Publisher's Synopsis
"Lancelot and the Grail" offers a solution to the problems of how the tale of Lancelot's love for Guinevere came to be linked with the quest for the Holy Grail. The first part of this book establishes the existence and coherence of a version of the French prose Lancelot, in which his love is presented as a source of his chivalric achievement. This romance contains no Grail quest, but only allusions to one already achieved by Perceval. The second part studies the transformation of this Lancelot "without the Grail" into an integral part of a Lancelot-Grail cycle, where the destructive element in Lancelot's relationship with Guinevere is recognized. Based on many years' work, on the textual tradition of a romance copied and read over three centuries, "Lancelot and the Grail" raises questions pertinent to the study of early European literature: the interplay between feudal relationships and literary structures, intertextuality, and the development of a text through time.
