The late medieval manuscript transmission of the 'Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen' in urban Flanders

The Middle Dutch ‘Chronicle of Flanders’ is a complex chronicle group consisting of various distinct manuscript versions. This chronicle group is generally divided into three separate ‘traditions’: the Chronicle of Jan van Dixmude, the Kronijk van Vlaenderen, and the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen. The most important question dealt with in this contribution is whether this subdivision still makes sense today. Research strategies on medieval chronicles shifted from a focus on the authority of a chronicle’s ‘author’ towards an increasing attention to its readers and audience. Searching for this (intended) audience makes it possible to underline the connections among various manuscripts. However, lately, a countermovement has renewed the interest in chronicles’ (scribal) authorship; it focuses on the self-fashioning aspect in historiographical works. This article argues that these methodologies are not so conflicting as has been thought previously. The manuscripts of the Middle Dutch ‘Chronicle of Flanders’ provide an ideal opportunity to analyse the relationship among medieval manuscripts on the one hand as a fluid, interwoven web of connections and networks, and as the self-fashioning project of one person or family on the other hand