Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "The Romance between Greece and the West. Heroes and Heroines in French, Anglo-Norman and English medieval narrative.""" "Koen De Temmerman" "Department of Literary Studies" "Medieval romance is arguably the most influential secular literary genre of the European Middle Ages. Its history has not been written yet. In order to enhance our understanding of this history (both conceptually and cross-culturally), this project offers the first reconstruction and interpretation of the persistence of (ancient) novelistic and (late antique and medieval)hagiographical traditions in French, Anglo-Norman and English medieval romance. Whereas it is assumed that ancient novels influenced medieval romance only if there were Latin versions of them,this project aims to explore the importance of hagiography as a possible narrative bridge between ancient (Greek) novels and medieval vernacular romance. The research hypothesis is that medieval romances were impacted (directly or indirectly) by ancient novelistic and late antique and medieval hagiographical influences of different kinds, and that they adopted, rehearsed, re-used and adapted them to various degrees in order to construct their protagonists as heroes/heroines. Two interrelated sets of research questions will test this hypothesis, one tracing diachronic continuity and the other examining synchronic differentiation. Methodologically, this project complements two literary-theoretical models, one modern (narratology), one ancient (rhetoric). The project will contribute to our knowledge about both reception of ancient novels in the Middle Ages and the literary complexities of medieval romance." "Information structure in the Medieval Greek vernacular politikos stichos romances" "Mark Janse" "Department of Linguistics" "I will investigate the language of the later Medieval Greek (12th-16th centuries) vernacular romances composed in metre of the politikos stichos within the modern framework of information structure (most important concept: intonation units), since these texts are assumed to adopt an oral discourse. Special attention will be paid to word order, particles, clitics, dislocations, parentheticals and discourse markers." "Fear. An Emotive Script in Middle Dutch Chivalric Romance (1250-1350)." "Remco Sleiderink" "Utrecht University, Institute for the Study of Literature in the Low Countries (ISLN)" "In today's society, we can observe a growing societal problem with the emotion 'fear' and a tendency of increased attention to emotions in general. Within academia, the 1980's paradigm shift towards a view on emotions as culturally contingent has sparked the 'affective turn' across the humanities, including literary historical studies. This project turns to the literary imagination in the medieval period, and seeks to examine how the emotion of fear is shaped within Middle Dutch chivalric romance (1250-1350). For this purpose, it will draw on the recently developed concept of 'emotive scripts.' This theoretical framework suggests that texts have an underlying script which functions as a literary blueprint for shaping emotionality, and which prescribes certain rules for emotional behaviour. To decipher the 'scripting' of fear, this project will focus on three aspects: (1) emotive staging and representations, (2) character-specific patterns, and (3) intra-textual social conceptions. Via cross-cultural comparisons, this project will investigate how the script of the Middle Dutch romances relates to that of other medieval literary traditions, but it will also investigate whether an overarching script emerges within the Middle Dutch tradition, or whether traces of divergence can be observed." "The Holy Romance. Characterization and concepts of fiction in Italo-Greek hagiography" "Koen De Temmerman" "Department of Literary Studies" "This project envisages for the first time a systematic, literary-rhetorical analysis of Italo-Greek hagiography, a corpus of which the prominent, narrative qualities have long been recognized but, for historical reasons of academic ideology, have never received serious scholarly attention in their own right. This corpus comprises Lives, martyr acts and encomia written in Greek between the 5th and the 13th centuries and describing the lives of Christian saints and martyrs of Sicily and Southern Italy (a region that culturally had been part of the Greek world ever since the Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean between the 8th and 6th centuries BC). The project examines concepts of fiction in this corpus, which are crucial, it argues, for enhancing our understanding of it as narrative. This field will be tackled through an analysis of character construction. The project both continues and deepens a research line established by my ERC Starting Grant ""Novel Saints. Ancient novelistic heroism in the hagiography of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages"" (2014-19) and will take it to unexplored horizons both by focussing on one specific tradition of hagiography and by asking new questions based on recent insights." "Rerouting the 'ridderroman'. Adaptation Strategies in the Poetics of the 14th-Century Middle Dutch Ridderroman" "Youri Desplenter" "Department of Literary Studies" "The 14th-century is seen as a highlight for secular literature in large areas of Western Europe. In contrast, 14th-century Middle Dutch secular literature has been largely underexposed. Its main exponent, the verse romance or ridderroman, has consistently been depreciated by 19th- and 20th-century literary historians as derivative, a mixture of older romance motifs amplified into sometimes grotesque proportions: 'epic in decay'. Yet, this view mainly springs from 19th-century poetical notions fed by four centuries of printing history and romantic conceptions of originality. The idea that the 14th century is the end of Dutch romance evolution deviates from the international consensus on Western European romance, which sketches an evolution from the 12th to at least the 17th century. Until recently, for example, the survival of Dutch ridderromans in 15th- and 16th-century prose novels has not been adequately taken into account. To conceptualize the 14th-century ridderroman more accurately, we need to leave behind anachronistic poetical notions. Therefore, this study aims to construct a historically substantiated poetics of the 14th-century ridderroman in which adaptation strategies of amplification and amalgamation are given central focus. This will be done through an intra-textual analysis of the poetical markers and through a thorough review of the material and socio-cultural contexts of the corpus texts. The resulting, more representative conceptualization of the poetics of the corpus can then be contrasted with Middle Dutch and international romance evolution more accurately." "Across Boundaries: A Western European Canon of Romances in an Era of Media Change (1471- c. 1550)" "Hubert Meeus" "Institute for the Study of Literature in the Low Countries (ISLN)" "The advent of print facilitated the dissemination of medieval romances and enabled the development of a transnational canon in Western Europe. The study of these narratives as a group transcends the limits of national philologies. It advances our understanding of the international success and regional diversity of this subject matter." "Illuminating Love. The Reception of the Song of Songs and the Role of Authority in Syriac Biblical Interpretation" "Joseph Verheyden" "Research Unit of Biblical Studies" "Love is the central theme of Song of Songs, unparalleled among biblical books in its portrayal of passion and sexual desire. It was because of that romantic nature that Song of Songs’ place among Early Christian holy texts was contested, and attitudes to the Song ranged from outright rejection  to admiration and figurative interpretation.  Ancient and medieval Syriac Christian texts offer especially rich examples of this interpretative diversity. Yet while the reception of the Song in Greek and Latin Christianity has been amply studied, this is hardly the case for Syriac Christianity. This project will therefore present the first extensive and detailed study of the Song’s reception among Syriac biblical interpreters. It will focus on several larger textual corpora devoted to the Song as well as on occasional references to the Song in other Syriac texts.The project will examine what authority interpreters attached to the Song and take into account their views of King Solomon – known in Antiquity for his many romances and authorship of the Song – to better understand their interpretations of the Song. Also, the project will provide insight into the role of compilation texts in the creation and transmission of authoritative interpretations of the Song. In this way, the project will contribute to the study of Syriac Christian biblical interpretation and the study of the Song’s reception history. Moreover, it will shed light on how texts claimed, received and lost authority."