Meesters van het woord: Middelnederlandse schrijvers en hun kunst by Joost van Driel (review)

In this nicely turned out and compactly argued book (“Middle Dutch Authors and their Art”), Joost van Driel seeks to flesh out the profiles of his chosen Middle Dutch authors by examining their use of language. This is a study of style and individual creativity in the work of a small selection of (mostly anonymous) medieval Dutch poets, and Van Driel begins by taking issue with the somewhat dated notion that most medieval authors were uninterested in originality or profiling their own voice. The author contends here that historical evidence suggests the opposite: no small number of early writers were aware of their individual styles and actively strove for originality.

Pointing to the German literature of the Middle Ages, he notes that this tradition features movements headed by great names like Hartmann von Aue, Wolfgang von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg, each with his own stylistic preferences. One of the problems any student of literature from the medieval Low Countries faces is the lack of knowledge concerning similar traditions amongst the authors in this region. Did Middle Dutch authors prefer some styles and dismiss others? What factors influenced their writing styles? To what extent did they consciously seek to deviate from the styles of their peers? What role did aesthetics play in their creative decisions, and did they actively experiment with language and style? These are the main questions that Van Driel seeks to answer in the course of this book.

In two instances, the authors he studies here comment themselves on their literary practice, language or form. Jacob van Maerlant and Jan van Boendale, the subjects of chapters III and V, respectively, make it possible for Van Driel to incorporate these insights into his analysis of their poetry. But there are few among the Middle Dutch authors who tell us why they write the way they do, or which linguistic forms they prefer. In such cases, the only recourse left to us in determining their aesthetic preferences is through stylistic analysis of their texts. It is this method that Van Driel employs in his attempt to describe and characterize the attitudes toward style and aesthetics of the writers he has chosen for this study. This selection consists of authors well known to readers of Middle Dutch literature, dating roughly from the period 1250–1350. What this small body of authors necessarily lacks in coverage is made up for by its stylistic variety: each one of these authors does something quite distinct in terms of form and language. The result is a study that has a great deal to offer to especially a more general audience, although there are enough new insights here to send the specialist back to the texts in question for a fresh reading.

The book consists of six chapters. Following the first chapter in which the author lays out his purpose and methodology, the next four deal with the work of an individual Middle Dutch poet. Chapter VI is devoted to a number of authors whom Van Driel labels “experimentalists” (experimentelen), or writers who, inspired by certain contemporaries, try out new poetic forms. This chapter is followed by a brief conclusion.

A striking feature of the book, and one that may point again in the direction of its having been intended primarily for a more general audience, is the amount of space given over to high quality, color plates. Not counting the Notes and Index, the book consists of 158 pages. Fully thirty (30) of these are devoted to plates. There are period maps of Bruge and Flanders, wood cut illustrations of Van den vos Reynaerde from a private collection, and single leaves or two-page spreads from manuscripts containing all the works Van Driel analyses in the course of the book. Some of these are illuminated, and all but the wood cuts are in glorious color. Their purpose in the study is somewhat unclear, although...