6 - The Gateway to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle: L’Estoire del Saint Graal

Summary

When Chrétien de Troyes’ naïve hero, Perceval, sees the Grail procession in the Fisher King's castle, he is confronted with a mystery that writers have sought to elucidate ever since. In Chrétien's text, the scene is presented as if through Perceval's eyes. Aseries of persons carrying various objects – a lance that bleeds, candelabra with ten candles each, a grail that gives off an extraordinary light, a silver carving dish – cross the hall where he and his host are seated, and enter another room. Perceval gazes with awe at the lance and the grail, promising himself to ask about them later. Though he eventually learns the answers to some of the enigmas posed in this sequence – who is served by the grail (his maternal uncle) and what is presented in this dish (a host, on which his uncle has lived for twelve years) – a multitude of questions are left unanswered for the reader/listener. This is undoubtedly why so many thirteenth-century romances rewrite the Grail procession, transforming and amplifying it, going back in time to the origins of the Grail and forward to its ultimate destiny.

The Lancelot-Grail Cycle elaborates all these aspects of this quintessential object, intertwining material about the Grail with the stories of Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere. While the five romances that compose the cycle can be read separately, they form an interlocking network, developing and rewriting the same themes and making numerous cross-references within an overall eschatological history that begins with the Crucifixion and ends with the fall of Arthur's kingdom. This reading of the Estoire del Saint Graal will therefore take into account the interrelationships among the romances.

Although there is debate over the order in which these texts were composed, critics agree that the Lancelot is the core around which the rest of the cycle was realized; though written later, the Estoire was conceived as the gateway into the cycle and the Mort le Roi Artu as its closure. The intent to create a coherent whole is manifest in the manuscript tradition, for the narrative is nearly always presented as continuous, with minimal demarcations between the individual works. The only texts with prologues are the Estoire and the Mort Artu; the conclusions are brief and often emphasize the links between the works.