In Autumn 2018, a few months before the confirmation of the award, the Aspremont-Lynden manuscript resurfaced at Sotheby’s in London. On 4 December, the book was sold to a private owner, who allowed me to study the manuscript in the context of my MSC-Fellowship. This unforeseendevelopment opened up new avenues for research into Jean d’Enghien’s compilation. Most of the research performed in my project was connected to the Livre des cronicques, its sources and its relation to contemporary chronicles of Brabant. When archives and libraries closed in March 2020 and travel became difficult, it was no longer possible to consult primary sources in situ. As archivists and librariansreturned to their daily routines and reproduction services reopened, I ordered digital surrogates of manuscripts of the Livre and associated chronicles of Brabant from libraries in Belgium, France, The Netherlands, and Austria. Much of this manuscript material is now freely available online.
I further dug into Enghien’s biography and the historical, cultural and historiographical context, based on a review of secondary literature, archival inventories, edited and digitized primary sources. Doing so, I reached a better understanding of Enghien’s professional life and network. Additionally, the digital images I made during the first months of the project allowed me to initiate a comparative analysis of several manuscripts of the Livre, chart the macro-structure of the compilation, investigate the use of historiographical sources, and explore the relation of Enghien’s compilation to contemporary Latin and Dutch chronicles, and (translated) literature. In a next phase, these preliminary findings could be further refined.
I presented my findings at local workshops and international conferences, where I talked about the framing of local and regional events in the broader framework of universal chronicles, the interaction between Latin and vernacular historiography, and the role of sequels, multi-text manuscripts and compilations in the dissemination of historiographical narratives. In another presentation, I focused on medieval translation from French into Dutch and discussed the Livre de cronicques in its historical and cultural context. I built further on this work at the Medieval Chronicle conference (July 2021), where I explored the compilation’s focus on virtue, the dukes’ Lotharingian heritage, and their presumed status as the sole surviving representatives of the illustrious bloodline of Charlemagne. At workshops with colleagues at the Leiden Institute for History, I talked about the events that prompted the making of Les croniques des pays de Hollande and considered the Livre des cronicques within the framework of descriptive translation studies.
The research presented in these talks informed important sections about the translation of historiography and cultural transfer in the Low Countries in the translation history of which I was one of the authors ( 'Vertalen in de Nederlanden', 2021). The results of the abovementioned research were also incorporated in the introduction to Francophone Literature in the Low Countries (1200-1600), a volume edited by Alisa van de Haar and myself about the dissemination and reframing of Francophone texts in this multilingual region.
The transfer of knowledge to students and cross-disciplinary collaboration was achieved through the research seminar for MA students that I developed together with Bram Caers. During our weekly meetings, we delved into the material aspects of manuscript transmission, narrative theory and historical discourse analysis, rewriting and the urban context of history writing in the Low Countries. The Wikisource platform in which students brought together links to digitized manuscripts and editions of chronicles of Brabant, Flanders and Holland, together with some of our students' blogposts can be accessed through the project website.
