Gaps

What’s not here

A reference work that only shows you what it has is misleading about the shape of its subject. This page is the list of things this portal cannot show you, roughly in order of how much their absence matters.

1. Chrétien’s Perceval — the poem that invents the Grail

This is the largest hole, and it is at the exact centre of the subject. Around 1180 Chrétien de Troyes wrote a romance in which a boy watches a bleeding lance and a graal carried through a hall and fails to ask the question that would heal a wounded king. He never says what the grail is. He died before finishing. Every Grail in this portal — the Vulgate’s holy vessel, the Queste’s judge, Wolfram’s stone, Perlesvaus’s weapon, Malory’s grief — is an answer to that unfinished poem.

There is no clean public-domain English translation. The good modern ones are in copyright. So Chrétien’s Grail is described here from the canon and never quoted, and his cell on the crosswalk is marked as a version without a quotation.

Reachable in part through three texts in this collection: the Welsh Peredur, which shows the same scene with no theology attached; Wolfram’s Parzival, which completes Chrétien directly and in the opposite direction from the French; and Perlesvaus.

2. The Vulgate Cycle — quotable, not publishable

The Lancelot-Grail cycle is Malory’s principal source and the hinge of the French tradition. Its only modern English translation is in copyright, so it can be quoted here briefly, with the translator named, and cannot be read here. The same applies to the cycle’s own Queste and Mort Artu in the Vulgate’s voice: this portal carries the Queste in a separate public-domain translation, and reaches theMort Artu only through Malory and the English poems that share its matter.

3. The Middle English Mortes — searchable, not quotable

The alliterative Morte Arthure and the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur are Malory’s own English sources for the fall, and both are public domain. But the available scans of the Middle English are rough enough that the quotation gate rejects them: a transcription that cannot be verified is not published here. They are named throughout as sources and carry no validated quotations of their own, which is why the alliterativeMorte’s famous vision of Fortune’s wheel is described rather than quoted.

4. The Madden Gawain romances — defeated by blackletter

Sir Frederic Madden’s 1839 Syr Gawayne contains four poems this portal would like to publish: the Wedding of Dame Ragnelle, the Awntyrs off Arthure, Golagros and Gawane, and the Carle of Carlisle. The scan is 1839 type with long s and heavy abbreviation, and it scores near zero against the quotation gate. Ragnelle’s riddle and its answer are quoted here from a small hand-checked transcription; the rest is searchable and not quotable.

5. Texts acquired but not yet set

Several public-domain works in this collection are validated against but have not yet been typeset for the reader. Quotations from them already appear throughout the site; the reading text is simply not built yet. They are listed on the texts page.

Every gap this portal declares, in one list

The rule is that a voice’s position must carry either a validated quotation or an explicit statement of why it doesn’t. Silence is not permitted. These are all the places the second case applies.

Where	Voice	Why there is no quotation
Source of rule	mabinogion	Described from the tales rather than quoted: the Welsh Arthur's standing is shown in how people treat him, not stated in a line.
The fellowship	chretien	Shown across Yvain and Erec as a structure rather than stated in a single line.
The fellowship	vulgate	The collapse itself is in the Mort Artu, which is not in this collection; the mechanism is laid down in the prose Lancelot.
The fellowship	tennyson	Reception rather than witness: this is the Victorian frame most modern retellings still inherit.
The Grail	chretien	Perceval has no clean public-domain English translation, so Chrétien's Grail is described here rather than quoted — a real hole at the exact centre of the subject.
The betrayal	mortes	Held as a search source only: the Middle English scan is too rough to quote.
The betrayal	tennyson	Reception rather than medieval witness.
The wound	grail-romances	Present across the Queste and Perlesvaus as a structure; not carried by a single validated line here.
The wound	mortes	Held as a search source only; the Middle English scan is too rough to quote.
The return	mortes	Held as a search source only; the Middle English scan is too rough to quote.
Foreknowledge	chroniclers	A structural absence rather than a position: the chroniclers simply have no Merlin until Geoffrey invents him.
Foreknowledge	vulgate	The cycle's own Merlin branch is in the volumes this portal may quote but not publish.
the dossier	The Chroniclers	Gildas is held as a search source only: this portal publishes Nennius from a better text than the collected volume that carries him.
the dossier	Geoffrey of Monmouth	The text here is reflowed from a scan of Sebastian Evans's translation: readable and citable, but its original pagination is lost.
the dossier	Chrétien de Troyes	Perceval — the poem that invents the Grail — is not published here. No clean public-domain English translation exists, so Chrétien's Grail is described from the canon rather than quoted. This is the single largest hole in the collection, and it is at the exact centre of the subject.
the dossier	Gottfried von Strassburg	Held as a quotation source only: the available scan is too uneven to publish as a reading text.
the dossier	The Vulgate Cycle	The only modern English translation of the cycle is in copyright. The Vulgate can be quoted here, briefly and with its translator named, but it cannot be read here. That is a real limitation at the centre of the French tradition, and it is stated rather than hidden.
the dossier	The Gawain Romances	Only Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is published here. The rest of the Madden volume — the Awntyrs, Golagros, the Carle of Carlisle — survives in an 1839 blackletter scan too rough to quote.
the dossier	The English Mortes	Held as search sources only. The available Middle English scans are too rough to publish or to quote at length, which is why this voice has no validated quotation of its own.