Utrecht University
21–23 September 2022
This project breaks new ground by systematically correcting the traditional, monolingual view on Flemish literature in the late Middle Ages. Seeking to do justice to the medieval cultural reality in this area, it is the first large-scale investigation devoted to the literary culture of Flanders, ca 1200 – ca 1500, from a multilingual perspective.
How did the three most important literary languages that co-existed in medieval Flanders, Latin, French and Dutch, function and interact? To tackle this central research question, the researchers use both Dutch, French and Latin texts that were written in medieval Flanders and that were read in that region, and manuscripts, the hand-written books containing Dutch, French and Latin texts that scribes copied in that region and that circulated there.
Their research draws on a combination of five theoretical perspectives, derived from literary history, sociolinguistics, institutional studies, translation studies, and the history of the book. Using a broad definition of literature, the researchers’ evidence consists of monolingual and multilingual texts, single-text manuscripts (mainly monolingual) and multi-text manuscripts (mono- or multilingual).
Proposals of no more than 250 words should be sent to the project team at multilingualdynamics@gmail.com by 1st April 2022
