Medieval English and Dutch Literatures: the European Context

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This collection honours the scholarship of Professor David F. Johnson,
exploring the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contracts with the Low
Countries, and highlighting common texts, motifs, and themes across the textual traditions
of Old English and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch.Few scholars
have contributed as much to the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contacts
with the Low Countries than Professor David F. Johnson. His wide-ranging scholarship
embraces both the textual traditions of Old English, especially in manuscript production,
and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch, highlighting their common
texts, motifs, and themes.Taking Johnson's work as its starting point and model, the essays
collected here investigate early English manuscript production and preservation,
illuminating the complexities of reinterpreting Old English poetry, particularly Beowulf,
and then go on to pursue those nuances through later English and Middle Dutch Arthurian
romances and drama, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, and the
Roman van Walewein. They explore a plethora of material, including early medieval textual
traditions and stone sculpture, and draw on a range of approaches, such as Body and
Disability Theories. Overall, the aim is to bring multiple disciplines into dialogue with
each other, in order to present a richer and more nuanced view of the medieval literary past
and cross-cultural contact between England and the Low Countries, from the pre-Conquest
period to the late-Middle Ages, thus forming a most appropriate tribute to Professor
Johnson's pioneering work.