Ruh and Hartmut Becker on the German side and Wim Gerritsen, Herman Pleij and Frits van Oostrom on the Dutch – have already opened a path towards philological cooperation, but much work still remains to be done.

While the early medieval poets in the Dutch-speaking areas tended to orientate themselves towards the east, the German-speaking areas, by the eleventh century or so this changed in favour of the French-speaking area, which from then on had a huge impact on Dutch literature, and also German and Italian. In turn, as we will discover, the narratives of Dutch-language writers were eagerly accepted and translated by their German-speaking contemporaries.

For our purposes it is necessary to consider which medieval Dutch texts engaged with the Charles myth and what specific perspectives were the determining factors. As all over Europe, there was great interest in all materials associated with Charlemagne and his descendants, as the rich corpus of relevant texts from the twelfth century onwards indicates. According to Bart Besamusca, scholars of Middle Dutch literature know of about twenty-seven epic poems involving Charlemagne, but only one of them has survived in a complete manuscript; all the others are extant only in fragmentary form. Rough estimates lead to the calculation that only 6 per cent of all Middle Dutch Charles epics have survived, which makes the Middle Low German translations particularly important because they allow us to understand better how their source texts might have looked. The heroic and mythical status of Charlemagne exerted a profound influence on the Dutch audiences, probably because some of the main themes centred on loyalty and treachery, on the rebellion of feudal tenants and vassals against their overlord – that is, Charlemagne or one of his sons.