religious content of the original to provide the Grail’s “sacred history,” identifying it for
the first time with the cup of the Last Supper. In addition, he extends Chrétien’s
references to pre-Arthurian Britain, which echo Wace’s Brut, to provide the Grail’s
“secular history.”
Robert’s most important contribution is the generative power that infuses his verse.
Not only are the prose adaptations of the Joseph/Estoire and Merlin among the earliest
examples of literary prose in French, they also stand at the head of a long tradition that
promoted the “translation” of imaginative and historical works written in “unreliable”
verse into the “more stable” and “more authoritative” medium of prose. The better-
known, more highly respected, Pseudo-Robert de Boron who was thus created, the one to
whose authorship the more widely transmitted prose works are attributed, became in the
early 13th century an even stronger literary force. He inspired the “completion” of
Chrétien de Troyes’s unfinished Conte du Graal in the anonymous Didot Perceval, and
he is ultimately responsible for the germination of the Vulgate Cycle.
Rupert T.Pickens
[See also: CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES; GRAIL AND GRAIL ROMANCES;
PERCEVAL CONTINUATIONS; PROSE ROMANCE (ARTHURIAN); VULGATE
CYCLE]
Robert de Boron. Merlin, roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. Alexandre Micha. Geneva: Droz, 1979.
——. Le roman de l’estoire dou Graal, ed. William A.Nitze. Paris: Champion, 1927.
——. Le roman du Graal, ed. Bernard Cerquiglini. Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1981.
Roach, William, ed. The Didot Perceval According to the Manuscripts of Paris and Modena.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1941.
Cerquiglini, Bernard. La parole médiévale. Paris: Minuit, 1981.
O’Gorman, Richard F. “The Prose Version of Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie.” Romance
Philology 23 (1969–70): 449–61.
——.“La tradition manuscrite du Joseph d’Arimathie en prose de Robert de Boron.” Revue
d’histoire des textes 1 (1971):145–81.
Pickens, Rupert T. “Histoire et commentaire chez Chrétien de Troyes et Robert de Boron: Robert
de Boron et le livre de Philippe de Flandre.” In The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris
J.Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, Vol. 2, pp. 17–39.
——. “Mais de go ne parole pas Crestiens de Troies...’: A Reexamination of the Didot Perceval.”
Romania 105 (1984): 492–510.
ROBERT DE CLARI
(fl. early 13th c.). Chronicler. The Conquête de Constantinople (ca. 1219) of Robert de
Clari is a valuable source for the Fourth Crusade. Robert begins with Foulques de
Neuilly’s preaching of the crusade in 1198 and continues in detail to 1205; from 1205 to
1219, he summarizes the events. Robert was neither well educated nor privy to the
councils of the mighty; we cannot understand the politics of the crusade from him. His
strength is his rendering of ambient rumors and his brilliant descriptions of what ordinary
knights experienced, such as the marvels of Constantinople. The single manuscript
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