Lancelot–Grail

The ''Lancelot-Grail'', also known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is an early 13th-century French Arthurian literary cycle consisting of interconnected prose episodes of chivalric romance in Old French. The cycle of unknown authorship, presenting itself as a chronicle of actual events, retells the legend of King Arthur by focusing on the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere as well as the religious quest for the Holy Grail, expanding on the works of Robert de Boron and Chrétien de Troyes.

There is no unity of place, but most of the episodes take place in Arthur's kingdom of Logres. One of the main characters is Arthur himself, around whom gravitates a host of other heroes, many of whom are Knights of the Round Table. Among them is the famed Lancelot, whose chivalric tale is centered around his illicit romance with Arthur's wife, Queen Guinevere. However, the cycle also tells of adventures of a more spiritual type; those involve the Holy Grail, the vessel that contained the blood of Christ, for which many of the members of the Round Table are searching, with Lancelot's son Galahad ultimately emerging as the winner of this sacred contest. Other major narratives include the life of Merlin and the stories of rise and fall of Arthur.

After its completion around 1230–1235, the ''Lancelot–Grail'' was soon followed by its major rewrite known as the Post-Vulgate Cycle. Together, the two cycles, with their multiple variants and abundance of characters, represent a major source of the Arthurian legend as they constituted a highly influential and most widespread form of Arthurian romance literature during their time and also contributed the most to the later English compilation '' Le Morte d'Arthur'' that formed the basis for Arthuriana's modern canon.

Composition and authorship

The Vulgate Cycle emphasizes Christian themes in the legend of King Arthur, in particular in the story of the Holy Grail. Like Robert de Boron's original poem ''Merlin'' (c. 1195–1210), the cycle states that its first parts are derived from the ''Livre du Graal'' ("The Book of the Grail"), described as a text dictated by Merlin himself to his confessor in the early years of Arthur's reign. Next, following the demise of Merlin, the supposed original (fictitious) authors of the later parts of the cycle are named (in one of several spelling variants) as Arodiens de Cologne (Arodian of Cologne), Tantalides de Vergeaus (Tantalides of Vercelli), Thumas de Toulete (Thomas of Toledo), and Sapiens de Baudas (Sapient of Baghdad), the scribes who served Arthur and recorded the deeds of the Knights of the Round Table, including the grand Grail Quest, as relayed to them by the eyewitnesses of the events beings told. It is uncertain whether the medieval readers actually believed in the truthfulness of the centuries-old "chronicle" characterisation or if they recognised it as a contemporary work of creative fiction.

Welsh writer Gautier (Walter) Map (c. 1140–1209) is attributed to be the editing author, as can be seen in the notes and illustrations in some manuscripts describing his discovery in an archive at Salisbury of the chronicle of Camelot, supposedly dating from the times of Arthur, and his translation of these documents from Latin to Old French as ordered by Henry II of England (the location was changed from Salisbury to the mystical Avalon in a later Welsh redaction). Map's connection has been discounted by modern scholarship, however, as he died too early to be the author and the work is distinctly continental.

The cycle's actual authorship is unknown, but most scholars today believe it was written by multiple authors. There might have been either a single master-mind planner, the so-called "architect" (as first called so by Jean Frappier, who compared the process to building a cathedral), who may have written the main section (''Lancelot Proper''), and then overseen the work of multiple other anonymous scribes. One theory identified the initiator as French queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who would have set up the project already in 1194. Alternately, each part may have been composed separately, arranged gradually, and rewritten for consistency and cohesiveness. Regarding the question of the author of the ''Lancelot'', Ferdinand Lot suggested an anonymous clerical court clerk of aristocratic background.

Today it is believed by some (such as editors of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'') that a group of anonymous French Catholic monks wrote the cycleor at least the ''Queste'' part (where, according to Fanni Bogdanow, the text's main purpose is to convince sinners to repent), as evident by its very Cistercian spirit of Christian mysticism (with Augustinian intrusions). Others doubt this, however, and a compromise theory postulates a more secular writer who had spent some time in a Cistercian monastery. Richard Barber