Medieval Dutch Literature - Chevalric Era

Chevalric Era

With the middle of the fourteenth century the chivalric spirit came once more into fashion. A certain revival of the forms of feudal life made its appearance under William III and his successors. Knightly romances came once more into vogue, but the newborn didactic poetry contended vigorously against the supremacy of what was lyrical and epical.

From the very first the literary spirit in the Low Countries began to assert itself in a homely and utilitarian spirit. Thoroughly aristocratic in feeling was Hem van Aken, a priest of Louvain, who lived about 1255–1330, and who combined to a very curious extent the romantic and didactic elements prevailing at the time. As early as 1280 he had completed his translation of the Roman de la Rose, which he must have commenced in the lifetime of its author Jean de Meung.

During the Bavarian period (1349–1433), very little original writing of much value was produced in Holland. Towards the end of the 14th century, an erotic poet of considerable power arose in the person of the lord of Waddinxveen, Dirc Potter van der Loo (c. 1365–1428), who was secretary at the court of the counts of Holland. During an embassy in Rome, this eminent diplomat made himself acquainted with the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio and commenced a vast poem, Der Minnen Loep ("The Course of Love"), a mixture of classical and Biblical instances of amorous adventures set in a framework of didactic philosophy. In Potter, the last traces of the chivalric element died out of Dutch literature, and poetry was left entirely in the hands of the school of Maerlant.