The Van Hulthem Manuscript is a masterpiece of medieval Dutch literature, probably compiled in the Duchy of Brabant. [1] It contains over 200 stories from across the Low Countries.
The manuscript is named after its last private owner, Charles van Hulthem of Ghent. It is in the collection of the Royal Library of Belgium. [2]
This manuscript contains the only known versions of the famous abele spelen ("able plays"), some of the earliest secular drama surviving from medieval Europe.
Dutch language literature comprises all writings of literary merit written through the ages in the Dutch language, a language which currently has around 23 million native speakers. Dutch-language literature is the product of the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles and of formerly Dutch-speaking regions, such as French Flanders, South Africa, and Indonesia. The Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was called under Dutch colonization, spawned a separate subsection in Dutch-language literature. Conversely, Dutch-language literature sometimes was and is produced by people originally from abroad who came to live in Dutch-speaking regions, such as Anne Frank and Kader Abdolah. In its earliest stages, Dutch-language literature is defined as those pieces of literary merit written in one of the Dutch dialects of the Low Countries. Before the 17th century, there was no unified standard language; the dialects that are considered Dutch evolved from Old Frankish. A separate Afrikaans literature started to emerge during the 19th century, and it shares the same literary roots as contemporary Dutch, as Afrikaans evolved from 17th-century Dutch. The term Dutch literature may either indicate in a narrow sense literature from the Netherlands, or alternatively Dutch-language literature.
The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems.
Floris and Blancheflour is the name of a popular romantic story that was told in the Middle Ages in many different vernacular languages and versions. It first appears in Europe around 1160 in "aristocratic" French. Roughly between the period 1200 and 1350 it was one of the most popular of all the romantic plots.
Gesta Romanorum, meaning Deeds of the Romans, is a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales that was probably compiled about the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th. It still possesses a two-fold literary interest, first as one of the most popular books of the time, and secondly as the source, directly or indirectly, of later literature, in Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, Giovanni Boccaccio, Thomas Hoccleve, William Shakespeare, and others.
Elckerlijc is a morality play from the Low Countries which was written in Dutch somewhere around the year 1470. It was first printed in 1495. The play was extremely successful and may have been the original source for the English play Everyman, as well as many other translations for other countries. The authorship of Elckerlijc is attributed to Peter van Diest, a medieval writer from the Low Countries.
Leiden University Libraries is a library founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands. It is regarded as a significant place in the development of European culture: it is a part of a small number of cultural centres that gave direction to the development and spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment. This was due particularly to the simultaneous presence of a unique collection of exceptional sources and scholars. Holdings include approximately 5,200,000 volumes, 1,000,000 e-books, 70,000 e-journals, 2,000 current paper journals, 60,000 Oriental and Western manuscripts, 500,000 letters, 100,000 maps, 100,000 prints, 12,000 drawings, 300,000 photographs and 3,000 cuneiform tablets. The library manages the largest collections worldwide on Indonesia and the Caribbean. Furthermore, Leiden University Libraries is the only heritage organization in The Netherlands with five registrations of documents in UNESCO's international Memory of the World Register.
The Old Hall Manuscript is the largest, most complete, and most significant source of English sacred music of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and as such represents the best source for late Medieval English music. The manuscript somehow survived the Reformation, and formerly belonged to St. Edmund's College, a Roman Catholic school located at Old Hall Green in Hertfordshire. It was sold to the British Library after an auction at Sotheby's in 1973.
The Lancelot-Grail Cycle, also known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is an early 13th-century French Arthurian literary cycle consisting of interconnected prose episodes of chivalric romance originally written in Old French. The work of unknown authorship, presenting itself as a chronicle of actual events, retells the legend of King Arthur by focusing on the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, the religious quest for the Holy Grail, and the life of Merlin. The highly influential cycle expands on Robert de Boron's "Little Grail Cycle" and the works of Chrétien de Troyes, previously unrelated to each other, by supplementing them with additional details and side stories, as well as lengthy continuations, while tying the entire narrative together into a coherent single tale. Its alternate titles include Philippe Walter's 21st-century edition Le Livre du Graal.
The Royal Library of the Netherlands is the national library of the Netherlands, based in The Hague, founded in 1798.
The Brut or Roman de Brut by the poet Wace is a loose and expanded translation in almost 15,000 lines of Norman-French verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain. It was formerly known as the Brut d'Engleterre or Roman des Rois d'Angleterre, though Wace's own name for it was the Geste des Bretons, or Deeds of the Britons. Its genre is equivocal, being more than a chronicle but not quite a fully-fledged romance.
Franciscus Junius, also known as François du Jon, was a pioneer of Germanic philology. As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts. In addition, he wrote the first comprehensive overview of ancient writings on the visual arts, which became a cornerstone of classical art theories throughout Europe.
Middle Dutch literature (1150–1500) is the Dutch literature produced in the Low Countries from the 12th century to the 16th century. It is preceded by only a few fragmentary texts existing in Old Dutch, and it was succeeded by Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age literature.
The Kurma Purana is one of the eighteen Mahapuranas, and a medieval era Vaishnavism text of Hinduism. The text is named after the tortoise avatar of Vishnu.
The Royal Library of Belgium is the national library of Belgium. The library has a history that goes back to the age of the Dukes of Burgundy. In the second half of the 20th century, a new building was constructed on the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg in central Brussels, near the Central Station. The library owns several collections of historical importance, like the Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, and is the depository for all books ever published in Belgium or abroad by Belgian authors.
The Gruuthuse manuscript is a medieval compilation, the oldest core of which is dated about 1395, while the youngest unfinished contributions date from around 1408. The manuscript is the only known source for a large number of Middle Dutch texts.
The Dutch Church, Austin Friars, is a reformed church in the Broad Street Ward, in the City of London. Located on the site of the 13th-century Augustinian friary, the original building granted to Protestant refugees for their church services in 1550 was destroyed during the London Blitz.
Esmoreit is a Middle Dutch drama. It is one of the four abele spelen contained in the Van Hulthem Manuscript and consists of 1,018 lines in rhyme. The other abele spelen are: Gloriant, Lanseloet van Denemerken and Vanden Winter ende vanden Somer.
Lanseloet van Denemerken is a Middle Dutch drama. It is one of the four abele spelen contained in the Van Hulthem Manuscript and consists of 925 lines in rhyme.
Charles Joseph Emmanuel van Hulthem (1764–1832) was a bibliophile from the Low Countries whose collection of books provided the first kernel of the Royal Library of Belgium.
Augustijnken was an itinerant entertainer and writer in Middle Dutch.
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