Lancelot-Grail Cycle

The Lancelot-Grail Cycle, also known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is an influential 13th-century French Arthurian literary cycle of unknown authorship written in Old French. Consisting of a series of interconnected prose episodes, it is a lengthy faux chronicle-style chivalric romance that retells the legend of King Arthur while focusing on the character of Merlin, the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, and the religious quest for the Holy Grail. Expanding on Robert de Boron's "Little Grail Cycle" and the poems of Chrétien de Troyes, the work ties their previously unrelated and disparate stories together into a coherent single tale and supplements them with new material, such as additional details, original characters, and side stories. It also features an ending inspired by the Arthurian chronicle tradition by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

There is no unity of time and place within the plot, but most of the episodes take place in Arthur's British kingdom of Logres. One of the main characters is Arthur, around whom gravitates many other heroes, including the Knights of the Round Table. The chief of them is Lancelot, whose chivalric tale is centered around his illicit romance with Arthur's wife, Queen Guinevere. However, the cycle also tells of adventures of a more spiritual type, featuring the Round Table's search for the Holy Grail (the vessel that contained the blood of Christ), until Lancelot's son Galahad ultimately retrieves it. Other major plot-lines include the accounts of the life of Merlin and of the rise and fall of Arthur.

After its completion around 1230–1235, the Lancelot–Grail was soon followed by its major reworking known as the Post-Vulgate Cycle. Together, the two prose cycles with their abundance of characters and stories represent a major source of the legend of Arthur as they constituted the most widespread form of Arthurian literature of the late medieval period, during which they were both translated into multiple European languages and rewritten into alternative variants, including having been partially turned into verse. They also inspired various later works of Arthurian romance, eventually contributing to the compilation Le Morte d'Arthur, which formed the basis for a modern canon of Arthuriana.

The cycle as a whole did not have an original title. The Lancelot-Grail is a popular modern title invented by Ferdinand Lot. Another widely used modern title,Vulgate Cycle (from the Latin editio vulgata, "common version"), was popularized (but not invented) by H. Oskar Sommer.

It is also sometimes known as the Vulgate Version of Arthurian Romances, and as the Pseudo-Map Cycle, named so after Walter Map, the work's pseudo-author. Less common alternative titles include that of Philippe Walter's 21st-century edition Le Livre du Graal ("The Book of the Grail").

The Vulgate Cycle emphasizes Christian themes in the legend of King Arthur, in particular in the story of the Holy Grail. As in Robert de Boron's poem Merlin (c. 1195–1210), the cycle states that its first parts have been derived from the Livre du Graal ("The Book of the Grail") that is described as a text dictated by Merlin himself to his confessor Blaise [fr] in the early years of Arthur's reign. Next, following the demise of Merlin, there are more supposed original (fictitious) authors of the later parts of the cycle, the following list using one of their multiple spelling variants: Arodiens de Cologne (Arodian of Cologne), Tantalides de Vergeaus (Tantalides of Vercelli), Thumas de Toulete (Thomas of Toledo), and Sapiens de Baudas (Sapient of Baghdad). These characters are scribes of Arthur, who recorded the deeds of the Knights of the Round Table, including the grand Grail Quest, as per eyewitnesses of the events being told. It is uncertain whether the medieval readers actually believed in the truthfulness of the centuries-old "chronicle" characterization or if they recognized it as a contemporary work of creative fiction. Typically for medieval stories in pseudo-historical settings, it is also highly anachronistic.

Welsh writer Gautier (Walter) Map (c. 1140 – c. 1209) is attributed to be the editing author, as can be seen in the notes and illustrations in some manuscripts describing his discovery in an archive at Salisbury of the chronicle of Camelot, supposedly dating from the times of Arthur, and his translation of these documents from Latin to Old French as ordered by Henry II of England (the location was changed from Salisbury to the mystical Avalon in a later Welsh redaction). Map's connection has been discounted by modern scholarship, however, as he died too early to be the author and the work is distinctly continental.

The cycle's actual authorship is unknown, but most scholars today believe it was written by multiple authors. There might have been either a single master-mind planner, the so-called "architect" (as first called so by Jean Frappier, who compared the process to building a cathedral), who may have written the main section (Lancelot Proper), and then overseen the work of multiple other anonymous scribes. One theory identified the initiator as French queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who could have set up the project as early as 1194. Alternatively, each part may have been composed separately, arranged gradually, and rewritten for consistency and cohesiveness. Regarding the question of the author of the Lancelot, Ferdinand Lot suggested an anonymous clerical court clerk of aristocratic background.