PORTS ET PASSAGES
. See CUSTOMS DUTIES
POST-VULGATE ROMANCE
. The popularity of the Arthurian Vulgate Cycle (ca. 1215–35) is attested in part by varied
literary continuations, among them the Post-Vulgate Arthuriad (also known as the Post-
Vulgate Romance of the Grail, or Roman du Graal, or the Pseudo-Robert de Boron
Cycle; ca. 1230–40). This anonymous corpus of prose narratives follows roughly the
structure of the Vulgate romances, providing versions of the Estoire del saint Graal, the
Merlin, the Queste del saint Graal, and the Mort le roi Artu but omitting the lengthy
Prose Lancelot, which constitutes nearly half of the Vulgate corpus. To bridge the
narrative gap between his Merlin and Queste, the Post-Vulgate continuator recast selected
scenes from the Agravain section of the Vulgate Lancelot, combining them with elements
from the first version of the Prose Tristan and other material of his own invention.
The resultant “text” is nowhere preserved in toto; it has been reconstructed from
French fragments and from Portuguese and Spanish translations. To judge from the
translations, the Post-Vulgate Estoire del saint Graal probably differed little from its
predecessor in the Vulgate Cycle. The Post-Vulgate Merlin (known commonly as the
Huth Merlin or the Suite du Merlin) reduplicates the prose rendering of Robert de
Boron’s verse text that constitutes the first part of the Vulgate Merlin but adds to this
base narrative a new elaboration. Whereas the Vulgate Merlin expands Robert de Boron’s
account by chronicling the military exploits of King Arthur, the Huth Merlin provides an
elaborate scenario of more fantastic incidents. The text is found in two manuscripts, both
incomplete at the end: the Huth manuscript, B.L. Add. 38117 and Cambridge Univ. Lib.
Add. 7071. The Post-Vulgate Queste and Mort Artu offer completely remodeled versions
of their predecessors in the Vulgate Cycle.
E.Jane Burns
[See also: PROSE ROMANCE (ARTHURIAN); VULGATE CYCLE]
Bogdanow, Fanni, ed. La folie Lancelot: A Hitherto Unknown Portion of the Suite du Merlin
Contained in MSS. B.N. fr. 112 and 12599. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1965.
——, ed. La Queste del Saint Graal et la Mort Artu Post-Vulgate, Troisième partie du Roman du
Graal Paris: Didot, 1991.
Lacy, Norris J., ed. Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in
Translation, trans. Norris J. Lacy et al. 5 vols. New York: Garland, 1993–.
Bogdanow, Fanni. “The Suite du Merlin and the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal” In Arthurian
Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1959, pp. 325–35.
——. The Romance of the Grail: A Study of the Structure and Genesis of a Thirteenth Century
Arthurian Prose Romance. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1966.
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