Post Scriptum a «Catábase virgiliana nos sonhos de Lancelote»

Abstract

Sofia Teixeira's article in the present issue of Guarecer addresses Lancelot's dreams in Demanda do Santo Graal. The analysis provides elements that lead to the conclusion that the Aeneid, especially chapter VI, is one of the romance sources. Since the same association cannot be corroborated in the French Queste del Saint Graal version of the dreams, the connection between the Portuguese and French works must be reasserted on new bases. Two main possibilities arise: either both oeuvres derive from an older, distinct work, which already contained the elements pertaining to the Aeneid - a text whose wide influence during this period is acknowledged -, in which case the French text certainly omitted all those elements; or the Virgilian motifs were not in the former text and must have been adjoined by the writer of the Pseudo-Boron cycle, which leads to rethink the whole plan behind it.