Des parentés choisies: La transmission des armes dans trois romans en prose du XIIIe siècle

The article deals with the modalities of the transmission of arms in a selection of prose texts from the first half of the thirteenth century: two romances from the Lancelot-Graal cycle, the Suite Vulgate and the Queste del saint Graal, and a composite romance commonly known as Guiron le Courtois. The transmission of arms dramatizes the tensions which exist between different types of kinship; fiction makes these tensions its own and reinterprets them based on specific ideological determinations. Thus the various romances select which kind of tie they wish to express through the transmission of arms; in each text, arms circulate within the bounds of one particular sort of kinship, be it carnal (and either matrilineal or patrilineal) or elective. Furthermore, the way in which arms circulate establishes a distinction between knights who represent solely the order of the bellatores and knights who enjoy some attributes of the royal function.