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Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: The Trilogy of Arthurian Prose Romances attributed to Robert de Boron (Arthurian Studies)
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Review
A trilogy of romances establishing a provenance for the Holy Grail and, through Merlin, linking Joseph of Arimathea with mythical British history and the knightly adventures of Perceval's Grail quest.
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About the Author
NIGEL BRYANT is head of drama at Marlborough College. He has also provided editions in English of the anonymous thirteenth-century romance Perlesvaus, published as The High Book of the Grail, and Chretien's Perceval: The Story of the Grail.
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Product details
Series: Arthurian Studies (Book 48)
Paperback: 180 pages
Publisher: BOYE6 (January 17, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0859917797
ISBN-13: 978-0859917797
Product Dimensions:
6.1 x 0.4 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.6 out of 5 stars
4 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#815,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The translator/editor, Nigel Bryant, has two theses here:1. That this book is the first of the Arthurian cycles and paved the way for the later ones, such as the Lancelot-Grail and Le Morte d'Arthur2. That medieval romances were meant to be read aloudI can agree with both points.In Joseph, Robert de Boron picks right up from the Gospels and Acts. It reads like scripture, and it is dry like scripture. Coming off of reading the thrilling chivalric quests of Chretien and the Perceval continuations, I found this quasi-sacred material incredibly slow moving and dry. It is rich with grail lore: indeed, de Boron is literally inventing the Christian grail story before our eyes. But something about it is just incredibly slow, dull, and uninteresting to me. I suppose comparing this material to tales of chivalry, it is by nature less enthralling.The same continues through the Merlin story, which has a Geoffrey of Monmouth feeling of very large events told without much attention to reader immersion. This works perfectly well in keeping with Bryant's insistence that these romances were performed orally and not intended for private reading. Well, I am reading this stuff privately, and it's pretty hard-going. The Merlin story drags on and on, picking up once Arthur is born. Here we get the sword in the stone and familiar Arthurian lore. Prior to that though, with Merlin telling prophesies and all the stuff with Uther Pendragon, I had to put the book down for weeks and weeks until I could force myself through it all.Finally we come to the best section, the Didot-Perceval, as it is called, which is essentially a gently-edited version of Chretien's poem. Notably, Perceval's slaying the red knight is absent; here, he is taught not to talk so much by his mother; Gawain's whole narrative is omitted (thankfully, for that was clumsily-handled by Chretien), and the Fisher King material is much enhanced by Robert de Boron's lore. However, the editor of this Perceval story includes Robert de Boron's material in such a comprehensive way that you could almost omit reading the Joseph and Merlin stories and still understand what is going on. The Perceval story is thrilling, as always, seemingly shattering the theory that this material was intended for oral performance given the detailed descriptions of settings, character appearances, emotions, etc. Indeed, Perceval stories are always imbued with such literary realism that I would argue their authors always have in mind more than mere oral performance, as they are great and absorbing works of literature.I should add also: Perceval's romance with Blanchefleur is also missing here. I felt that the Perceval continuators handled their marriage incredibly poorly, and I'm disappointed that it was not included here. I certainly would prefer them to have a "happily ever after." But here the Perceval editor decided that Perceval would succeed the Fisher King and "give up chivalry." At that point the Perceval story seems to end.But it doesn't! Clumsily, a "death of Arthur" story is tacked on, returning to the birds-eye-view descriptions of large armies, minimal description, and other Song of Roland-type features totally affirming Nigel Bryant's thesis that these stories were orally performed. Just like Joseph and Merlin, this Death of Arthur addition to the Perceval tale is slow-moving, totally ahistorical, totally unbelievable, and even silly. (Julius Caesar, the emperor of Rome, is allied with the Spanish Saracens, with the king of France, King Floire, as Julius Caesar's vassal. Arthur invades Normandy and defeats King Floire in single combat. This upsets Julius Caesar, who comes to battle Arthur and loses in battle sequences that to me are as disappointing as those in Song of Roland.)Finally, we return to Perceval again, who is upset at the death of Arthur and Gawain (he died too). Merlin moves in next door and has Blaise, from the earlier story, write this all down.All of this material shows the hallmarks of being brought together by a single editor. This editor is careful to weave together Robert de Boron's Joseph and Merlin, Chretien's Perceval, and this death of Arthur story. I see no evidence that the Perceval story here was written in any way by Robert de Boron: it seems to be literally Chretien's story streamlined and supplemented with details from Joseph and Merlin. The Perceval story is clearly meant to end with him becoming the Fisher King. I was in complete surprised that more narration persisted afterwards.The Death of Arthur supplement is totally different compared to the Perceval story. I would not be surprised if Robert de Boron wrote this. Indeed, the Joseph, Merlin, and Death of Arthur stories all share the same clumsy style, the same "oral performance" qualities that are singularly absent from the Perceval (lack of detailed and immersive descriptions of settings, lack of characterizations), resulting in unpleasant reading.I encourage you to test what I am saying by looking at the end of the Merlin section. What does it say? Arthur and his barons are sitting there pondering Merlin's words. Perceval has never been mentioned once yet. Now look at the Death of Arthur section (page 156). What is there? Arthur and his barons.So to me, what I see is this: Robert de Boron wrote Joseph, Merlin, and Death of Arthur. I think he got his material from either Chretien's Perceval or from a mutual source. He decided to provide a backstory for the grail, using Merlin as a persistent and prominent character and mythical source for his inventions, and concluded with Geoffrey of Monmouth's Arthurian tale with a new Death of Arthur.Later, an editor took Chretien's Perceval, simplified it, squeezed it between Merlin and Death of Arthur, and made it fit nicely by adding a couple elements from Joseph and Merlin. He then made it fit seamlessly with Death of Arthur too, and thus we got the present trilogy.Only it doesn't fit very seamlessly. The momentum of the Joseph-Merlin-Perceval story halts with Perceval becoming the Fisher King and completing the Grail Quest. That was the narrative started in Joseph, the history of the Grail. Arthur is actually of secondary importance in Joseph-Merlin-Perceval. That the Death of Arthur comes after Perceval feels too "tacked on" and unnecessary. Perceval did it! He won the grail and became the Fisher King!Now let's tell you about the Death of Arthur.It doesn't work as a flowing narrative.Alternatively, Joseph-Merlin-Death of Arthur could be a narrative too. Here, the core story is the rise and fall of Arthur. While all contain core details about the Grail, in Joseph-Merlin-Death of Arthur the grail is of secondary importance, what actually matters is the circumstances leading to Arthur's birth, the establishment of his court, his wars, and his fall.It just doesn't work as a narrative, for me, to have Joseph-Merlin-Perceval-Death of Arthur. Perceval is different (and far superior) to all three, and Death of Arthur just ends up feeling tacked-on.Overall, I was glad to read Perceval again. I was bored by Joseph, Merlin, and Death of Arthur, even while appreciating the additions to Arthurian lore that Robert de Boron contributed: like George Lucas, he's a good ideas man, even if not the best at putting those ideas into a product.While this version of the Perceval story contains a great narrative sequence, I do not like that it omitted Blanchefleur and overall simplified things, for it is not therefore "definitive." It is not THE Perceval story in my mind, which, after having read Chretien's, this version, and the four continuations, I have not yet encountered. Nevertheless, the Perceval story is by far the best of the bunch here.I rate this four stars. It's historically very important for Arthurian lore. For that alone it is a "classic." As a narrative, it is clumsy, for reasons explained above. Robert de Boron's actual writing seems poor: I can forgive him for writing for "oral performance," but I am a reader, and my experience reading most of this material was not satisfying. Furthermore, if Chretien de Troyes was also writing for oral performance, yet includes immersive descriptions of setting and characters, then why could not Robert de Boron? Comparing Robert and Chretien, the latter is an infinitely superior author and I miss him.
A cycle of three -- or, by some counts, four -- Arthurian romances attributed to the poet Robert de Boron (or Borron) is of exceptional importance. It seems to have provided the model for the later Vulgate Cycle, which includes "Lancelot" and "The Quest of the Holy Grail," and its successors, including Thomas Malory''s "Le Morte D'Arthur." Obviously, everyone seriously interested in Arthurian literature will have read it. Wrong. Very wrong.To begin with, there is, unfortunately, direct manuscript evidence for only "Joseph of Arimathea" (the early history of the Grail) and the opening of "Merlin" in verse. What we have for the whole cycle, concluding with "Perceval" (the Grail Quest), and "The Death of Arthur" (as either the conclusion of "Perceval" or a short continuation of the cycle), is a prose redaction. The relationship of this to the work of the original poet in its later portions is uncertain -- assuming that there was a complete version in verse.The prose retelling exists in a variety of manuscripts, only two of which (known as Modena and Didot, the latter famous but textually corrupt) contain the whole collection, and they otherwise differ among themselves. There have been a number of editions of the medieval French texts, based on different manuscripts and editorial principles, so even those with a good reading knowledge of Old French have not necessarily read the same book.For those of us who read only English (at least with any fluency), there has been only the last section, as "The Romance of Perceval in Prose: A Translation of the E Manuscript of the Didot Perceval" by Dell Skeels, published by University of Washington Press in 1961. It was once available in paperback (1966 printing), but is long out of print. Fortunately Skeels resisted the turn-of-the-century models of Sebastian Evans and W.W. Comfort, and turned out workman-like modern English instead of pseudo-Malory. Unfortunately, he provided only half the story (the Quest and the Death of Arthur), and the information provided about the material was limited.Now Nigel Bryant has come riding to the rescue of beleaguered amateur Arthurians and besieged students (sorry, I can't resist the image) with another of his modern language translations. (He has also made available in English the "Perceval" of Chretien de Troyes, and a selection of its numerous continuations {see now the addendum below}, and also the rather odd "Perlesvaus," as "The High Book of the Grail"). Originally published in hardcover as Volume XLVIII of an ongoing Arthurian Studies series, "Merlin and the Grail" is readable, critically astute, and bibliographically up to date (although I have yet to find Skeels in the bibliography or notes.) It is exactly what I longed for a quarter-century ago when trying to make sense of passages in William Roach's 1941 edition of "The Didot Perceval, According to the Manuscripts of Modena and Paris." We have at last a really early version of the origin and wanderings of the Grail, the conceptions and births of Merlin and Arthur, and the King's early reign, and the insertion of the Grail Quest into the traditonal "history" of Arthur's reign.{Addendum May 2018: I haven't looked at this review in too many years, and I now find that should have added something several years ago. Nigel Bryant has since translated, as "The Complete Story of the Grail," Chretien's unfinished story, all four of the verse "Continuations" of Chretien's "Perceval," (complete) plus the two preludes written as what some (like me) would call prequels.}
These are important stories to read, to understand how the ideas of Courtly Romance still affect out time.
Excellent book! I had read "Joseph of Arimathea" in the past, but had always assumed that "Merlin" and "The Grail" were lost. Essential for any Grail/Arthur enthusiasts!!
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