Manuscript Blauwe Schuit

Medieval Miscellanies in the Netherlands, volume 16

Het Blauwe Schuit manuscript (The Hague, KB, 75 H 57). With comical tales, burlesque humour and mockery alongside refined courtliness, minstrelsy and German-coloured poetry, this varied manuscript, written shortly after 1440 and sadly mangled in many ways, is at the same time a fascinating echo of a then already waning courtly culture, as the starting point of a long-lived urban phenomenon: the Blue Barge. The texts themselves, the enigmatic notes and blunders of the two copyists, together with the intriguing provenance from Egmond monastery, make this paper book a unique object of study for medievalists and literary historians.

Edited by Herman Brinkman