exactly to those in the calendar years 1197, 1223, and 1234. Easily drawing on the
medieval repertoire of rhetorical figures, the Flamenca poet spryly crosses boundaries
between the “real,” the conventional, and the outrageous.
Amelia E.Van Vleck
[See also: JOUFROI DE POITIERS]
Gschwind, Ulrich, ed. Le roman de Flamenca: nouvelle occitane du XIIIe siècle. 2 vols. Bern:
Francke, 1976.
Hubert, Merton J., ed., and Marion E.Porter, trans. The Romance of Flamenca: A Provençal Poem
of the Thirteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962.
Huchet, Jean-Charles, ed. and trans. Flamenca, roman occitan du XIIIe siècle. Paris: Union
Générale d’Éditions, 1988.
Limentani, Alberto. L’eccezione narrative: La Provenza médiévale e l’arte del racconto. Turin:
Einaudi, 1977.
“Encore une bibliographie pour Flamenca?” Revue des langues romanes 92(1988):105–23.
FLANDERS
. The pagus Flandrensis was a district along the North Sea coast from Bruges to the Yser
River, first mentioned in the 8th century. The “Flanders” with politi-cal and economic
power by the 10th century, however, was bordered by the Scheldt (Escaut) on the north,
the line of the Scheldt and Dender on the east, and the Canche on the south. While the
counts held western and southern Flanders in fief of the French crown, lands in the east
were held of the Holy Roman emperor.
The first known count, Baudouin I Iron Arm (d. 879), added the districts of Ghent,
Waas, Thérouanne, Aardenburg, and perhaps the Yser and Leie valleys to his lands
around Bruges. Baudouin II (d. 918) extended his power southward, and Arnulf I the
Great (r. 918–65) took Montreuil, Douai, and Artois. After he died, his principality was
divided and only reunited in the 11th century, and the counts’ position was never as
strong in the south, which had a predominantly Romance-speaking population, as in the
north, the home of their dynasty. Baudouin IV (r. 988–1035) was the first Flemish count
to control both banks of the Scheldt. Count Baudouin V (r. 1035–67) married his son and
successor to the widow of the count of Hainaut, but the two houses were divided after the
death of Baudouin VI (Baudouin I of Hainaut) in 1070. His young son Arnulf III’s
position was usurped by his uncle, Robert the Frisian (count of Flanders 1071–93).
Flanders and Hainaut were reunited only in 1191.
The next counts tried to keep the peace with their French lords and Norman neighbors
on the south. From the early 12th century, Lotharingia and imperial Flanders, which had
dominated the diplomacy of the 11th-century counts, moved into the background, while
Flemish policy was increasingly caught between the counts’ two other feudal lords: the
king of France, from whom they held most of their lands, and the king of England, from
whom they held a fief-rente and on whom their cities were already dependent by the 12th
century for high-grade wool. Foreign interests came to the foreground in 1127, when
Count Charles the Good was assassinated by members of his entourage. After a civil war
in which the king of France supported William Clito, the nephew and rival of King Henry
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