Texts, translators, and the rights line
A medieval text reaches a modern reader through a translator, and translators have estates. The three tiers below are not a quality ranking — they record what this site is permitted and able to reproduce, which is not the same as what it can cite.
Tier APublished in full
Clean public-domain text, set for reading here.
| Work | Author | Edition & translator | Tradition | Rights |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Le Morte d'Arthur composed 1469–70 | Sir Thomas Malory | Caxton's text of 1485, as edited for Project Gutenberg | English | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #1251 and #1252. |
| Sir Gawain and the Green Knight composed late 14th century | the Gawain poet | Retold in modern prose by Jessie L. Weston (1898) tr. Jessie L. Weston | English | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #66084. |
| The Mabinogion — the Arthurian tales composed collected 12th–14th century, from older matter | anonymous (Welsh) | Translated by Lady Charlotte Guest (1849) tr. Lady Charlotte Guest | Welsh | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #5160. |
| Four Arthurian Romances composed c. 1170–90 | Chrétien de Troyes | Translated by W. W. Comfort (1914) tr. W. W. Comfort | French romance | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #831. |
| The High History of the Holy Graal composed c. 1200–10 | anonymous (Old French) | Translated by Sebastian Evans (1898) tr. Sebastian Evans | French romance | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #750. |
| Parzival composed c. 1200–10 | Wolfram von Eschenbach | Translated by Jessie L. Weston (1894) tr. Jessie L. Weston | German | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #47297 and #47298. |
| Roman de Brut composed 1155 | Wace | Translated by Eugene Mason (1912) tr. Eugene Mason | Chronicle | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #10472. |
| Layamon's Brut composed c. 1190–1215 | Layamon | Translated by Eugene Mason (1912) tr. Eugene Mason | Chronicle | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #14305. |
| Historia Brittonum composed c. 830 | Nennius | Translated by J. A. Giles (1848) tr. J. A. Giles | Chronicle | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #1972. |
| Idylls of the King composed 1859–85 | Alfred, Lord Tennyson | Project Gutenberg text | Reception | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #610. |
Tier BPublished as reflowed text
Public domain, but reconstructed from a scan: readable and citable, with the original pagination lost.
| Work | Author | Edition & translator | Tradition | Rights |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The History of the Kings of Britain composed c. 1136 | Geoffrey of Monmouth | Translated by Sebastian Evans (1903); archive.org scan tr. Sebastian Evans | Chronicle | Public domain. Text reflowed from the research base's OCR corpus; original pagination and paragraphing are lost. |
| The Quest of the Holy Grail composed c. 1225 | anonymous (Old French) | Translated by W. W. Comfort (1926); archive.org scan tr. W. W. Comfort | French romance | Public domain. Quotations only; the OCR is too uneven for a reader. |
| Tristan composed c. 1210 | Gottfried von Strassburg | Translated by Jessie L. Weston (1899); archive.org scan tr. Jessie L. Weston | German | Public domain. Quotations only. |
Tier CQuoted, never published
In copyright, or a scan too rough to reproduce. Short cited quotations only.
| Work | Author | Edition & translator | Tradition | Rights |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Syr Gawayn and the Grene Kny3t composed late 14th century | the Gawain poet | Richard Morris's EETS edition of the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript (1864) | English | Public domain. Project Gutenberg #14568. Held as the quotation source for the poem's own words. |
| Syr Gawayne — the Madden romances composed 14th–15th century | anonymous (Middle English) | Sir Frederic Madden, Syr Gawayne (1839): the Wedding of Dame Ragnell, the Awntyrs off Arthure, Golagros and Gawane, the Carle of Carlisle | English | Public domain, but the 1839 blackletter scan is too rough to publish or quote at length. |
| Six Old English Chronicles composed c. 540 onwards | Gildas, Nennius and others | Translated by J. A. Giles (1848) tr. J. A. Giles | Chronicle | Public domain. Held for the Gildas material; Nennius and Geoffrey are published separately from better texts. |
| The English Mortes composed c. 1350–1400 | anonymous (Middle English) | Alliterative Morte Arthure (Brock, EETS) and the Stanzaic Le Morte Arthur (Hemingway) | English | Public domain, but the OCR of the Middle English is too rough to publish or to quote at length. |
| Lancelot-Grail (the Vulgate Cycle) composed c. 1215–35 | anonymous (Old French) | Translated by Norris J. Lacy et al. tr. Norris J. Lacy (ed.) | French romance | IN COPYRIGHT. Used for research and quote validation only; never redistributed here. Short quotations appear under fair use with translator and locus. See DECISIONS.md ADR-0004. |
The Vulgate, and why you cannot read it here
The Lancelot-Grail cycle is the hinge of the entire French tradition and Malory’s principal source. It is also, in English, a single modern scholarly translation that remains in copyright.
So the Vulgate is quoted on this site — briefly, with its translator named, under fair use — and cannot be read on it. The underlying text was used for research and to verify those quotations, and is not distributed with this project. The verification still holds: when the text is not present, each Vulgate quotation is checked against a committed record proving it was located when the text was available, and the build fails if the quotation has since been altered.
This is a genuine limitation at the centre of the subject, and stating it is better than quietly leaving a hole where the French cycle should be.
Where the files came from
The public-domain texts are fetched from Project Gutenberg and archive.org by a script that records a checksum for every file, so that a later re-fetch returning different bytes is detectable — Project Gutenberg does reissue texts. The transformation from source file to the text you read is deterministic, and every editorial decision it makes is written to a log published on each work’s contents page.