The ‘Conte du Graal’ Cycle: Chrétien de Troyes’s ‘Perceval’, the Continuations, and French Arthurian Romance by Thomas Hinton (review)

The central thesis of Thomas Hinton’s closely and mostly convincingly argued study is that Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal was received in the thirteenth century and beyond not so much as part of Chrétien’s corpus of works but as the foundation text of a ‘Conte du Graal Cycle’ comprising at least two, frequently three, and on two occasions four Continuations. A secondary thesis within the economy of this book, but one that has had enormous repercussions in Chrétien de Troyes studies, is that the cycle and especially the Second (Perceval) Continuation imposed retrospectively the idea that Chrétien’s unfinished Grail story was a romance of Perceval. Additionally, it is the Third Continuation, by Manessier, that transforms a still potentially secular object into a religious one and made Perceval’s story into a quest for the Holy Grail. Hinton gives full weight to the importance of La Queste del Saint Graal from the Lancelot-Grail or Vulgate Cycle of prose romances in this transformation, but surprisingly, given the accepted dates of the works, makes no mention of Robert de Boron’s trilogy linking the Grail to the Passion of Christ and presenting Perceval as the hero of the Grail quest. Hinton’s Introduction considers the Conte du Graal corpus (his preferred term in the Introduction) in relation to Chrétien’s other works, to the Roman de la rose, and to the Guillaume Cycle of chansons de geste. Whether Hinton’s notion of cyclicity as a literary phenomenon (p. 15) is appropriate, or whether it should be seen as a codicological phenomenon is doubtless a moot point, but the dates he gives for Le Charroi de Nîmes (1130–40) and La Prise d’Orange (1140–50) (p. 17) are indefensible. Also in this section we note that neither the Rose nor the work of Leslie C. Brook (1995) indicated in a footnote (p. 5) are in the bibliography. Hinton’s first main chapter deals with the aesthetics of cyclic development, particularly interlace and cross-reference as structuring principles. It also contrasts the centrifugal structures of the First (Gauvain) Continuation, with its proliferation of adventures not related to a central hero, with the centripetal tendencies of the other Continuations, which establish Perceval as the sole hero. However, this reading is only possible if one discounts Gauvain as a potential hero of Chrétien’s work retrospectively in the light of the Second, Manessier, and Gerbert Continuations. The two following chapters, relating kinship patterns within the romances to literary and authorial filiations across the Continuations, and redefining an approach to thirteenth-century Arthurian verse romances in the light of their interactions with the Conte du Graal corpus, provide important insights into the evolution of the genre in a period when verse texts (epic, romance, and chronicle) were losing ground to prose equivalents. The Conclusion makes a very cogent summation of Hinton’s arguments, although the codicological evidence (eighteen manuscripts of the ‘Conte du Graal Cycle’ against twelve of Chrétien’s other works) is perhaps not as important as claimed. The book ends with useful appendices giving manuscript contents and dates of works.