Crossroads of Cultures : Multilingual Diversity in Dutch Literature from LateMedieval Flanders

Positioned in the geographical region where the Low Countries, the Holy German Empire, and the French Kingdom meet, the medieval County of Flanders was a crossroad at which many cultures from across Europe met. As these cultures mixed, so too did their languages, leading to Flanders becoming profoundly multilingual, both on a societal and individual level. This volume examines the literary interaction between the most prominent languages of Flanders, namely Dutch, French, and Latin, in a variety of texts and manuscripts from an array of genres, analyzing multilingualism as a cultural phenomenon, a sociolinguistic feature, and a literary device. Combining literary studies with insights from sociolinguistics, material philology and translation studies, this work illustrates the rich multilingual diversity of medieval Flemish literature during the late Middle Ages and promotes the study of Dutch literature in a translingual, multicultural context. [Publisher's text]

741059 characters.