The Object and the Cause in the Vulgate Cycle

The thirteenth-century French Vulgate Cycle is the earliest vernacular text to trace the Arthurian world from the beginning of the Holy Grail at Christ's crucifixion to the death of the kingdom and its king. In this study, one of the first to treat the Cycle's five texts as a unified work, Miranda Griffin explores notions of chronology and causality within the Cycle, as the text seeks to explain the origins of Arthurian characters, objects and motifs. Informed by psychoanalytical theory, her reading focuses especially on the construction within the Cycle of three privileged objects of desire—the book, the body and the Grail—which, Griffin argues, function as focal points for the anxieties concerning origins voiced by the Cycle's characters and critics. This original approach opens up new avenues of research which go directly to the heart of many concerns about this important text. (Legenda Main Series, Legenda 2004)

The 13th-century French Vulgate Cycle is the earliest vernacular text to trace the Arthurian world from the beginning of the Holy Grail at Christ's crucifixion to the death of the kingdom and its king. Approaching the Cycle's five texts as a unified work, Griffin (French, Girton College, U. of Cambridge) explores its notions of chronology and causality as the text seeks to explain the origins of Arthurian characters, objects and motifs. Griffin uses psychoanalytic theory to focus on the Cycle's objects of desire—the book, the body, and the Grail—which, she argues, function as focal points for anxieties about origins. Distributed by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR