Literary Life in the City

Urban Spectacle

IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES, society in the Low Countries was becoming more and more urban, and this brought with it changes to the literature that flourished there. From the fourteenth century onwards, towns and cities increasingly served as the focal points not only for commerce, finance, and artisan manufacture but also for ecclesiastical authority, worship, the arts, learning, and even courtly life. By the end of the Middle Ages all these activities would be conducted almost exclusively in this urban space. Rather than simply being another arena for things already familiar, the new environment saw the commingling of forms of human socialization and behavior that in previous centuries had remained separate but were now becoming integrated. This melting pot produced all kinds of innovations, adding new facets to a literature that in these urban circles, too, continued to be an instrument of unparalleled ideological importance.

The towns and cities of Flanders and Brabant were the first to emerge as centers of literary life, keeping pace with the relatively rapid spread of literacy within the new milieu. This development sprang from the specific communication needs of industry and commerce and coincided with the speedy growth of a broadly based intellectual middle class of clerks and officials who worked for the municipal administrations and, of course, the judiciary.

A bilingual conversation manual written in Bruges around 1369, aimed at teaching Dutch and French, provides useful documentary evidence of the urban community's awareness of a well-established literacy — a society that was now able to perceive and chronicle itself within a historical context. The Book of Professions (Bouc van den ambachten / Livre des mestiers) was intended for a new kind of school that was attempting to break free from ecclesiastical control. As an initiative of merchants and guildsmen, these new schools were inspired by the needs and aspirations of urban society rather than by those of the church.