Papers by Bram Caers
Layered Text Formation in Urban Chronicles The Case of an Early Modern Manuscript from Mechelen, 2016
As a rule, chronicles are never finished. Chronicle texts were continued, expanded and altered, a... more As a rule, chronicles are never finished. Chronicle texts were continued, expanded and altered, and are in this way the very essence of text variation. Chroniclers could and did mould existing text material, altering historical narratives to better fit into their present needs and those of their intended audience(s). The chronicle material from Mechelen is no exception to this rule. This paper focuses on a sixteenth-century manuscript in which a fifteenth-century chronicle text, the ‘Cronike van die scone ende heerlijke stadt van Mechelen’, has been continued and heavily altered by two contributors. The manuscript seems to have functioned for both as a type of ‘work in progress’, and is the autograph of their alterations and additions. The aim of this essay is to disentangle the complex text formation process within this manuscript. Doing so provides an improved insight into early modern authorship.
Sint Rombout, bisschop ende martelaer, in een Mechelse stadskroniek Laatvijftiende-eeuwse devotie geprojecteerd op het verleden, 2016
In a Mechelen urban chronicle written around 1500 by Mechelen citizen Jan de Wilde, much attentio... more In a Mechelen urban chronicle written around 1500 by Mechelen citizen Jan de Wilde, much attention is devoted to the city’s patron, Saint Rumbold. The author based his chronicle mainly on Brabantine historiography, but added passages on Rumbold from various sources. Among these are not only an older vita describing Rumbald’s life and miracles, but possibly also archival sources which are still kept in the city archives today. The article shows that Jan de Wilde was true to his sources, but at the same time consciously increased the importance of Rumbald in his narrative. His version of Mechelen’s history, infused with Rumbolds vita, fits within a broader context of intensified devotion towards the city patron in the late fifteenth century that increasingly associated the Saint with the city’s urban identity.
In Monte Artium, 2019
Because of an almost exclusive attention to literature in print, early modern manuscripts have un... more Because of an almost exclusive attention to literature in print, early modern manuscripts have until now failed to attract the scholarly attention they deserve. Literary historians of the Early Modern period have only very recently turned to manuscripts, studying for example how they functioned within circles of collective readership (e.g. rhetoricians), how they materialise social networks (e.g. alba amicorum), or provide opportunity to appropriate and alter canonical texts for individual audiences (e.g. chronicles). A genre that so far has not attracted as much attention in Dutch scholarship as it has abroad, is theatre. There are some individual case studies on theatre manuscripts from the Early Modern period, and theatre texts preserved in manuscript have been edited, but so far, no one has questioned the role of manuscript as a medium in early modern theatre practice. Working towards a typology of early modern Dutch theatre manuscripts, this contribution is the first comprehensive attempt to chart various types of codices with Dutch theatre texts, and their respective functions and contexts of usage. The analysis is based on theatre material preserved in the Royal Library of Belgium, but has implications for theatre manuscripts generally, and for our understanding of theatre practice in the Early Modern period, especially in the southern Low Countries.
In Monte Artium, 2018
The Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels is the custodian of two intriguing fifteenth-century man... more The Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels is the custodian of two intriguing fifteenth-century manuscripts that contain part of the fourteenth-century Brabantine chronicle Bra-bantsche yeesten, by the Antwerp council clerk Jan van Boendale (IV 684 and IV 685). One of them contains no less than 69 illuminations, while the other was obviously intended to be illustrated in the same way, but never was. They are the only medieval manuscript version of the chronicle to ever have been illustrated, making them popular among medievalistst studying the Duchy of Brabant. Surprisingly, very little scholarly work has been done on the illuminations as such, and the manuscript context in which they are found. We also see that a handful of illustrations return time and again in scholarly publications, while others are less known. Now that the Library has digitised the manuscripts and made them available online, we provide an updated description and an annotated list of illustrations, with an index of persons and places depicted. We hope to provide scholars easier access to this rich collection of illustrations, which is of interest not only to medievalistst studying Brabant, but to medi-evalists studying western Europe generally.
Stadtisch, urban, kommunal. Perspektiven auf die stadtische Geschichtsschreibung des Spatmittelalters und der Fruhen Neuzeit, 2019
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verz... more Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.
Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde, 2011
A great many epic texts from the Low Countries, also those contained in non-Flemish manuscripts, ... more A great many epic texts from the Low Countries, also those contained in non-Flemish manuscripts, seem to have been written in Flanders. At the same time, texts written in Brabant or further eastward in the Rhine-Meuse area, seem not to have been read or copied in Flanders. This article combines data on the origin in time and place of manuscripts and auctorial texts, in order to provide an empirical base for these assumptions. It proves that epic literature moved from west to east, and attempts to place this conclusion in a historical context.
The Royal Library of Belgium holds three peculiar cityscapes of the city of Mechelen that have no... more The Royal Library of Belgium holds three peculiar cityscapes of the city of Mechelen that have not been studied in any detail before. They show the city in two of its most distress-ful moments: the Spanish (1572) and English (1580) furies, both gruesome episodes in the Dutch Revolt. The present article is a first attempt to place the cityscapes in a wider context. It provides an overview of the history of the city of Mechelen in the late sixteenth century and then moves on to a closer study of the cityscapes in question. By looking at contemporary sources of a similar nature (cartography, printed depictions of the Revolt) and by sketching the outlines of the contexts in which these sources were produced and circulated, it hopes to provide new insight into the cityscapes under scrutiny, as well as to the function of similar sources in the post-Revolt Low Countries.
Tijdschrift Voor Nederlandse Taal En Letterkunde, Jan 22, 2014
Tijdschrift Voor Nederlandse Taal En Letterkunde, Sep 1, 2012
A great many epic texts from the Low Countries, also those contained in non-Flemish manuscripts, ... more A great many epic texts from the Low Countries, also those contained in non-Flemish manuscripts, seem to have been written in Flanders. At the same time, texts written in Brabant or further eastward in the Rhine-Meuse area, seem not to have been read or copied in Flanders. This article combines data on the origin in time and place of manuscripts and auctorial texts, in order to provide an empirical base for these assumptions. It proves that epic literature moved from west to east, and attempts to place this conclusion in a historical context.
In 1467, there was an uprising in the city of Mechelen (Southern Low Countries). Allegedly, the m... more In 1467, there was an uprising in the city of Mechelen (Southern Low Countries). Allegedly, the magistrate had allowed three Brussels ships to pass upstream to their home town without paying the due tolls. The commoners rebelled and chased their ruling class from the town, provoking the anger of duke Charles the Bold. The precise occurings of the summer of 1467 are still unclear, and that is due to the contemporaneous historiography, which was partial to either side of the battling factions. One Mechelen chronicle fails to mention the uprising at all, and another is an emotional complaint of the negative attitude of the magistrates. The article tries to shed some light on the uprising, and shows how a dominant historiography succeeded, through conscious and unconscious censorship, to influence our understanding of the conflict up to this very day.
This article deals with two sixteenth-century manuscripts containing different versions of a fift... more This article deals with two sixteenth-century manuscripts containing different versions of a fifteenth-century urban chronicle describing the history of Mechelen. These two versions are autograph manuscripts of chroniclers that have extensively reworked or expanded the original text. This contribution examines the correlation between the chroniclers and their historical contexts on the one hand, and their contributions to the urban historiography on the other. The discussion of textual additions leads to the conclusion that the two versions of the Mechelen chronicle need not be interpreted as texts aimed at a certain audience, but are rather a reflection of the author’s profile. When reading chronicles, one has to take into account the profile of the chronicler, and interpret the text more as a complex dialogue between the individual chronicler and historical reality.
Dating texts is one of the most important challenges for research into literary history. Only thr... more Dating texts is one of the most important challenges for research into literary history. Only through a chronological ranking of texts, one can gain insight into the development of literature through time. Dating Middle Dutch chivalric epics is a complex issue, on which little agreement has been reached. Situating texts is often difficult because the original authors’ texts rarely survive and researchers have to work with much younger, often fragmentary copies. In this contribution, we present a critical state-of-the-art of recent research into dating
Middle Dutch chivalric epics. After a short discussion of the main dating methods, we present a chronological overview of Middle Dutch chivalric epics, based on a critical scrutiny of secondary literature. We hope to reach a synthesis as a point of reference for future research.
Around 1600, the Mechelen mayor Jan van Wachtendonck wrote an urban chronicle of his town that th... more Around 1600, the Mechelen mayor Jan van Wachtendonck wrote an urban chronicle of his town that thoroughly revised the existing chronicle dating about a century back. Wachtendonck’s text presents a version in which Mechelen sides firmly with the princely authorities, notably the Burgundian dukes. This contribution shows that the revision of Mechelen’s history is part of a broader policy
of memory initiated by the city council after the calvinist regime (1580-1585). Through text and image, the new council aimed to reassert the city’s image as a catholic and loyal capital, in accordance with its motto ‘in fide constans’.
Book Reviews by Bram Caers
Journal of Dutch Literature, 2016
Extensive book review of 'Wereld in woorden' by Frits van Oostrom.
Books by Bram Caers
Brepols: Turnhout, 2019
In the densely populised Low Countries, with their powerful and self-conscious cities, historical... more In the densely populised Low Countries, with their powerful and self-conscious cities, historical consciousness was expressed in various ways. Cases of regional historiography have been well-studied, but more local instances of historiographical production have remained more or less unnoticed. In ten articles with an extensive introduction, this volume places the local historiography in this region in a European perspective. It brings to the attention new material from a wide variety of cities and sets the standard for future research. This volume aims at taking the first steps towards a revaluation of urban historiography in Northwest Europe, including rather than excluding texts that do not fit common definitions. It confronts examples from the Low Countries to well-studied cases abroad, in order to develop new approaches to urban historiography in general. In the authors' view, there are no fixed textual formats, social or political categories, or material forms that exclusively define ‘the urban chronicle’. Urban historiography in pre-modern Western Europe came in many guises, from the dry and modest historical notes in a guild register, to the elaborate heraldic images in a luxury manuscript made on commission for a patrician family, to the legally founded political narrative of a professional scribe in an official town chronicle. The contributions in this volume attest to the diversity of the ‘genre’ and look more closely at these texts from a broader, comparative perspective, unrestrained by typologies and genre definitions. It is mainly because of these hybrid guises, that many examples of urban historiography from the Low Countries for instance succeeded in going unnoticed for a considerable amount of time.
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Papers by Bram Caers
Middle Dutch chivalric epics. After a short discussion of the main dating methods, we present a chronological overview of Middle Dutch chivalric epics, based on a critical scrutiny of secondary literature. We hope to reach a synthesis as a point of reference for future research.
of memory initiated by the city council after the calvinist regime (1580-1585). Through text and image, the new council aimed to reassert the city’s image as a catholic and loyal capital, in accordance with its motto ‘in fide constans’.
Book Reviews by Bram Caers
Books by Bram Caers
Middle Dutch chivalric epics. After a short discussion of the main dating methods, we present a chronological overview of Middle Dutch chivalric epics, based on a critical scrutiny of secondary literature. We hope to reach a synthesis as a point of reference for future research.
of memory initiated by the city council after the calvinist regime (1580-1585). Through text and image, the new council aimed to reassert the city’s image as a catholic and loyal capital, in accordance with its motto ‘in fide constans’.