It is under precisely similar circumstances that the hero of the Bel Inconnu stories undertakes his first adventure.
Others have been struck by this resemblance, and M. Philipot, in his review of Dr. Schofield's Studies on the Libeaus Desconus,[110] maintains that the Lancelot story (more particularly in the version known to Ulrich von Zatzikhoven) is the elder of the two, and the source of the parallel adventure of the Bel Inconnu group.
With this view I cannot agree. I have elsewhere[111] given reasons for holding the true order of the Enfances to be as follows, Perceval, Le Bel Inconnu, Lancelot, and to this view I adhere. We must remember that the French original of the Lanzelet must in any case be prior to 1194; how much earlier we have no means of deciding, but the Lanzelet has points of contact with both the Perceval (Enfances) and the Bel Inconnu (Fier Baiser) story. Further, the prose Lancelot, though differing very widely from Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's poem, yet, as we see, also offers parallels both to Perceval and Le Bel Inconnu; such parallels being entirely different from those of the Lanzelet. To assert that these stories borrowed from the Lancelot would involve the existence, at an early date, of a fully developed and widely diffused Lancelot legend, a conclusion which the absence of all reference to the hero in the earlier Arthurian romances forbids.
To my mind, when we have three separate cycles of romance closely connected with each other, if we desire to discover which is the oldest of the stories we should ask in the first instance, in which of the stories are the incidents common to all the essence, in which are they the accidents, of the tale. It is quite clear that they are not essential to the Lancelot story. The characteristics of ignorance, simplicity, and headlong impulsiveness attributed to him by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, are entirely foreign to his character as elsewhere represented; even in the Lanzelet they are promptly discarded: but they are the very essence of Perceval's character, he, and no other, is the schöne tumbe of romance. Again, the adventure of the Fier Baiser has absolutely nothing to do with Lancelot; it is manifestly dragged into the Lanzelet version 'by the head and shoulders,' and has no connection with the context, but it is the crown and completion of the adventures of Gawain's nameless son.[112]
Whatever be the connection between the Perceval and Bel Inconnu stories, I think it is clear that both were well known before the development of the Lancelot legend took place, and that in the process of development this latter borrowed from both. A close examination of the variants of the Lancelot 'Enfances' will, I think, strengthen the hypothesis advanced in a previous chapter, i.e. that the connection of the hero with a water-fairy alone is of the essence of the tale, all the rest is comparatively late in development, and markedly non-original and secondary in character.[113]
CHAPTER VII
THE PROSE LANCELOT—THE LOVES OF LANCELOT AND GUINEVERE
In the previous chapter I remarked that the time, and the material, for a really critical study of the prose Lancelot were not yet ripe, and that I should, therefore, confine myself to the discussion of the more striking features of the story, i.e. the Enfances, the liaison with Guinevere, and the connection with the Grail Quest. These form what we may call the persistent element in the completed Lancelot legend; the great mass of adventures filling in the framework, varying (as we shall presently see) so considerably, that till we have some idea of the growth and various redactions of the story it is hopeless to attempt to criticise them.