TNTL 111

Evert van den Berg

Ridderepiek in Vlaanderen: van centrum tot periferie

Abstract - In this publication it is argued that at least two literary cultures have to be distinguished in Flanders in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. One has to be located within the cultural atmosphere of the count's court at Ghent, the other seems to have had little contact with the first one. Possibly we have to locate the latter one in the milieu of the urbanized nobility and the cognate aristocracy in towns like Bruges. In the thirteenth cenrury this peripheral literature seems to show conservative and trivializing tendencies; after 1300 it consists of oldfahioned romances from the thirteenth century and romances of adventure, in which the crusade mentality hardly seems to play a role, this contrary to the 'central' literature.