From Insular to European Romance: The Medieval 'Bevis'-Tradition in Multi-Text Manuscript Contexts

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Miriam Edlich-Muth
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; Medieval History
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 434448311

• Final Report Year: 2025

Final Report Abstract

Our project investigated the medieval "Bevis of Hampton" tradition within multi-text manuscript contexts, aiming to understand its connection to regional identities and its broader European dissemination. We created a comprehensive, multilingual database documenting all surviving multi-text manuscripts containing versions of the Bevis narrative, which involved extensive research in libraries and archives across Europe. This database provides scholars with detailed information on the manuscript contexts in which Bevis appears and its textual companions. Using this database, we conducted digital analyses to identify patterns in the cooccurrence of Bevis with other texts. These analyses, visualised through graphs, shed light on the relationships between Bevis and various genres, revealing the diverse literary and cultural environments in which it circulated. We also produced five articles exploring specific aspects of the Bevis tradition in multitext manuscripts. These articles offer in-depth analyses of individual manuscripts and their unique contributions to the Bevis narrative. One article examines British Library Egerton MS 2862, uncovering a previously unnoticed change of plan during its production, suggesting a more fluid approach to manuscript compilation and highlighting the episodic, adaptable structure of the romance. Another article explores the role of reader-oriented intertextuality in shaping the Bevis tradition, demonstrating how reader interpretations could generate new narrative branches and contribute to the dynamic evolution of the Bevis story. A further article focuses on an Anglo-Italian manuscript, highlighting the connections between the Bevis narrative and the presence of Italian merchant communities in England, shedding light on the cultural exchange between the two regions. We also conducted a comparative analysis of three Middle English romances, including Bevis, to understand how different genre influences shaped their plot structures. This research offers a new model for understanding genre hybridity in medieval romance. Finally, we published an article examining the dragon-fight episode in Bevis, tracing its origins and adaptations across different manuscripts and regions. This research highlights the creative process of textual adaptation and the interplay between romance conventions and other literary traditions in shifting cultural contexts. Our project has generated valuable resources and findings that will foster further research on the Bevis tradition. The open-access database will provide a solid foundation for future scholarship on Bevis and offers a very useful overview of a wide range of key later medieval manuscripts from across Europe that contain romance material in different languages. At the same time, the digital analyses we have undertaken offer new insights into the genre components shaping medieval romance and how these intersect with the genre dominants of adjacent genres and create subgroupings within the romance field. These results, alongside our publications, which focus in greater depth on the role manuscript context has played in shaping the reception of these texts in different regions, have successfully illuminated the multifaceted role the Bevis of Hampton tradition played in European literary history. On a broader level, our findings contribute to a richer understanding of medieval literary culture and the dynamic interplay between texts, manuscripts, and readers.

Publications

• Comparative Graph Analyses “Comparing Plot Features in Middle English Romances”
  Miriam Edlich-Muth & Christian Edlich-Muth
  
• Database of the Bevis-Tradition in Multi-Text Manuscript Contexts
  Mary Bateman
  
• “Disrupted Plans: Negotiating Bevis of Hampton in the Shifting Framework of MS Egerton 2862.” Philological Quarterly 101, 163–187
  Mary Bateman, Miriam Edlich-Muth & Christian Edlich-Muth
  
• Intertextual Potential and the Reader in the Bevis Tradition: Boeve de Haumtone, Bevis of Hampton and Beuve de Hantonne. Neophilologus, 107(2), 167-183.
  Bateman, Mary
  
• Locating Anglo-Italian Communities in Bevis and the Naples Manuscript. Neophilologus, 108(4), 633-653.
  Fraaije, Karel