TNTL 114

Hans Kienhorst

Fragment van een onbekende Middelnederlandse ridderroman over Willem van Oringen: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Dutch b. 2, fol. 6

Abstract -- In this article a new fragment of an unknown Middle Dutch chevalric poem is edited. The fragment, that is owned by the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is a slip of parchment from a 14th-century Flemish manuscript. It contains on each side 29 incomplete verses. The names of 'Willem' and 'Oringen' are mentioned, and the fierce battle at Arles is brought up. The fragment therefore probably belongs to a poem on the legendary hero William of Orange and his struggles with the Saracen invaders in southern France as described in the Chanson de Guillaume d'Orange and in poems from the extent Cycle de Guillaume. In these chansons de geste however the famous battlefield is called 'Larchamp', 'Aliscans' or 'L'Archant'. Yet there is a connection between Arles and the epic cycle. As can be read in Maerlant's Spiegel historiael many of the fallen Christian knights where thought to be burried in the vast cimetery near the town of 'Arleblanke'.