La quête inachevée. Le sang sur la neige dans Kamouraska d’Anne Hébert et le Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes

Cet article remet en question un intertexte qui, tout crucial qu’il soit, est passé presque entièrement inaperçu : celui entre Kamouraska d’Anne Hébert et Le Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes. En interrogeant la façon dont Hébert remanie l’image clé chez Chrétien du sang sur la neige, nous soulignons, pour la première fois, le rôle indispensable que l’imaginaire du Graal occupe dans le corpus de cette auteure.

An Arthurian Knight in Ivory and Ink

Manuscript Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12577 and ivory casket Musée du Louvre, OA 122, and are two of three extant fourteenth-century visualizations of Chrétien’s Le Conte du Graal, produced in Paris circa 1310-1330. Although the objects’ shared era of production suggests similarities of iconography, artistic influences, and production methods, little research has been conducted regarding visual and cultural connections between MS fr. 12577 and OA 122. Through iconographic and stylistic analysis of the scenes each artisan depicted within his respective medium, I elucidate how the casket and manuscript’s imagery personifies Perceval’s dual nature, a young knight symbolic of the secular and sacred. As visualizations of Chrétien’s most religiously-minded legend, MS fr. 12577 and OA 122 exemplify the intertwining of the sacred and secular within fourteenth-century French romantic art, specifically within illuminated manuscripts and carved ivory, materials that through their refinement, rarity, and expense, signified leisure, luxury, and nobility. By examining these two opulent objects, I provide insights into their purpose and significance in late medieval France, especially cultural crossover between the porous realms of sacred and secular medieval life.

Peredur and the Problem of Inappropriate Questions

This article reopens the question of the relationship between the medieval Welsh version of the Grail narrative, the Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, and the French Conte du Graal of Chrétien de Troyes. It explores the seeming inconsistencies in the Welsh tale’s presentation of the Grail procession, and suggests that the hero’s actions, and in particular his reticence in asking questions about the procession, should be read in the context of medieval Welsh customs and legal tradition. The article concludes with an exploration of the implications of the proposed interpretation for the reading of Historia Peredur as a postcolonial narrative.