Text and image in the 'Estoire del Saint Graal': A study of London, British Library MS Royal 14.E.iii

The Estoire del Saint Graal, the first part of the so-called Vulgate Cycle, enjoyed great popularity from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries as is evident from the large number of extant manuscripts containing illustrated versions of this story. The pictorial traditions for these stories evolved shortly after the creation of the texts; the development of progressively longer and increasingly more detailed picture cycles from ca. 1250-1350 provides us with an excellent opportunity to compare two separate but interdependent modes of narration which developed almost simultaneously.;The purpose of our study is to explore the possibilities of various kinds of links between text and image in the Estoire using an early fourteenth century Franco-Flemish MS with the longest Estoire miniature cycle, MS Royal 14.E.iii, as a base. A close examination of Royal 14.E.iii along with a comparison of it to the other thirteenth and fourteenth century Estoire manuscripts entails two main areas of inquiry: What kinds of material (external) and content-related (internal) links can be determined between text and image? Included in the first category are examinations of the mise-en-page including a study of the hierarchy of decoration, the distribution of the images and secondary decoration in the text, and the density of the picture cycle. Also investigated here are the functions of rubrics, inscriptions in the images, and marginal instructions and sketches. The study of the internal links between text and image in Royal 14.E.iii is based upon the determination of major motifs and motif clusters in the text, and the most frequently repeated iconographic motifs in the miniatures. Also considered here: Do all the miniatures stress equally important episodes? Which portions of the text are most densely illustrated, and which remain unillustrated? Can motifs found in illustrations of a particular episode point out the thematic significance of a different unillustrated episode?;The study of MS Royal 14.E.iii is preceded by a survey of the current state of research on text-image problems. Appended to the text is a detailed catalogue of the illustrated Estoire MSS produced between 1250-1360.