Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:11:45.795Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Spenser and Two Old French Grail Romances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edgar A. Hall
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

So far as the writer has been able to discover, attention has not been called to the probability that Spenser drew material directly from two French romances of the Grail-Perceval cycle for the episodes of the first two cantos of Book VI of the Faerie Queene.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , 1913 , pp. 539 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1913

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 540 note 1 Potvin's ed. Conte du Graal, vol. i, p. 97 ff. For an English translation see Evans' High History of the Holy Grail, Everyman's Library ed., pp. 99–102.

page 541 note 1 San Marte, Beiträge zur bretonischen und celtisch-germanischen Heldensage, p. 60.

page 541 note 2 Geoffrey of Monmouth, Hist. Reg. Brit., x, 3; the so-called “Suite” Merlin, or Livre d'Arthur, Pt. ii, fol. 105; Layamon, Brut, v. 11957 ff.; Malory, Morte Barthur, i, 24, where the version represents a fusing of the Merlin details with those of the Chevalier aux Deux Épées; Drayton, Polyolbion, song 4; the ballad of King Rience's Challenge (Furnivall's ed. Robert Laneham's Letter, pp. 41–2).

page 541 note 3 The Old French Grail Romance of Perlesvaus, p. 104 n.

page 543 note 1 A recent study by Professor Reed Smith involving Spenser's treatment of sources (The Metamorphoses in “Muiopotmos,” MLN. xxviii, 3, 82–5) bears out my statements.

page 543 note 2 Nothing can be more far-fetched and absurd than the parallel set up by Dr. Marie Walther (Malory's Einfluss auf Spenser's Faerie Queene, pp. 41–2) between Briana's tender of her hand and her castle to Calidore and the incident in Malory, x, 64, where the people of the Red City offered Sir Palamides one-third part of their goods after he defeated two brethren who had put them in “fear and damage.”

page 554 note 1 Cf. the Temple of Venus allegory (iv, 10) with the garden of Sir Mirth in the Roman de la Rose.