Dutch Literature - Middle Dutch Literature (1150-1500)

Middle Dutch Literature (1150-1500)

Main article: Medieval Dutch literature See also: Middle Dutch and Dutch folklore

In the 12th and 13th century, writers starting writing chivalric romances and hagiographies (i.e. stories about the lives of saints) for paying noblemen. From the 13th century, literature became more didactic and developed a proto-national character. The primary audience was no longer the nobility, but the bourgeoisie. The growing importance of the Southern Low Countries resulted in most works being written in Brabant, Flanders and Limburg.

In the first stages of Dutch literature, poetry was the predominant form of literary expression. It was both in the Low Countries and the rest of Europe that courtly romance and poetry were popular literary genres during the Middle Ages. One Minnesanger was the aforementioned Van Veldeke. The chivalric romance was a popular genre as well, often featuring King Arthur or Charlemagne as protagonist.

As the political and cultural emphasis at the time lay in the southern provinces, most of the works handed down from the early Middle Ages were written in southern Low Franconian dialects such as Limburgish, Flemish and Brabantic. The first Dutch language writer known by name is van Veldeke who wrote courtly love poetry, hagiographies and epics.

Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268) was the first known prose writer in the Dutch language, the author of the notable dissertation known as the Seven Ways of Holy Love.

A number of the surviving Dutch language epic works, especially the courtly romances, were copies from or expansions of earlier German or French efforts, but there are examples of truly original works (such as the anonymous Karel ende Elegast) and even Dutch-language works that formed the basis for version in other languages (such as the morality play Elckerlijc that formed the basis for Everyman (play)). Another genre popular in the Middle Ages was the fable, and the most elaborate fable produced by Dutch literature was an expanded adaptation of the Reynard the Fox tale, Vanden vos Reynaerde ("Of Reynard the Fox"), written around 1250 by a person only known to us as Willem.

Up until the 13th century, the Middle Dutch language output mainly serviced the aristocratic and monastic orders, recording the traditions of chivalry and of religion, but scarcely addressed the bulk of the population. With the close of the 13th century a change appeared in Dutch literature. The Flemish and Hollandic towns began to prosper and to assert their commercial supremacy over the North Sea, and these cities won privileges amounting almost to political independence. With this liberty there arose a new sort of literary expression.

The most important exponent of this new development was Jacob van Maerlant (~1235–~1300), a Flemish scholar who worked in Holland for part of his career. His key works are Der Naturen Bloeme ("The Flower of Nature", c. 1263), a collection of moral and satirical addresses to all classes of society, and De Spieghel Historiael ("The Mirror of History", c. 1284). Van Maerlant straddles the cultural divide between the northern and southern provinces. Up until now, the northern provinces had produced little of worth, and this would largely remain the case until the fall of Antwerp during the Eighty Years' War shifted focus to Amsterdam. He is sometimes been referred to as the "father of Dutch poetry", "a title he merits for productivity if for no other reason."

The Brussels friar Jan van Ruusbroec (better known in English as the Blessed John of Ruysbroeck, 1293/4–1381), is considered the father of Dutch prose, who following Beatrice took prose out of the economic and political realms and used it for literary purposes. He wrote sermons filled with mystic thought.

Around 1440, literary guilds called rederijkerskamers ("Chambers of Rhetoric") arose. These guilds, whose members called themselves Rederijkers or "Rhetoricians", were in almost all cases middle-class in tone, and opposed to aristocratic ideas and tendencies in thought. Of these chambers, the earliest were almost entirely engaged in preparing mysteries and miracle plays for the people. Soon their influence grew until no festival or procession could take place in a town unless the Chamber patronized it. The Chambers' plays very rarely dealt with historical or even Biblical personages, but entirely with allegorical and moral abstractions and were didactic in nature. The most notable examples of Rederijker theatre include Mariken van Nieumeghen ("Mary of Nijmegen") and Elckerlijc (which was translated into English as Everyman).

At the close of the early period, Anna Bijns (c. 1494–1575) stands as a transitional figure. Bijns was an Antwerp schoolmistress and lay nun whose main targets were the faith and character of Luther. In her first volume of poetry (1528) the Lutherans are scarcely mentioned and focus lies on her personal experience of faith, but in that of 1538 every page is occupied with invectives against them. With the writings of Bijns, the period of Middle Dutch closes and the modern Dutch begins (see also History of the Dutch language).