2004
Volume 32, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0929-8592
  • E-ISSN: 2667-1689

Samenvatting

Abstract

A significant portion of medieval literature owes its survival to professional scribes, whose contributions to textual transmission are only now being more fully recognised. This essay investigates the attitudes of such scribes toward literary texts by reconstructing the working methods of one of them — likely active in Ghent during the second decade of the fifteenth century. This professional scribe copied (a Dutch translation of the ) into the Comburg manuscript, a version that diverges notably from other known renditions. A close analysis of orthographic changes, textual variations, and scribal errors suggests that scribe A acted chiefly as a faithful copyist, with little critical engagement with the text or interest in correcting his exemplar through comparison with the French original of the . The stark contrast between his approach and that of contemporaries such as Geraert van Woelbosch highlights the broad range of scribal involvement with literary texts. The article calls for a reassessment of textual variation in conjunction with archival research and codicological analysis to develop a more nuanced understanding of scribes — not simply as transmitters, but as individuals whose agency and involvement varied according to context, skill, and purpose.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.5117/QUE2025.1.002.BRIN
2025-10-01
2025-12-05
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/09298592/32/1/QUE2025.1.002.BRIN.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.5117/QUE2025.1.002.BRIN&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Benskin, Michael & MargaretLaing, ‘Translations and Mischsprachen in Middle English Manuscripts’, in ‘So meny people longages and tonges’: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English presented to Angus McIntosh, ed. by MichaelBenskin & M.L.Samuels (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 55–106
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Berteloot, Armand, Bijdrage tot een klankatlas van het dertiende-eeuwse Middelnederlands, 2 vols (Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Taal- en Letterkunde, 1984)
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Brinkman, Herman, ‘Het Comburgse Handschrift en de Gentse Boekproductie omstreeks 1400’, Queeste, 5 (1998), 98–113
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Brinkman, Herman, ‘Tekst in transitie: een toneelspel in handen van een Gentse beroepskopiist’, in Spel en spektakel: Middeleeuws toneel in de Lage Landen, ed. by Hansvan Dijk & BartRamakers, Nederlandse literatuur en cultuur in de Middeleeuwen, 23 (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2001), pp. 178–200 and 348–52
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Brinkman, Herman, ‘De hardnekkige Middeleeuwen: persistentie van literaire productie- en transmissievormen’, Queeste, 11 (2004), 184–203
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Brinkman, Herman, ‘De Gentse dichter Everaert Taybaert en het stadsdichterschap in de late middeleeuwen’, Spiegel der Letteren, 53 (2011), 419–42
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Brinkman, Herman & HermanMulder, ‘Recht, historie en schone letteren: het arbeidsterrein van een Gents kopiistencollectief. Hs. Brussel KB 16.762–75 en het Comburgse handschrift’, Queeste, 10 (2003), 27–78
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Brinkman, Herman & JannySchenkel (eds), Het Comburgse Handschrift: Hs. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. poet. et phil. 2o 22, Middeleeuwse Verzamelhandschriften uit de Nederlanden, 4, 2 vols (Hilversum: Verloren, 1997)
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Connolly, Margaret, John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998)
    [Google Scholar]
  10. de Bruijn, Elisabeth & MikeKestemont, ‘Contrastive Multivariate Analyses of the Middle Low German Flos unde Blankeflos Tradition’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen: Bulletin of the Modern Language Society, 114 (2013), 171–205
    [Google Scholar]
  11. de Vooys, C.G.N., ‘Bijdragen tot de Middelnederlandse woord-geografie en woordchronologie: viii. Middeleeuws Vlaams en Brabants’, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde, 60 (1941), 228–48
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Faems, An, ‘De Middelnederlandse late ridderepiek: “bleke spookgestalten” krijgen kleur’, in Ene andre tale: tendensen in de Middelnederlandse late ridderepiek, ed. by AnFaems & MarjoleinHogenbirk (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012), 11–36
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Gysseling, Maurits, Corpus van Middelnederlandse teksten (tot en met het jaar 1300). Reeks i: Ambtelijke bescheiden (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1977)
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Hegman, W.E., ‘Het voorbeeld van Hein van Akens vertaling van de Roman de la Rose’, De Nieuwe Taalgids, 62 (1969), 241–44
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Hellinga, W.Gs. & P.J.H.Vermeeren, ‘Codicologie en filologie xv: Filologie en paleografie ii’, Spiegel der Letteren, 9 (1965–66), 59–62
    [Google Scholar]
  16. McIntosh, Angus & others, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986)
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Mooijaart, M.A., Atlas van Vroegmiddelnederlandse taalvarianten (Utrecht: LEd, 1992)
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Rouse, Mary A., ‘Archives in the Service of Manuscript Study: The Well-Known Nicolas Flamel’, in Patrons, Authors and Workshops: Books and Book Production in Paris around 1400, ed. by GodfriedCroenen & PeterAinsworth, Synthema, 4 (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), pp. 69–89
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Schenkel, Janny, ‘Het handschrift-Van Hulthem, het Comburgse handschrift en de scriptoriumhypothese’, Queeste, 4 (1997), 42–59
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Thaisen, Jacob, ‘A Probabilistic Analysis of a Middle English Text’, in Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, ed. by BrentNelson & MelissaTerras, New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2012), pp. 171–200
    [Google Scholar]
  21. van den Berg, E. & A.Berteloot, ‘Taalgeografische variabelen in Middelnederlandse rijmen’, Verslagen en mededelingen van de Vlaamse Academie voor Taal- en Letterkunde, 1991, 238–73
    [Google Scholar]
  22. van der Poel, D.E., De Vlaamse Rose en Die Rose van Heinric: Onderzoekingen over twee Middelnederlandse bewerkingen van de Roman de la Rose, Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 13 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1989)
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Van Loey, A., Middelnederlandse spraakkunst, 2 vols (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1948–49)
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Verwijs, Eelco (ed.), Die Rose van Heinric van Aken, met de fragmenten der tweede vertaling (Utrecht: Nijhoff, 1868; repr. 1976)
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.5117/QUE2025.1.002.BRIN
Loading
/content/journals/10.5117/QUE2025.1.002.BRIN
Loading

Data & Media loading...

Dit is een verplicht veld
Graag een geldig e-mailadres invoeren
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error