In October of 1473 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, met with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III in Trier, in modern day France. Their meeting was sumptuous, charged, and recorded by an unknown chronicler in the Book of the Duke and Emperor. The Duke and Emperor, which has not been previously edited, is an historical account of an important political meeting including details of its protocol, attendees, and activities, while also embodying a late-medieval cultural ideal put forward by the Duke and his chronicler. The late fifteenth-century MS. Manchester, Chetham's Library 8009 (Mun. A.6.31) contains the unique extant copy of this Middle English prose text, which is found alongside Middle English romance, hagiography, a comic ballad, and courtesy literature. Importantly, when considered with the pieces that coexist with it, the Duke and Emperor takes on new meaning within the “whole book” of the manuscript. This literally contextual examination first presents the Duke's ideal of power, status, and performing identity, and then manifests an unexpected dissenting voice detectable within another text of the manuscript.

This article aims to introduce a significant fifteenth-century historical account which encapsulates Charles the Bold's ideology of power and conveys the dynamics involved in both acquiring and confirming that power. The piece also aims to provide a close reading within the MS. Chetham 8009 which demonstrates how the Duke and Emperor enters into an informed debate over ideologies of status and display with two other items in the manuscript: the romance Ipomadon and John Russell's Book of Carving and Nurture.