A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle
A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle

Author: Carol Dover

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780859917834

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The early thirteenth-century French prose Lancelot-Grail Cycle (or Vulgate Cycle) brings together the stories of Arthur with those of the Grail, a conjunction of materials that continues to fascinate the Western imagination today. Representing what is probably the earliest large-scale use of prose for fiction in the West, it also exemplifies the taste for big cyclic compositions that shaped much of European narrative fiction for three centuries. A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle is the first comprehensive volume devoted exclusively to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and its medieval legacy. The twenty essays in this volume, all by internationally known scholars, locate the work in its social, historical, literary, and manuscript contexts. In addition to addressing critical issues in the five texts that make up the Cycle, the contributors convey to modern readers the appeal that the text must have had for its medieval audiences, and the richness of composition that made it compelling. This volume will become standard reading for scholars, students, and more general readers interested in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, medieval romance, Malory studies, and the Arthurian legends. Contributors: RICHARD BARBER, EMMANUELE BAUMGARTNER, FANNI BOGDANOW, FRANK BRANDSMA, MATILDA T. BRUCKNER, CAROL J. CHASE, ANNIE COMBES, HELEN COOPER, CAROL R. DOVER, MICHAEL HARNEY, DONALD L. HOFFMAN, DOUGLAS KELLY, ELSPETH KENNEDY, NORRIS J. LACY, ROGER MIDDLETON, HAQUIRA OSAKABE, HANS-HUGO STEINHOFF, ALISON STONES, RICHARD TRACHSLER. CAROL DOVER is associate professor of French and director of undergraduate studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Before Malory
Before Malory

Author: Richard James Moll

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 9780802037220

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Although most modern scholars doubt the historicity of King Arthur, parts of the legend were accepted as fact throughout the Middle Ages. Medieval accounts of the historical Arthur, however, present a very different king from the romances that are widely studied today. Richard Moll examines a wide variety of historical texts including Thomas Gray's Scalacronica and John Hardyng's Chronicle to explore the relationship between the Arthurian chronicles and the romances. He demonstrates how competing and conflicting traditions interacted with one another, and how writers and readers of Arthurian texts negotiated a complex textual tradition. Moll asserts that the enormous variety and number of existing chronicles demonstrates the immense popularity of the historical Arthur in medieval England. Since these chronicles were the dominant source of Arthurian information for the late medieval reader, they provide an invaluable, and neglected, interpretive context for modern readers of Malory and other later medieval romances. The first monograph to look at the impact of these historical texts on Arthurian literature, Before Malory is also the first to show how canonical vernacular romances interacted with chronicle texts that have since dropped out of the canon.

The Holy Grail
The Holy Grail

Author: Richard W. Barber

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 9780674013902

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In this fascinating work, Barber traces the history of the legends surrounding the Holy Grail, beginning with Chrtien de Troyes's great romances of the 12th century and the medieval Church's religious version of the secular ideal.

The Arthur of the Welsh
The Arthur of the Welsh

Author:

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 178683734X

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Little, if anything, is known historically of Arthur, yet for centuries the romances of Arthur and his court dominated the imaginative literature of Europe in many languages. The roots of this vast flowering of the Arthurian legend are to be found in early Welsh tradition, and this volume gives an account of the Arthurian literature produced in Wales, in both Welsh and Latin, during the Middle Ages. The distinguished contributors offer a comprehensive view of recent scholarship relating to Arthurian literature in early Welsh and other Brythonic sources. The volume includes chapters on the 'historical' Arthur, Arthur in early Welsh verse, the legend of Merlin, the tales of Culhwch ac Olwen, Geraint, Owain, Peredur, The Dream of Rhonabwy and Trystan ac Esyllt. Other chapters investigate the evidence for the growth of the Arthurian theme in the Triads and in the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and discuss the Breton connection and the gradual transmission of the legend to the non-Celtic world. The volume, which is unique in offering a comprehensive discussion of the subject, will appeal widely to medievalists, to Welsh and Celtic scholars, and to those non-specialists who have felt the fascination of the figure of Arthur and wish to know more.

This is Not a Grail Romance
This is Not a Grail Romance

Author: Natalia Petrovskaia

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2023-07-15

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 183772038X

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This is Not a Grail Romance provides answers to some of the most important questions surrounding the medieval Welsh Arthurian tale Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, one of the few surviving medieval Welsh narrative compositions, and an important member of the ‘Grail’ family of medieval European narratives. The study demonstrates that Historia Peredur is an original Welsh composition, rather than (as previous theories have suggested) being an adaptation of the twelfth-century French grail romance. The new analysis of the structure of Historia Peredur presented here shows it to be as complex as it has always been thought – but also more formal, and the result of intentional and intricate design. The seeming inconsistencies or oddities in Historia Peredur can be understood by reading it in its medieval Welsh cultural context, allowing the modern reader a greater appreciation of both the narrative and the culture that produced it.