Robert de Boron

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Robert de Boron was a French poet of Anglo-Norman origin who worked at the transition from the 12th to the 13th century. He came from the village of Boron east of Montbéliard and enjoyed the support of the crusader Gautier de Montbéliard († 1212).

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He is the poet of the Estoire dou Graal (History of the Grail), a Grail novel in 3500 verses, which he created around the same time as Chrétiens de Troye's Grail novel Perceval at the end of the 12th century. Roberts and Chrétien's poems form the legend of the Holy Grail for the first time in literary form, but so completely different in terms of content and material history that it is unclear which of the two novels was the predecessor of the other.

The Grail seeker Perceval does not appear in Robert's poetry . Instead, a strongly Christian prehistory of the Grail kingship is told, which is linked to the apocryphal legend of Joseph of Arimathea .

For Robert, the Grail is the chalice that Christ used at the Last Supper . In this cup, Joseph of Arimathea catches the blood of Christ at the crucifixion. Later the chalice becomes the focus of a cult in memory of the Lord's Supper. According to Joseph, his brother-in-law Bron, who is called "the rich fisherman" ( Le Riche Pescheeur , v. 3345), protects the Grail. God announces that Bron's grandson, the son of his son Alain, is to become the third keeper of the Grail. Bron, Alain and their followers leave Palestine . They take the Grail with them to the west and want to await the arrival of Bron's grandson in the "Valleys of Avaron" ( es vaus d'Avaron , 3123).

It is questionable whether the fragmentary Merlin poem (504 verses about the birth of Merlin), which follows the Estoire dou Graal in the only manuscript , also comes from Robert.

Later versions of the Grail story

A substantive connection between Chrétiens Conte du Graal and the Estoire dou Graal was only established later. In the French prose novels a few decades later, in the Perlesvaus , in the Vulgate cycle and in the prose Tristan , ever more extensive syntheses of the subject were undertaken, which up to the late Middle Ages also included the entire Arthurian legend.

For example, in two manuscripts there is a trilogy of novels by Joseph-Merlin-Perceval , which claims to be the work of Roberts de Boron, but is in fact an anonymous compilation of three texts. In this cycle of novels , a prose version by Roberts Estoire and a prose Merlin precede the redemption story of Perceval, who here is the prophesied grandson of Bron (so-called Didot-Perceval ). This prose cycle from around 1205 to 1210 is the oldest text in which the search for the Grail is associated with the end of the Arthurian world ( Mort Artu ).

literature

  • Text edition: Robert de Boron: Le roman du Saint-Graal, translated and introduced by Monica Schöler-Beinhauer, 1981.
  • Article Robert de Boron and Robert de Boron (pseudo-) , in: Dictionnaire des lettres francaises, Le Moyen Age, ed. Par G. Hasenohr et M. Zink, pp. 1280–1282.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Norris J. Lacy (Ed.): The New Arthurian Encyclopedia . Garland Publishing, Inc., New York, London 1991, ISBN 0-8240-4377-4 , p. 385
personal data
SURNAME Robert de Boron
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet
DATE OF BIRTH 12th Century
DATE OF DEATH 13th Century