These two volumes are about the forty-five surviving manuscripts and fragments that transmit, and sometimes illustrate, the texts of Chrétien de Troyes. Here is presented, for the first time, a photographic corpus of those manuscripts that is as complete as possible and includes all the illustrations of the illustrated manuscripts, organized according to a new interpretation of their chronology and distribution. This visual material is complemented by a catalogue of all the extant manuscripts and their illustrations and by a series of analytical essays on aspects of the codicology, palaeography, the history of style and iconography, and the history of textual transmission of the manuscripts.
The 24 colour and 435 black/white plates and figures include at least one reproduction of every manuscript and fragment, with the unfortunate exception of the fragments that have been lost since their texts were edited and of which no photograph has been preserved. The collaboration of literary scholars with art historians, codicologists, and palaeographers make this enterprise a new departure in manuscript and text studies: many of the essays are also illustrated.