The Arthur of the Iberians: The Arthurian Legends in the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds (Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages) by

Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Published: 2015-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

VII

THE POST-VULGATE CYCLE IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA

Paloma Gracia

Between 1235 and 1240 the cycle known as the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal, or simply as the Post-Vulgate (P-V), was composed.1 This compilation brought together sections derived from the work of Robert de Boron, the Vulgate and the Tristan en prose, in a rewriting the extent of which varied from one section to another. This cycle told of the origins of the Grail, in a version close to the Estoire del Saint Graal, continued with the histories of Merlin and of Arthur, according to the prosification of the Merlin of Robert de Boron and a Suite du Merlin very different from the Vulgate version, and concluded with the end of the Grail adventure and the destruction of Logres, in a profound remodelling of the Queste del Saint Graal and the Mort le roi Artu, known as the Post-Vulgate Queste-Mort Artu.

No manuscript survives that includes the whole of the P-V, which is the main problem with this cycle; the surviving manuscripts are incomplete and, on occasion, involve folios that include copies of other compilations, or loose fragments. The Iberian versions corroborate the existence of the P-V, since some of their manuscript and printed witnesses cover one or more of its branches; they give an idea of the configuration of the original cycle, since they preserve, when taken together as a whole, the greater part of the P-V and therefore facilitate its reconstruction.

The history of critical scholarship on the P-V begins with the identification of its sections in manuscripts traditionally considered to belong to the Vulgate, especially the Huth Manuscript (now in the British Library, MS Add. 38117), which includes the prosified Merlin of Robert de Boron and continues with the innovating Suite du Merlin. In the prologue to their edition, Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich (1886) advanced the hypothesis that the manuscript formed part of a trilogy earlier than the Vulgate, the last section of which would have been a Queste and Mort Artu, preserved in the Demanda do Santo Graal. Although the hypothesis was the subject of argument and the idea of the priority of the P-V over the Vulgate was soon rejected, while new theories were formed regarding the number of branches that it embraced and the different reworkings to which it had been subjected, the work of Paris and Ulrich made possible a slow and progressive identification of the parts that constitute the cycle, scattered in copies of other compilations. In broad outline, works on the P-V have concentrated upon the establishment of its structure, the identification of fragments in various manuscripts, and its relations with the Vulgate and the Tristan en prose. Beyond any doubt, the greatest progress in knowledge of the P-V is that represented by the publications of Fanni Bogdanow, beginning with her The Romance of the Grail (1966), which offered a reconstruction of the storyline of the cycle, the analysis of its sections and its sources, and the study of its significance.

Leaving to one side the Iberian reworkings, the reconstruction is based on a series of manuscripts in French:

1.

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