Contenu du sommaire

Abstract Time Lost, Time Found. The Rhythms of Memory and Speech in Le Haut Livre du Graal (Perlesvaus). Le Haut Livre du Graal illustrates such well-known and general features in Arthurian romances as chronological distortions and other games with narrative time. The specific status of time in this romance will be examined at the hand of a corpus of episodes dealing with the issue of memory and characterised by mysteriously protracted forgetfulness and strangely sudden remembrance. The fact once established, we will attempt an interpretation. The starting point is the following: in this romance as in many others (for instance those by Chrétien de Troyes) memory is connected to speech. Perlesvaus, Gauvain, Arthur and Lancelot offer glaring instances of this in Le Haut Livre du Graal. Why can lost time only be apprehended in a jarring tempo through «fabulous hypertrophies»?

Feasts and Feasting in Ambroise's Estoire de la guerre sainte. The motif of feasting runs through Estoire de la guerre sainte, this 12th-century chronicle of the third crusade. In the accuracy and truthfulness with which he presents it Ambroise shows his concern for a careful and objective recording of events, but also his intention to praise the power of the King of England by displaying the generosity of King Richard Lionheart. To this end he uses the vernacular literature – romances and chansons de geste – which he seems to have a good knowledge of, within ever following them slavishly. The way he rewrites the motif of feasting, which is one of the work's main features, together with his political and religious commitments leads us to wonder about his status, somewhere between a cleric and a jongleur, an occasional historiographer and a committed pilgrim.