The rise and proliferation of Arthurian prose romances in France in the thirteenth century is attested most notably by the enormous corpus of Old French Arthurian prose romances known as the Vulgate Cycle. According to most scholars, the Vulgate Cycle in its original form comprised three prose romances: the Roman de Lancelot en prose, the Roman de la Queste del Saint Graal and the Roman de la Mort le Roi Artu. At a later stage, two other prose romances conceived as preliminary works to the original trilogy were added to the cycle: the Estoire del Saint Graal and the Vulgate Merlin. This group of Old French Arthurian romances has survived in nearly one hundred manuscripts and was translated into almost all major Western European languages. Of the three extant Middle Dutch translations of the Lancelot en prose, Orlanda Lie has chosen the (only) verse translation (preserved on two leaves of parchment, the so-called Rotterdam Fragments) as the starting point for a comparison between the Middle Dutch, the Middle High German and the Old French Lancelot en prose versions. In this comparative analysis only a small portion of the extensive Lancelot en prose (namely, those sections that are parallel to the content of the Rotterdam Fragments) will be involved. The relation of the consulted French manuscripts to the Dutch and German Lancelot translations are ascertained in the light of insights gained from an investigation into the manuscript tradition of the Lancelot en prose sections which qualify for a comparison with the two Middle Dutch fragments. Although the main emphasis of this study falls on the manuscript tradition of the Lancelot en prose, a brief discussion of some of the important stylistic and structural characteristics of the Lancelot trilogy as a whole is presented, especially since it is more than likely that the scope and complexity of the work has also influenced (directly of indirectly) its manuscript tradition. A diplomatic and a critical edition of the Rotterdam Fragments as well as a translation in modern English are included in this volume.

"The book consists of five chapters. The introductory chapter deals with the study of cyclicity, the literary context of the Lancelot Compilation, and the manuscript tradition. In the following three chapters the ten romances are studied one by one. Each analysis consists of two parts: a description of the compiler's source and a survey of his interventions. In the fifth and last chapter the Lancelot Compilation is characterized as a narrative cycle and compared with French, English and German cycles. The monograph concludes with an attempt to describe the essence of the compilation."--BOOK JACKET.

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.

New editor, new directions: the series broadens its scope to encompass European literatures other than French and English; still, however, "an indispensable component of any historical or Arthurian library". NOTES AND QUERIES This new volume of Arthurian Literature, the first under its new editor Keith Busby, is devoted to the Roman van Walewein(The Romance of Walewein [Gawain]) by Penninc and Pieter Vostaert, an undisputed gem of Middle Dutch literature which has recently become accessible to an English-speaking audience through translation. Essentially a fairy-tale written into Arthurian romance, it presents a Gawain quite different to the man found in the English Sir Gawain and the Green Knightor the French Gauvain. Expert readings of the Walewein, especially commissioned and collected by BART BESAMUSCA and ERIK KOOPERof the University of Utrecht are provided by a group of renowned scholars, contributing to the on-going critical appraisal of the Walewein. KEITH BUSBY is George Lynn Cross Research Professor at the Center for Medieval and Renaissane Studies, University of Oklahoma. Contributors: BART BESAMUSCA, ERIK KOOPER, WALTER HAUG, DOUGLAS KELLY, NORRIS J. LACY, MATHIAS MEYER, AD PUTTER, FELICITY RIDDY, THEA SUMMERFIELD, JANE H.M. TAYLOR, BART VELDHOEN, NORBERT VOORWINDEN, LORI WALTERS

There is no book-length overview of the Dutch Arthurian tradition in English available at this moment. Like the other books in the ALMA series, this book will give the state of the art in (in this case Dutch) Arthurian studies. This book provides a comprehensive and informed survey of medieval Arthurian literature in Dutch.

The renowned and illustrious tales of King Arthur, his knights and the Round Table pervade all European vernaculars, as well as the Latin tradition. Arthurian narrative material, which had originally been transmitted in oral culture, began to be inscribed regularly in the twelfth century, developing from (pseudo-)historical beginnings in the Latin chronicles of "historians" such as Geoffrey of Monmouth into masterful literary works like the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Evidently a big hit, Arthur found himself being swiftly translated, adapted and integrated into the literary traditions of almost every European vernacular during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This Handbook seeks to showcase the European character of Arthurian romance both past and present. By working across national philological boundaries, which in the past have tended to segregate the study of Arthurian romance according to language, as well as by exploring primary texts from different vernaculars and the Latin tradition in conjunction with recent theoretical concepts and approaches, this Handbook brings together a pioneering and more complete view of the specifically European context of Arthurian romance, and promotes the more connected study of Arthurian literature across the entirety of its European context.

The focus of this book is medieval vernacular literature in Western Europe. Chapters are written by experts in the area and present the current scholarship at the time this book was originally published in 1996. Each chapter has a bibliography of important works in that area as well. This is a thorough and reliable guide to trends in research on medieval Arthuriana.