The essays in this volume comprise expanded versions of papers given at the XXIIIrd Triennial Congress of the International Arthurian Society held in Bristol in July 2011. It was agreed that there would not be a volume of proceedings, but thatArthurian LiteratureandArthurianawould jointly consider all submissions, and publish selections of essays.Arthurianais publishing four special issues of which the first, on eco-criticism, the natural world, landscapes and geography, and the second, on Merlin, have already appeared as volumes 23.1 and 23.2 (2013). The editors of the two journals have worked most amicably and productively together,...

The term ‘Celtic magic’ has had a long currency in medieval studies, particularly Arthurian studies, being positioned alongside ‘Celtic myth’ as a convenient explanation for elements in vernacular medieval romance whose provenance is not otherwise obvious. Yet both terms, ‘Celtic’ and ‘magic’, are problematic when it comes to definitions, and this is particularly so in relation to two of the most important survivals of Welsh Arthurian literature,Culhwch ac Olwen(Culhwch and Olwen) andBreuddwyd Rhonabwy(The Dream of Rhonabwy). Both tales locate Arthur in the centre of a magic landscape; one that is subject to supernatural events. The figure...

One of the abiding impressions made bySir Gawain and the Green Knight(henceforthSGGK) on its readers is that the Green Knight is an embodiment of nature.¹ An earlier generation of scholars saw the poem chiefly as a museum of Celtic folklore, but Celtic paganism and the ‘Green Man’, both associated with a mystical, proto-Romantic reverence for the natural environment, remain a part of its critical heritage.² Despite the manifest courtliness and hospitality practised at the Green Knight’s castle, where Gawain spends Christmas week before riding to the Green Chapel on New Year’s Day, the view persists that the...

Perceforestis the greatest of the unread Arthurian romances. There is still no complete modern edition, and in order to read the last book, you have to use the huge folio volumes produced in Paris in the early sixteenth century, designed to satisfy the enthusiasm of buyers of the new-fangled romances in book form. Neglected until a summary version by Jeanne Lods appeared in 1951, it was only with the appearance of the first volume of theTextes littéraires françaisedition by Jane Taylor in 1979 that it began to attract wider attention among Arthurian scholars, reinforced by the publication...

Perceforest, the extraordinary fourteenth-century ‘prehistory’ of Arthurian Britain, ends with the coming of the Grail and with it the news of Christ’s life and death and a ‘New Law’. Almost the whole of this immense romance, however, takes place in the pagan past, a past of multiple gods – not just Venus, Mars and others from the familiar classical pantheon, but mortals-turned-deities like Sarra, this ‘Goddess of Dreams’. Moreover, what is so striking is that this ‘Goddess of Dreams’works– everything she shows the sleeping Gallafur comes true: she has real power. So, for example, does Mars: when the fearsome child...

Malory’sTale of the Sankgreal(henceforthM) is generally considered the ‘least original’ of his adaptations, conforming in most significant respects to the plot of the VulgateQueste del Saint Graal(Q).¹ The main alterations Malory appears to have made are thematic; most notably, he clearly downplays the mystical and devotional flavour ofQin his work.² However, the precise extent of Malory’s manipulation of his materials is hard to quantify, since the version ofQfrom which he was working does not match any known version of that text.³ Eugène Vinaver suggested that Malory’s exemplar was probably closer to...

In the prologue to the mid-fifteenth-century adaptation of the ‘rhymed story of Erec, the son of King Lac,’ theprosateurdescribes his work as a ‘transmutation’: ‘… pour ce que l’en m’a presentee le histoire de Erec le filz du roy Lach en rime, je, au plaisir de Dieu, occuperay mon estude ung petit de tamps a letransmuer de rime en prose …’ (Because I have been presented with the rhymed story of Erec, the son of King Lac, I shall, God willing, devote a little time to transposing it from verse into prose …).¹ The termtransmuer(to...

On observe aujourd’hui une forte tendance à valoriser les romans tardifs de la fin du quatorzième siècle-milieu quinzième siècle, à deux titres: comme les témoins d’une nostalgie du temps passé, réactivant la devise ‘d’armes et d’amour’, certes, mais aussi comme les précurseurs d’une forme de modernité. Après avoir considéré ces textes tardifs comme décadents, mal construits, la critique les pare désormais de nombre d’atouts, en partie avec raison, en partie parce que nous nous trouvons dans la situation des écrivains de la fin du Moyen Âge, où il faut faire avec ce qui reste, de façon toute pragmatique.

Le Moyen...

In 1842,The British History of Geoffrey of Monmouthappeared in the seriesThe Monkish Historians of Great Britain.¹ Already published were Bede’sEcclesiastical History, a volume of Gildas’s and Nennius’sHistoriesand theChronicleof Richard of Devizes, along with Richard of Cirencester’s description of Britain. Further works of Bede, histories by William of Malmesbury and William of Newburgh, the Saxon Chronicles and Asser’sLife of Alfredwere all in press. The series page announced that several of the volumes were appearing ‘in an English dress’ for the first time, but this particular book was a revised edition, by...