a trilogy – with a verse Perceval forming the third part – or a tetralogy – with Perceval and the short Mort Artu (Death of Arthur). Collectively it is variably known as The Grand History of the Grail (La Grant Estoire dou Graal), the Romance of the Grail (Roman du Graal), the Book of the Grail (Livre du Graal), and The Little/Lesser Grail Cycle (Le Petit Cycle du Graal), or simply as Robert de Boron's cycle, the Robert Cycle, or even just the "Arthurian trilogy" (trilogie arthurienne). The , also known as the Romance of Perceval in Prose is a retelling of Percival's story similar in style and content to the other works attributed to Robert, and attached to them. It may or may not be a prosification of the lost sections, and contains elements from Chrétien's own unfinished Perceval and its Second Continuation. Its separate section known as Mort Artu is effectively a continuation, which seems to be in turn a source for later works such as Perlesvaus. Linda Gowans, however, proposed that Robert wrote only the Joseph in prose, which she also sees as the original version. Robert de Boron gave the Grail myth a Christian dimension to produce a history of the Grail. According to him, Joseph of Arimathea used the Grail (the Last Supper vessel) to catch the last drops of blood from the Christ's body as he hung on the cross. Joseph's family brought the Grail to the vaus d'Avaron, the valleys of Avaron in the west, which later writers changed to Avalon, identified with Glastonbury, where they guarded it until the rise of Arthur and the coming of Percival. Robert also introduced a "Rich Fisher" variation on the Fisher King and is also credited with introducing Merlin as born of a devil and a virgin, and destined to be a redeemed Antichrist. In particular, his works laid a foundation for the Vulgate Cycle and were eventually included into it in a reworked form, and then into the subsequent Post-Vulgate Cycle, formerly known as the "pseudo-Robert de Boron cycle" due to the Huth Merlin manuscript author's attribution of the entire work to Robert. As a character Robert de Boron appears as Boron in Umberto Eco's Italian novel Baudolino (2000). References Further reading Mary E. Giffin, A Reading of Robert de Boron, PMLA, 80 (1965), 499–507 Linda Gowans, What did Robert de Boron Really Write?, Arthurian