Up-to-date Coverage of the scope and extent of the important tradition of Arthurian material in Iberian languages and of the modern scholarship on it. (= Wide-ranging bibliographical coverage and guide to both texts and research on them.) Written by Specialists in the different Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula (Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Spanish and its dialects). (= Expert analysis of different traditions by leading scholars from Spain and the UK.) Wide-ranging Study not only of medieval and Renaissance literary texts, but also of modern Arthurian fiction, of the global spread of Arthurian legends in the Spanish and Portuguese worlds, and of the social impact of the legends through adoption of names of Arthurian characters and imitation of practices narrated in the legends. (=A comprehensive guide to both literary and social impact of Arthurian material in major world languages.)

Die Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie zählen zu den renommiertesten Fachpublikationen der Romanistik. Sie pflegen ein gesamtromanisches Profil, das neben den Nationalsprachen auch die weniger im Fokus stehenden romanischen Sprachen mit einschließt. In der Reihe erscheinen ausgewählte Monographien und Sammelbände zur Sprachwissenschaft in ihrer ganzen Breite, zur mediävistischen Literaturwissenschaft und zur Editionsphilologie.

The early thirteenth-century French prose Lancelot-Grail Cycle (or Vulgate Cycle) brings together the stories of Arthur with those of the Grail, a conjunction of materials that continues to fascinate the Western imagination today. Representing what is probably the earliest large-scale use of prose for fiction in the West, it also exemplifies the taste for big cyclic compositions that shaped much of European narrative fiction for three centuries. A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle is the first comprehensive volume devoted exclusively to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and its medieval legacy. The twenty essays in this volume, all by internationally known scholars, locate the work in its social, historical, literary, and manuscript contexts. In addition to addressing critical issues in the five texts that make up the Cycle, the contributors convey to modern readers the appeal that the text must have had for its medieval audiences, and the richness of composition that made it compelling. This volume will become standard reading for scholars, students, and more general readers interested in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, medieval romance, Malory studies, and the Arthurian legends. Contributors: RICHARD BARBER, EMMANUELE BAUMGARTNER, FANNI BOGDANOW, FRANK BRANDSMA, MATILDA T. BRUCKNER, CAROL J. CHASE, ANNIE COMBES, HELEN COOPER, CAROL R. DOVER, MICHAEL HARNEY, DONALD L. HOFFMAN, DOUGLAS KELLY, ELSPETH KENNEDY, NORRIS J. LACY, ROGER MIDDLETON, HAQUIRA OSAKABE, HANS-HUGO STEINHOFF, ALISON STONES, RICHARD TRACHSLER. CAROL DOVER is associate professor of French and director of undergraduate studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

The rise and proliferation of Arthurian prose romances in France in the thirteenth century is attested most notably by the enormous corpus of Old French Arthurian prose romances known as the Vulgate Cycle. According to most scholars, the Vulgate Cycle in its original form comprised three prose romances: the Roman de Lancelot en prose, the Roman de la Queste del Saint Graal and the Roman de la Mort le Roi Artu. At a later stage, two other prose romances conceived as preliminary works to the original trilogy were added to the cycle: the Estoire del Saint Graal and the Vulgate Merlin. This group of Old French Arthurian romances has survived in nearly one hundred manuscripts and was translated into almost all major Western European languages. Of the three extant Middle Dutch translations of the Lancelot en prose, Orlanda Lie has chosen the (only) verse translation (preserved on two leaves of parchment, the so-called Rotterdam Fragments) as the starting point for a comparison between the Middle Dutch, the Middle High German and the Old French Lancelot en prose versions. In this comparative analysis only a small portion of the extensive Lancelot en prose (namely, those sections that are parallel to the content of the Rotterdam Fragments) will be involved. The relation of the consulted French manuscripts to the Dutch and German Lancelot translations are ascertained in the light of insights gained from an investigation into the manuscript tradition of the Lancelot en prose sections which qualify for a comparison with the two Middle Dutch fragments. Although the main emphasis of this study falls on the manuscript tradition of the Lancelot en prose, a brief discussion of some of the important stylistic and structural characteristics of the Lancelot trilogy as a whole is presented, especially since it is more than likely that the scope and complexity of the work has also influenced (directly of indirectly) its manuscript tradition. A diplomatic and a critical edition of the Rotterdam Fragments as well as a translation in modern English are included in this volume.