L’Iconographie du ‘Lancelot-Graal’. Par Irène Fabry-Tehranchi et Catherine Nicolas

Abstract

Although the iconographic cycles which illustrated medieval books are of great importance for a holistic understanding of the texts they were designed to illustrate, they are often neglected by scholars. Obstacles to accessing the original manuscripts preserving these cycles, in conjunction with the difficulty of conceptualizing a given cycle of illustrations as a unitary entity (especially in long works in which illustrations may be widely scattered, or in works where the relation of text to image is unclear), have fed the need in medieval studies for examinations such as that presented by the present volume. Here, two eminent Arthurian scholars, Irène Fabry-Tehranchi and Catherine Nicolas, provide a detailed commentary of a complete iconographic cycle illustrating the Lancelot-Graal (or Vulgate) cycle of Old French prose romances. This cycle comprises five units or books, all dating from the thirteenth century: the Estoire del Saint Graal, Merlin and the Suite Vulgate, the prose Lancelot, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the Mort le Roi Artu. This cycle was extremely popular, being preserved for us today in over 180 manuscripts from the thirteenth century to the fifteenth, as well as in numerous early printed editions. In order to produce this study, the authors have examined a wide range of extant manuscripts; the results of their survey are presented in a concise and informative Introduction, which in addition contextualizes the Lancelot-Graal and provides summaries of its constituent parts. The authors focus in particular on six manuscripts created between the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, all of which contain the full cycle of texts and are richly illustrated. They note that it is difficult to speak of a definitive, fixed iconographic cycle for the Lancelot-Graal, for exemplars are characterized by a high degree of variety; much higher than image cycles designed to accompany contemporary but more conventional texts, such as books of hours. For this reason, rather than struggling to justify the selection of any one manuscript on the grounds of the superior representative quality of its illustrative cycle, the authors have chosen to reproduce the complete cycle as found in Paris, BnF, MS fr. 344, as representing the most suitable entry point for studying the iconographic tradition associated with this text as a whole. The reproductions in black and white of the 348 illustrations in MS fr. 344 are arranged in order of books and chapters, and are accompanied by detailed commentary, as well as by brief descriptions of the corresponding illustrations in the other manuscripts. Brief descriptions of illustrations from these other manuscripts are similarly included for chapters left unillustrated in MS fr. 344. This excellent research tool is supplemented by a comprehensive bibliography and a synoptic table that allows researchers to compare at a glance the iconographic programmes of all six manuscripts. Following a detailed index, this volume is crowned by an appendix of full-colour reproductions of the iconographic cycle from MS fr. 344, helpfully cross-referenced with the commentary. Arthurian studies will long be indebted to this thorough guide to the iconographic tradition of the Vulgate cycle.