Post-Vulgate Cycle
early 13th century Arthurian literature
The Post-Vulgate Cycle, also known as the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal (Romance of the Grail) and formerly as the Post-Vulgate Arthuriad or Pseudo-Robert de Boron Cycle, is one of the major Old French prose cycles of Arthurian literature from the early 13th century. It is considered essentially a rewriting of the earlier and more popular Vulgate Cycle (also known as the Lancelot-Grail cycle), with much left out but also much added, including characters and scenes from the Prose Tristan. The cycle did not survive in its entire original form, but has been reconstructed from fragments in several medieval languages.
History
The Post-Vulgate Cycle (formerly "pseudo-Boron" cycle), written anonymously probably from between c.1230 to c.1250. The cycle appears to have borrowed material from the first version of the Prose Tristan, and in turn was soon partially incorporated in its second version.
It did not survive complete, but in addition to Old French texts (of post-Vulgate Graal and Merlin) pieced together from Huth and several other French manuscripts (see § Structure and contents). The remainder (post-Vulgate Quest and Morte), whose French texts only survived in fragments, has been reconstructed using the translated fragments in Old Castilian (La Demanda del Santo Grial) and Galician-Portuguese (A Demanda do Santo Graal).
The Post-Vulgate itself (or at least its Suite du Merlin section) was one of the most important sources for Thomas Malory's Arthurian compilation Le Morte d'Arthur. The Suite du Merlin was also adapted into the Spanish work Baladro del Sabio Merlín ("The Tale of Merlin the Wise").
Structure and contents
The work is divided into four parts, named similar to their corresponding Vulgate Cycle versions.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Post-Vulgate Cycle” is early 13th century Arthurian literature. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Post-Vulgate, Cycle and early, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3179725. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1230 and 1250.
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This entry incorporates text from “Post-Vulgate Cycle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.