Note 43 — Chapter III

See the quotation from Jean Bodel, p. 26, note. The literature of the Arthurian question is very large; and besides the drawbacks referred to in the text, much of it is scattered in periodicals. The most useful recent things in English are Mr Nutt's Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail (London, 1888); Professor Rhys's Arthurian Legend (Oxford, 1891); and the extensive introduction to Dr Sommer's Malory (London, 1890). In French the elaborate papers on different parts which M. Gaston Paris brings out at intervals in Romania cannot be neglected; and M. Loth's surveys of the subject there and in the Revue Celtique (October 1892) are valuable. Naturally, there has been a great deal in German, the best being, perhaps, Dr Kölbing's long introduction to his reprint of Arthour and Merlin (Leipzig, 1890). Other books will be mentioned in subsequent notes; but a complete and impartial history of the whole subject, giving the contents, with strictly literary criticism only, of all the texts, and merely summarising theories as to origin, &c., is still wanting, and sorely wanted. Probably there is still no better, as there is certainly no more delightful, book on the matter than M. Paulin Paris's Romans de la Table Ronde (5 vols., Paris, 1868-77). The monograph by M. Clédat on the subject in M. Petit de Julleville's new History (v. supra, p. 23, note) is unfortunately not by any means one of the best of these studies.