This blogpost was authored by Dr. Jelmar Hugen, who is based at the Leiden University Centre for Arts in Society (LUCAS) in the Netherlands, and specializes in medieval romance literature and multilingualism. Dr. Hugen visited the University of Bristol in Autumn 2024 to collaborate with Professor Ad Putter in the Department of English.
Between October 1st and November 15th, I had the great fortune to attend the University of Bristol as a Visiting Researcher, working alongside some of the leading experts on medieval romance to examine the reception of unfinished medieval French literature outside of medieval France and explore new opportunities to study this movement and transformation of romance literature across Europe in the future. The aims of this stay – establishing new contacts, producing co-authored research articles, and planning for future scholarly collaboration – were all met and have made my stay extremely rewarding.
Perceval Passing Borders
As a main point of interest, my research in Bristol centered around a particular group of medieval romances whose content has been described as reactions or responses to the French Conte du Graal, an unfinished Arthurian romance by Chrétien de Troyes (late 12th century) featuring the Grail hero Perceval that enjoyed great popularity across Europe from its inception all the way into the premodern period. Scholars such as Prof. Ad Putter and Prof. Leah Tether at the University of Bristol have examined in the past how different French authors continued this unfinished work, some by adding new material, others by trying to tie up the loose narrative plotlines to close off the story. As it turns out, however, this mode of continuation (or, more broadly, rewriting) is different to that of writers outside of the francophone literary tradition. By examining the works of these writers, in particular the Middle Dutch Roman van Moriaen and the Middle English Sir Perceval of Galles, me and Prof. Putter were able to conclude these texts worked differently towards the closure of Chrétien’s work and, in doing so, made changes to the existing romance and placed new thematic emphases that shifted away from the Holy Grail quest towards more family-oriented adventures rooted in social realism.
The findings of this research were presented in the Centre for Medieval Studies Seminar Series, where I was fortunate to get valuable comments and suggestions from experts of (Arthurian) romance and courtly culture in general (Fig. 1). In the near future, these findings will be reworked by myself and Prof. Putter into a co-authored publication.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Aside from the Conte du Graal and its European responses, I was also very happy to work on a different Arthurian romance during my stay, namely the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century). This masterpiece is well-known among Arthurian scholars and a must-read even for those such as myself who don’t normally work on medieval English romance. Fittingly, the undergraduate course on medieval English literature in Bristol spend two full weeks on the text, exploring its literary-historical context, its use of nature and space and its view of medieval gender. As the fourth and final seminar in this series, I was given the opportunity to talk to the Bristol students about the literary development of the titular hero Gawain in the Arthurian tradition and even present the students with some of the interesting bridges that exist between Dutch and English Arthuriana. Doing so not only allowed me to spend time studying this fascinating text, but also gain a new experience by teaching in English to students outside of the Netherlands, which I greatly enjoyed.
Pan-European Continuation
These bridges between different romance traditions across Europe also formed the basis for various of my discussions with the CMS members. It quickly became clear that the Pan-European scope of medieval romance was not just interesting to many researchers of individual linguistic traditions, but also that some of the practices and literary traditions that we were examining showed interesting commonalities that suggested close ties and interactions. Texts that have commonly been studied in isolation, as part of their individual literary traditions, or through intertextual connections with specific works can be understood as crafted products of a Pan-European network in which texts move, transform and adjust to different cultures and audiences. Charting out this network and examining how it functioned across Europe will require a large scale project involving scholars with expertises in different literary traditions and forms of rewriting, and it is such a project that we will work towards in the following years.
The article drafted by myself and Prof. Putter forms part of the foundation for this research, as will an article that myself and Prof. Leah Tether are working on that focuses on the literary practice of medieval continuation in French, German and Dutch romance. In the next few months, I hope to further explore the possibilities for a large scale project involving not just the University of Bristol and my home university of Leiden, but also other institutions and scholars across Europe. Hopefully, whatever form this project will take, it will also lead me back to Bristol in some way!
Conclusion
I am extremely grateful to have been able to spend time in Bristol, collaborating with some of the brightest and friendliest colleagues I have had the pleasure to work with. The Visiting Researcher program has been truly rewarding and the new connections I have made make me happy to look forward to the next steps our collaborations may take (Fig. 2).
