The romances translated here are contained in the so-called Lancelot
Compilation. Compiled in the early fourteenth century by five scribes,
its 241 extant folios contain the lion's share of Arthurian romance in
Middle Dutch, no fewer than ten texts. The core of this compilation is
comprised of translations into rhymed couplets of the
Lancelot-Queste-Mort, into which seven additional romances have been
inserted. The result is a compilation that successfully transforms a
number of disparate texts into an ordered sequence of ten Arthurian
romances, a project that rivals similar ones in better known European
vernaculars, and bears comparison with Malory's Morte Darthur. Parallel
text with notes and an introduction.
Wrake van Ragisel (Vengeance of Raguidel), the Ridder metter mowen
(Romance of the Knight of the Sleeve), Lanceloet en het hert metde witte
voet (Lancelot and the Hart with the White Foot), Walewein ende Keye,
and Torec.
David F. Johnson is Professor of English, Florida State University;
Geert H.M. Claassens is Professor of Middle Dutch Literature at the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.