A Description of the Non-Cyclic Romance

Abstract The non-cyclic Prose Lancelot is not the painstaking recreation of twentieth-century scholarship, but is to be found in its entirety in the Florence manuscript, Laurcnziana 89 in£ 61, and the Rouen manuscript 1055 (06). In BN fr. 768 it is almost complete (the last folio is missing from the manuscript); Pierpont Morgan 805-6 only leaves it after the death of the False Guinevere (PL 612.13) and joins the cyclic version; BN fr. 339 transfers in the middle of Lancelot’s judicial duel against three knights (PL 605.18). Cyclic and non-cyclic versions only diverge after the installation of Lancelot as a Knight of the Round Table (at the end of Sommer III, PL 572.4); ten manuscripts’ give the beginning of the non-cyclic version before transferring to one which prepares for the later branches of the cycle. This leads towards an abduction and rescue of Guinevere (the Charrette story), a Grail Quest in which Lancelot is surpassed by his son Galahad, and ultimately a Mort Artu in which Lancelot and Guinevere’s love starts the dissension from which stems Arthur’s death and the end of the Round Table.