Reinventing Arthur: Representations of the Matter of Britain in Medieval Scotland and Catalonia

Summary

Yo vull seguir la manera d’aquells cathalans qui trasladaren los llibres de Tristany e de Lançalot, e tornaren-los de lengua francesa en lengua cathalana.

(I will follow the style of those Catalans who translated the books of Tristan and Lancelot, and transformed them from the French language into the Catalan language.)

This well-known passage from Curial e Güelfa not only alerts the reader to the existence of Catalan translations of Arthurian romances, but it highlights their importance as literary models for later writers in Catalan. This combined debt to the French Arthurian corpus (from which thematic and stylistic elements are borrowed) and to an emerging local literary tradition is also evident in the Scottish Arthurian texts. Historically, during the Middle Ages both nations were establishing the bases of their otherness in opposition to their more powerful neighbours. These social circumstances are reflected to some extent in their respective literatures. In both cases the adaptation of romances from the dominant French tradition goes further than mere translation: it alters the character of the Arthurian myth. Notably, the Scottish makars select passages in which the nature of kingship and the independence of one's territories can be debated. Both Catalan and Scottish writers highlight the moral and spiritual aspects of courtly and knightly behaviour even more emphatically than their French counterparts. This spiritual vision of knighthood may come from Catalan author Ramon Llull's influential Llibre del Orde de Cavalleria, which was also a very important manual of chivalric behaviour in late medieval Scotland due to Gilbert Hay's translation (see the discussion below). Both traditions reduce the long French disquisitions on cortesia and fin’amors, and as a result limit the significance of female characters. Despite the great differences in culture between the two small European nations of Scotland and Catalonia, this comparative study of their reception of the Matter of Britain through the medium of French literature will turn up surprising correspondences. It provides us with a useful perspective on the methodology of the Scottish adaptations and helps us to understand how and why both traditions change the thematic focus of French romances within their historical contexts.