Its roots are given as
Middle Dutch and Middle Low German grof EDNLS gives its origin as grofr in ON.
The book offers sixteen perspectives on
Middle Dutch literature, and makes no claim to be definitive or to establish any sort of canon.
It is perhaps somewhat of a prejudice to see Dutch literature of the period as emphatically didactic, and yet this is a view that seems to be confirmed by Hartmut Kokott's comparison of the Strasbourg Ulenspiegel, a printed version of 1510/11, with that of the
Middle Dutch Antwerp print of 1525/46, in which the eschatological elements have been toned down in favour of the didactic thrust of the text.
Kruyskamp would appear to have one of these idioms in mind when he glosses line 34 of Heile van Beersele in his editioa of the
Middle Dutch fabliaux: eig.
Erik Kwakkel contributes "Late Medieval Text Collections: A Codicological Typology Based on Single-Author Manuscripts" to the volume in which he examines compilation in the specific material context of
Middle Dutch manuscripts.
Fichte (on Arthur's death), Gerhard Wild (the abandonment of the symbolic structure of the Arthurian romance in the late Middle Ages), Bart Besamusca (narrative structures in the
Middle Dutch Lancelot compilation), Klaus Ridder (on Reinfried von Braunschweig) and Tomas Tomasek (on the Frauendienst of Ulrich von Liechtenstein).
Northing new concerning our problem is to be found in The Barnhard Dictionary of Etymology (1988) under the entry hanker v.: 'borrowed probably from Flemish hankeren, related to Dutch hunkeren to hanker, of uncertain origin (perhaps frequentative or intensive form of hangen to hang, related to
Middle Dutch hangen to hang.
She concentrates on the most important textual witness of the
Middle Dutch translation of the long version, Vienna, Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek, MS 15231, which was used and copied in a community of Augustinian canonesses.