Rerouting the 'ridderroman'. Adaptation Strategies in the Poetics of the 14th-Century Middle Dutch Ridderroman Ghent University
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 ...