Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ...as inventions of Borron's, possibly derived from Breton sources, the ease with which the hero fulfils a task explained to him beforehand favouring such a view. Bonon, it must be noticed, had no great inventive power; in the Joseph he is all right so long as he has the legend to follow; in the Merlin and the Perceval he clings with equal helplessness to the Breton sagas, confining himself to weaving clumsily the adventures of the Grail into the regular Arthur legend. The question as to the authorship of the Grand St. Graal and the Queste, the latter so confidently attributed to W. Map, may now profitably be investigated. Map, who we know flourished 1143-1210 (see supra, p. 5), took part in all the political and social movements of his time. If we believe the testimony of the MSS. which ascribe to him the authorship of the following romances: (1) the Lancelot, in three parts; (2) the Queste; (3) the Mort Artur; (4) the Grand St. Graal, he would seem to have shown a literary activity quite incompatible with his busy life, when it is remembered how slow literary composition was in those days. Nor can it be reconciled with the words of Giraldus Cambrensis, although Paulin Paris (Rom. i. 472) has attempted such a reconciliation by the theory that the words dicere and verba dare referred to composition in the vernacular, and that Map was Opera V. 410: TJnde et vir ille eloquio clarus W. Mapus, Oxoniensis archidiaconus (cujus animae propitietur Deus) eolita verborum facetia et urbanitate praecipua dicere pluris et nos in hunc modum convenire solebat: "Multa, Magister Geralde, scripsistis et multum adhuc scribitis, et nos multa diximus. Vos scripta dedistis et nos verba." 118 BIRCH-HIRSCHFELD: MAP'S AUTHORSHIP OF QUESTE DENIED. opposing...
