Edition of the Saint Graal from Yale 229

FAIN: FB-50613-04

Elizabeth M. Willingham
Baylor University (Waco, TX 76798-7284)

The proposed project, an edition of the Queste du Saint Graal (Queste), known in English as the Grail Quest or the Search for the Holy Grail, has as its basis the manuscript codex Yale 229 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University). The Queste is the pivotal narrative of the Vulgate Cycle (a prose reworking of Robert de Boron's verse) and the center piece of a planned three-volume series, which will include editions of the Mort, the Queste, and the Agrauains from Yale 229 when it is complete. The Mort edition will be published by Brepols later this year. The Queste du Saint Graal edition will include the transcribed annotated text, an editor's introduction, word and name glossaries, two essays to treat the literary and artistic aspects of the manuscript, respectively, and appendices for grammar, phonology, and bibliographical terms. The edition will be designed to be used by a lay person or scholar for private study and enjoyment, as well as for academic purposes by the scholar or student. The subject matter of this thirteenth-century Old French telling of the Grail Quest makes this edition particularly valuable as a contribution to the Humanities; moreover, the edition text will be authentically Old French, with the reading thoroughly supported by ancillaries; the codex pages reproduced in the edition will present a fine example of gothic manuscript production after the Cistercian tradition, with superb and intriguing decoration. The edition brings medieval art, language, and narrative to the academic and popular audience from a manuscript that has never before been edited, thereby preserving and disseminating manuscript culture and providing a basis for continuing interpretations in the Humanities.

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