Robert de Boron - Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: The Trilogy of Arthurian Prose Romances attributed to Robert de Boron

ARTHURIAN STUDIES XLVIII

MERLIN AND THE GRAIL

It is hard to overstate the importance of this trilogy of prose romances in the development of the legend of the Holy Grail and in the evolution of Arthurian literature as a whole. They give a crucial new impetus to the story of the Grail by establishing a provenance for the sacred vessel and for the Round Table itself in the Biblical past; and through the controlling figure of Merlin they link the story of Joseph of Arimathea with the mythical British history of Vortigern and Utherpendragon, the birth of Arthur, and the sword in the stone, and then with the knightly adventures of Percevals Grail quest and the betrayal and death of Arthur, creating the very first Arthurian cycle. Ambitious, original and complete in its conception, this trilogy translated here for the first time is a finely paced, vigorous piece of storytelling that provides an outstanding example of the essentially oral nature of early prose.

NIGEL BRYANT is head of drama at Marlborough College. He has also provided editions in English of the anonymous thirteenth-century romance Perlesvaus , published as The High Book of the Grail , and Chretiens Perceval: The Story of the Grail .

ARTHURIAN STUDIES

ISSN 0261 9814

Previously published volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book

Three for three:

Sally, Jevan and Will

and it is surely no exaggeration. Not only in the development of the Grail legend, but in the evolution of Arthurian literature as a whole, it would be hard to overstate the importance of this trilogy of prose romances. Relatively short though they may be, these works attributed to Robert de Boron not only gave a vital new impetus to the story of the Grail left unfinished by Chrtien de Troyes, but were also to prove an inspiration to later writers, showing the way forward by combining a series of narratives to create the very first cycle of Arthurian tales. For the redactor of the version translated here was not content merely to take the Grail as the object of a chivalric quest and go back in time to tell the story of its origins in the Biblical past; nor was he content to move on and see the Grail quest brought to a conclusion; he went further, and gave his audience a resolution to the whole Arthurian story by finishing his Perceval with an account of the betrayal and death of Arthur and the end of the knights of the Round Table. This trilogy is astonishingly ambitious, original and complete in its conception.

The Joseph of Arimathea has survived in seventeen manuscripts, most of which also contain Merlin, but only two go on to contain the entire trilogy of Joseph, Merlin and Perceval : manuscript E. 39 of the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, and nouv. acqu. no. 4166 of the Bibliothque Nationale, Paris (formerly named the Didot manuscript after a past owner hence the title Didot-Perceval often applied to the third part). These manuscripts have not necessarily been used as the bases for modern editions: both Richard OGorman in his parallel follows the text simply of the Modena manuscript. Uncritical though some may feel this to be, it has the great virtue of presenting a medieval reality: it gives a single, complete text as it would have been experienced by a contemporary audience.

Of the two manuscripts that contain the complete trilogy, the Modena text is unquestionably the better notably in the Perceval section. In his fine edition of the Perceval, William Roach refers to the Modena redactor as a careful and thoughtful workman... [whose manuscript] gives a straightforward, clear text, admirably suited to conveying the impression that the Joseph Merlin Perceval Mort Artu tetralogy is a unified and harmonious whole... [while the Paris Didot manuscript, although it tells essentially the same story, contains]... hopelessly garbled passages.... The text of the [Didot] manuscript is so corrupt that the reader may often wonder whether some of its readings do not represent misprints or errors of transcription on the part of the editor.

This, therefore, is a translation of the trilogy (or tetralogy, if you think of the Mort Artu as a separate section) as compiled by the anonymous writer of that specific manuscript, now in the library at Modena, and as it would have been read or, more probably, performed and heard by a specific group of people in the thirteenth century.

But what exactly did the redactor whose work is preserved in the Modena manuscript do with Robert de Borons material? What exactly did Robert himself write?

A simple account would have it that this trilogy is a translation into prose of a trilogy originally written by Robert in verse. However, only one manuscript of his verse version survives, ). It is true that an ambiguity in the sentence structure at this point makes it just about possible that it is Merlin who could not know but it would be a strange thing to say about a being who has knowledge of all things past and future, and I have translated the sentence to make it clear that it is Robert who ne pot savoir le conte dou Graal.

But what exactly did he not know? Some scholars have suggested that Robert did not even know Chrtien de Troyes unfinished Perceval which, in the mid-1180s, introduced the Grail to an intrigued world. However, given the degree of excitement generated by Chrtiens tantalising, unresolved theme, which prompted the composition of no fewer than four direct Continuations and other brilliant developments in, for example, Perlesvaus and The Quest of the Holy Grail, it does not seem likely that any writer interested in Arthurian matters in the 1180s and 1190s would have been unaware of Perceval . In any case, if Robert did not know Chrtiens work or they were writing simultaneously it would be difficult to explain the phrase and so the rich Fisher King departed of whom many words have since been spoken (below, , which corresponds to a similar passage in the verse Joseph, vv. 3456-8).

It must be said, however, that it is almost certain that neither the Fisher King nor the Grail was exactly Chrtiens invention. Robert refers to a high book as his source (below, It is certainly possible that Robert drew on this independently of Chrtien; but I believe it most likely, amidst all the speculation, that he knew the contents of Chrtiens Perceval as well as something of the amorphous mass of traditional material, and was prompted by both to the idea for his hugely influential story of Joseph of Arimathea. I would suggest, therefore, that the prose redactors reference to his not knowing the story of the Grail was to Roberts being unable, perhaps because of his own death, to know the way the Grail theme had subsequently been developed in, for example, the Second Continuation, from which several episodes in the prose Perceval are derived.

In Chrtien de Troyes Perceval it is even introduced on its first appearance with an indefinite article un graal and in a most downbeat way at the start of a sentence:

Un graal entre ses deus mains

Une damoisele tenoit.

What kind of vessel this grail is Chrtien never specifies, though he does tell us that it is made of pure gold and encrusted with surpassingly beautiful jewels, but in a later passage Percevals hermit uncle tells him:

Dont imagine that [the one who is served from the grail] is given pike or lamprey or salmon; hes served with a single host....