Brabantsche Yeesten
The Brabantsche Yeesten or Gestes de Brabant (lit. 'Brabantian Deeds') is a rhyming chronicle of some 46,000 verses written in the 14th and 15th centuries in the Middle Dutch language. It provides a history of the Duchy of Brabant, and the original five volumes were written by Jan van Boendale (c. 1280–c. 1351) of Antwerp; his text was later extended to seven volumes by an anonymous continuator.
Composition and authorship[edit]
Van Boendale's text was written between around 1318 and around 1350, commissioned for a member of the Antwerp patriciate.[citation needed] It extends to 16,318 verses. Boendale's main sources were the Chronica de origine ducum Brabantiae of 1294 and Spieghel Historiael of Jacob van Maerlant.[citation needed] Much of the text of the first three books are taken from Jacob van Maerlant almost verbatim.[citation needed] The events in book five are from Boendale's own lifetime.[citation needed]
Books six and seven, which extend the scope of the chronicled events to 1440, were written by an anonymous continuator. Some scholars attribute these books to Wein van Cotthem;[1] others to Hennen van Merchtenen, amongst other candidates.[2] Book six is dated 1432 and book seven is dated 1440; this latter date is also the approximate age of the oldest extant manuscripts of the text.[citation needed]
Manuscripts and editions[edit]
There are seven extant manuscript copies.[citation needed]
- Two 15th-century manuscripts are held by the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels (mss. IV 684 and IV 685).[citation needed]
The text was first edited by Jan Frans Willems and Jean Henri Bormans beginning in 1839.[citation needed]
Literature[edit]
- Jan Frans Willems: De Brabantsche Yeesten (3 vols., Brussels 1839, 1843, 1869). vol. 2 available online.
- Katell De Groote: Jan Van Boendaele, Brabantse Yeesten, XXIV. M.A. dissertation at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2003.
- Reynaert, Joris (1 March 2019). "Hennen van Merchtenen en de Voortzetting van de Brabantsche yeesten (ca. 1430-1450): Een bijdrage aan de attributieproblematiek" [Hennen van Merchtenen and the Continuation of the Brabantsche Yeesten (c. 1430–1450): a contribution to the debate on attribution]. Nederlandse Letterkunde (in Dutch). 24 (1): 1–33. doi:10.5117/NEDLET2019.1.001.REYN. ISSN 1384-5829.
References[edit]
- ^ Bellon, Michael (January 28, 2010). "Rijmen in de middeleeuwen" (in Dutch). De Standaard. Retrieved October 22, 2021.
- ^ Reynaert 2019, pp. 3–4.
External links[edit]
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