Scholars in the fields of History, Art, Musicology, and Literary Studies have, each in their own way, shown interest in the courtly song culture that developed in the Burgundian and Habsburg Low Countries in the long fifteenth century. A challenge all of these fields face is that the dynamics of this song culture are complicated by the different cultural, linguistic, and social barriers that were at play during this period. Burgundian and Habsburg court culture was predominantly French, but often interacted with urban contexts that were if not overall Dutch-speaking (e.g. Mechelen, Bruges), then certainly bilingual (e.g. Brussels). While literary historians are fully aware of the multilingual context in which literature functioned in this period, the genre of lyric has been somewhat understudied from this point of view. In previous research, as well as in catalogues and inventories, multilingual sources of song and lyrical poetry have often been neglected or studied only partly, and often from a single-language point of view.

The FWO-funded project ‘New Perspectives on Medieval and Renaissance Courtly Song’ aims to examine the broad musical, spatial, textual, and cultural-historical context of late medieval and early modern courtly songs, presenting new perspectives that take this dynamic cross-cultural context into consideration. In the subproject that takes place at Leiden University, emphasis is placed on the collection of metadata from Dutch song texts, manuscripts, and early prints from this period and the multilingual networks in which these works were produced, transmitted and utilized. Through a transnational, interdisciplinary perspective that combines insights from literary history, manuscript studies and musicology with methodological approaches from the fields of network analysis and digital humanities we strive to complete the following objectives:

• Mapping the circulation of songs and lyrics in the Low Countries and tracing the textual networks to which they belonged;
• Interpreting the songs from the Low Countries within the multilingual context (Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Latin) in which they originated and functioned;
• Identifying the networks of commissioners, producers, and recipients of manuscripts and prints containing songs and lyrics, relating them to the textual networks, and interpreting them within their cultural-historical context.

This project is part of a larger international project, funded by the Flemish Research Organisation (FWO), between the Alamire Foundation, KU Leuven, UAntwerpen and Leiden University, entitled ‘New Perspectives on Medieval and Renaissance Courtly Song’. This project aims for a collaborative, multidisciplinary exploration of the broader societal, linguistic, and cultural context in which late medieval and early modern courtly song circulated and operated.

Project website: https://research.kuleuven.be/portal/en/project/3H240308

KU Leuven: Prof. David Burn (Researcher), Prof. Toon van Waterschoot (Researcher)

Alamire Foundation: Dhr. Bart Demuyt (Researcher, PI)

UAntwerpen: MA Febe Thonissen (PhD), Prof. Mike Kestemont (Supervisor), Prof. Remco Sleiderink (Supervisor) 

Universiteit Leiden: Dr. Bram Caers (Supervisor), Dr. Jelmar Hugen (Postdoc)

• historical multilingualism
• languages, cultures and worldviews

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