An adaptation of an Old French romance with parallel text, notes and a detailed introduction.
Some time in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Guillaume le Clerc composed the story of Fergus, a romance in which the main character features as a "new" Perceval in a realistically depicted Scottish landscape. Shortlythereafter, perhaps as early as 1250, the story was translated into Middle Dutch. The Ferguut, however, is an adaptation of the Old French Fergus, rather than a slavish translation. The result is a romance which possesses all the appeal of the Old French Fergus, but at the same time reveals something of the Middle Dutch romancer's tastes and techniques. This volume offers the first ever English translation, facing a new edition of thetext, and will thus bring this important work to a wider audience; it is accompanied by an introduction, variants and rejected readings, and critical notes.
David F. Johnson is Professor of English, Florida State University; Geert H.M. Claassens is Professor of Middle Dutch Literature at the Katholieke Universityeit Leuven, Belgium.
