How to Make Friends: Burgundian Politics in Two Early Modern Prose Texts (Hug Schapler and Girart de Roussillon)

Fifteenth-century Europe witnessed the growth of a political giant in its midst, the Duchy of Burgundy. Under its four successive rulers Burgundy developed from one of the fiefdoms of France into France's most powerful rival. Increasingly aggressive, it sought to assert its right to a Middle Kingdom vis-a-vis France and the Empire who watched these developments with growing alarm. Burgundy's ambitions are reflected in much of the literature commissioned by its most powerful duke, Philip the Good. In these texts Carolingian and Lotharingian history is adapted to Philip's political schemes and written to legitimize his ambitions. On the opposing side, Europe watched Burgundy with understandable alarm, and the reaction to this growing menace in its midst found its way into its literature. Two prose texts from the fifteenth century, Wauquelin's Girart de Roussillon and Elisabeth von Saarbrucken's Hug Schapler, serve as illustrative examples of ways in which the political conflicts of early modern Europe were dealt with.