Lancelot Compilation


The Lancelot Compilation is the name given to a Middle Dutch collection, produced ca. 1320, containing seven Arthurian romances folded into the three parts of the Lancelot-Grail cycle.

Lancelot in Dutch

Arthurian romance must have been widespread orally in the Low Countries; the oldest written remains of Arthurian romance in Middle Dutch date from the second half of the thirteenth century; this compilation is the "largest collection of Arthurian romances in Middle Dutch". There are three main witnesses for the Lancelot en prose tradition: the Lancelot Compilation; the collection of rhyming fragments known as Lantsloot vander Haghedochte; and the prose translation attested by the two so-called Rotterdam Fragments.
Lanceloet en het hert met het witte voet is an original romance in which Lancelot fights seven lions to get the white foot from a hart which will allow him to marry a princess. The creation of a new story indicates Lancelot's widespread popularity. The manuscript is the second of two compendiums of translations of Old French Arthurian romances; the first is lost. The manuscript has three columns and 480 folio pages, totaling almost 90,000 lines of verse.