Post-National Reconceptions of European Literary History: A Mixed-Method Approach to a Late Medieval Text Tradition

Introduction

The study of pan-European medieval literature faces two significant problems. The first is so obvious that it is rarely given much thought: only a fraction of the texts created in this period have survived.

Challenges in Text Study

The second problem is similarly easy to overlook when working on any one text, which is that the content and reception history of those texts that do survive are usually studied separately within the ‘national’ philologies. These linguistic and cultural borders make it difficult to gain insights into the broader patterns of creation, dissemination, and reception arising out of these fragments of cross-regional text traditions.

At the same time, the linguistic and temporal limitations of analogue study make it all but impossible to gain a comprehensive overview of text traditions spanning different languages and large numbers of text versions.

Project Overview

The interdisciplinary Post-REALM project will combine digital analysis with close reading and study of material context in order to focus on 26 versions of the late medieval pan-European 'Floire and Blancheflor' narrative.

Methodology

Drawing on a broad range of analogue and digital forms of analysis, we will:

1. Develop and refine a new mixed-method template for how to approach widespread cross-lingual text traditions from the past.
2. Create an entirely new understanding of how this popular late medieval narrative was written, adapted, and disseminated across different regions of Western Europe.

Goals

The aim of the project is to inspire a step change in how the study of medieval literature is approached. Doing so will provide:

• New conceptual frameworks
• Resource formats within which to relate the different surviving versions of historical text traditions to each other
• New ways of understanding and visualizing their contents, material context, and paths of dissemination.