Transcultural Critical Editing: Vernacular Poetry in the Burgundian Netherlands, 1450-1530

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In the late Middle Ages, most of the Low Countries was ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy and their Hapsburg successors. Often termed 'the Burgundian Netherlands' for this reason, the region boasted a dynamic culture, including literature in both French and Dutch. Many historians have assumed that works in French were largely consumed by the Dukes and their aristocratic entourage, while those in Dutch were aimed at urban merchant classes. Recent research, however, has suggested that French- and Dutch-speakers interacted in some significant ways. (Dutch-speaking printers published books in French, for example, while Dutch theatre companies took part in French-language drama festivals and vice-versa.) The project will improve our understanding of this interaction. It will benefit not only the numerous scholars of the Burgundian Netherlands, but also academic researchers in related fields such as cross-cultural relations.We will shed light on the exchange between the region's French- and Dutch-language communities by editing poetry produced by each community in the period 1450-1530. This will involve transcribing poems from manuscripts and early printed books; indicating how the various sources of each poem present different versions, and identifying which versions are best; and supplying the introductions, explanatory notes, and linguistic glossaries that make up the normal 'apparatus' for scholarly editions. Our apparatus will pay particular attention to the interaction between cultures, noting features such as linguistic and stylistic borrowing from the other language. We will edit work by a particularly important author in each language, whose poetry badly needs a new edition - Anthonis de Roovere in Dutch (d. 1482) and Jean Molinet in French (1435-1507) - as well as an anthology of poems in both languages, about current affairs in the region, which have not previously been edited. The total corpus will comprise 300-320 poems of different lengths, from a few lines to around twenty pages (a very few pieces are longer than this; the vast majority range between 20 and 200 lines). English translations will be supplied in the anthology and the De Roovere edition, to make them more accessible to non-specialists.Besides producing the editions, we will invite experts on the Burgundian Netherlands to a conference about the region's cross-cultural relations. Here we will present our ongoing editorial findings, and the invited participants will present their own research on the subject. The event will help us develop the editions on the basis of specialist scrutiny, while also ensuring that they inform other research in the field. Papers from the conference will then be collected for publication in a book.Our research will also benefit a wider public by offering a different picture of medieval Europe, more diverse and respectful of other languages and communities than is generally supposed. We will reach this public by holding an exhibition in Manchester, and by writing articles on our subject for popular history journals (e.g. 'History Today') in different countries.Our work will be based on collaboration by an international team of experienced scholarly editors, two in the UK and three key collaborators based in mainland Europe. Each team member is a specialist in Dutch or French literature of the period, and can read scholarly work in the other language. We will each edit texts in the language of our own specialism, but will share our findings and pool our skills by reporting on our reading, submitting drafts for discussion to an online forum, and discussing each other's work at regular team meetings. (The online forum will also include a public portion, to inform wider academic and non-academic publics of our work.) By working together in this way, we will identify cross-cultural elements in the poems we are editing. Hence each edition will draw on the entire team's expertise in French-and Dutch- language cultures.