De betogen van Ami en Vrient

Die Rose is one of two Middle Dutch adaptations of the Old French Roman de la Rose (c. 1278). It was written before 1325 in the Duchy of Brabant by an author named Heinric van Brussel. Divergences from the French source text primarily occur in the translation of the second part of the romance, attributed to Jean de Meun. This article focuses on a section of the adaptation of Jean de Meun’s sequel: the sermon of Vrient, which is based on the speech of Ami. First, the current editions of both the French and Brabantine Rose are examined to decide on the most suitable edition for this comparative analysis. Variant readings in the manuscripts of the French Rose are compared with the text of the Brabantine Rose, in order to determine the manuscript family to which the French source text may have belonged. Second, the hypothesis that Die Rose was (partially) retranslated in the Comburg manuscript (ms. C) is tested. For this purpose, the sermon of Vrient in Die Rose as found in ms. C is compared to the corresponding passages in the other Middle Dutch manuscripts and in the French Rose. Finally, the stylistic and thematic shifts introduced by Heinric in his translation of Ami’s sermon are described and discussed.