Dutch Romances III

Parallel texts and editions of the Dutch Arthurian works Die Wrake van Ragisel, Walewein ende Keye, Die Riddere metter Mouwen, Lanceloet en het Hert med de Witt Voet and Torec.

The romances translated here are contained in the so-called Lancelot Compilation, MS The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 129 A 10. Compiled in the early fourteenth century by five scribes, its 241 extant folios contain thelion's share of Arthurian romance in Middle Dutch, no fewer than ten texts. The core of this compilation is comprised of translations into rhymed couplets of the Lancelot-Queste-Mort, into which seven additional romances have been inserted. The result is a compilation that successfully transforms a number of disparate texts into an ordered sequence of ten Arthurian romances, a project that rivals similar ones in better known European vernaculars, and bears comparison with Malory's Morte Darthur.
This volume presents the five romances interpolated between the Queste and the Mort, the majority of which are not attested elsewhere in any other language:the Wrake van Ragisel (Vengeance of Raguidel), the Ridder metter mouwen (Romance of the Knight of the Sleeve), Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet (Lancelot and the Hart with the White Foot), Waleweinende Keye, and Torec. Traditionally these romances have been separated from their context and published in separate editions, and only Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet has ever appeared in English translation. They are presented here in their manuscript order for the first time since 1846; the edition of Walewein ende Keye is the first to be published since that date. The text and translations are accompanied by an introduction, variants and rejected readings, and critical notes.

David F. Johnson is Professor of English, Florida State University; Geert H.M. Claassens is Professor of Middle Dutch Literature at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium