What is the Lancelot-Grail ?
by † Elspeth Kennedy
by † Elspeth Kennedy
The Lancelot-Grail Cycle (Cycle du Lancelot-Graal),
sometimes
called
the Vulgate Cycle or the Prose Lancelot, evolved in stages.
The oldest
surviving Lancelot manuscript in prose, Paris, BNF fr. 768,
begins 'En la
marche
de Gaule' with an account of the events that lead to Lancelot
being
brought
up, without a name, in the semblance of a lake, by a lady who had
learned
her magic from Merlin. It then recounts Lancelot's adventures,
from
his knighting at King Arthur's court and his first sight of Queen
Guinevere
which was to inspire him to perform great deeds and to save Arthur's
kingdom
more than once, up to the establishment of his name at Arthur's court
and
his installation as a knight of the Round Table. This is followed
by an account of his departure from Arthur's court with his great
friend
Galehot and the False Guinevere episode in which Guinevere's identity
is
challenged and is re-established by Lancelot who then remains at
Arthur's
court. This version of the romance ends with the death of Galehot
through his separation from his close companion Lancelot. There
is
much interplay with the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and with
those of Robert de Boron and allusions to past Grail adventures, one of
which names Perceval as the Grail hero who had sat in the Perilous
Seat.
The second stage in the development of the cycle is marked by a re-writing of the False Guinevere episode and the death of Galehot that prepares the way for the incorporation of Chrétien's Chevalier de la Charette (Knight of the Cart), of a Grail Quest with a new hero Galaad, son of Lancelot, and of a Mort Artu. The final stage includes two new branches placed at the beginning: firstly, the Estoire, a fundamental re-writing of Robert de Boron's early history of the Grail (the Joseph); secondly, a Merlin, a prose version of Robert de Boron's Merlin in verse. This is followed in most cyclic manuscripts by a Suite Vulgate (Merlin Continuation) that prepares the way for what was originally the beginning of the first Prose Lancelot (En la marche de Gaule). The change of Grailwinner, in the course of the development of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle from the first Prose Lancelot without a Grail quest resulted in a number of inconsistencies as a majority of manuscripts kept the allusion to Perceval as Grail-winner and also an account of the birth of an un-baptised Merlin that clashes with what is to be found in the second branch of the complete cycle. Sporadic attempts are made in some manuscripts to remove these contradictions. There is, however, one group of manuscripts that makes a more consistent effort to remove these contradictions. This group is described as the 'Short Version' as it gives a slightly condensed version of the text, and it is manuscripts belonging to this group on which our study is based.
The Lancelot-Grail Cycle had a considerable influence on
Arthurian
prose romance. Parts of it are incorporated into the Prose Tristan
(some
later Prose Lancelot manuscripts also incorporated parts of the
Prose Tristan within the Lancelot-Grail Cycle).
A new
cycle, which does not make Lancelot the central character, has survived
in fragments in various languages, some in French, some only in
translation
into Spanish or Portuguese. This is known as the Post-Vulgate
Cycle.
There is also a fifteenth-century manuscripts, Paris, BNF fr. 112,
which
provides a 'Readers Digest' version of Arthurian prose romance, and
includes
parts of the Prose Lancelot, in a very condensed form, but is
textually
related to the group of manuscripts we have studied.
Note by Alison Stones:
Robert de Boron's Joseph in a
prose version, and sometimes his Merlin,
continued to be copied well into the fourteenth century alongside the Lancelot-Grail (see Manuscript
List, espcially New Haven, Beinecke Library, Yale 227), and
numerous
other special and abridged versions were copied well into the fifteenth
century.