18 - The Lancelots of the Lowlands

Summary

Introduction

What could be more natural than translating an Old French prose text into Middle Dutch prose? Two small fragments from a fourteenth-century manuscript illustrate precisely this, for they contain a Middle Dutch prose translation of the French prose Lancelot. And yet in the Low Countries there is far more manuscript evidence of translations of the same text in rhymed couplets: Lantsloot vander Haghedochte (c. 1260), and the Lanceloet–Queeste van den Grale–Arturs doet trilogy (c. 1280) preserved in the Lancelot Compilation (c. 1320). It is generally assumed that the two rhymed versions preceded the prose version, although there is as yet no conclusive evidence for this. The three independent translations of the Old French prose Lancelot might therefore represent a gradual introduction of its literary innovations, such as the use of prose and the use of li contes as an impersonal narrator, into Middle Dutch literature. Whether this idea is completely convincing is debatable, but first we must consider the texts themselves, starting with the prose fragments. Then we will focus on the famous Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation.

The Middle Dutch Prose Lancelot

The prose manuscript fragments belong to the Rotterdam Gemeentebibliotheek collection (hence the name ‘Rotterdam Fragments’ and the initial R) and are dated c. 1340–50; the original prose translation may have been done in the thirteenth century, after or about the same time as the verse translations. They consist of two non-consecutive parchment folios with two columns of prose on each side, eight columns of forty-one lines in all, with four red and blue initials two lines high; the end of sentences is usually marked with a dot. The dialect is predominantly Brabantine. Both folios contain episodes belonging to the so-called ‘Préparation à la Queste’ section of the French prose Lancelot. The first fragment describes how Gawain is invited to take part in the tournament at the ‘Chastel del Moulin.’ In the second fragment Lancelot lies ill after drinking from a poisoned well and the damsel who can cure him wants to know what her reward will be for restoring him to health. In her groundbreaking study and edition of the fragments, Orlanda Lie calls this episode (R II) the ‘Virgin Love Covenant,’ and the other episode (R I) the ‘Chastel del Moulin.’