Naturally enough, the Arthurian legend reflected in Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae was developed along very different lines in France. It provided not a national myth, but subject matter for fiction. It provided material for the relatively short "Breton lays" popular in France in the mid-twelfth century and after (not all of the lays are Arthurian), and it provided themes for the more elaborate verse "romances." The earliest which have survived — and perhaps the first written — are those of Chretien de Troyes, elegant and artificial elaborations of older Arthurian stories of (possibly) Welsh origin. Here the tales become threads for moral allegory, illustrations of virtuous behavior, courtesy, and polite conversation. Verse romances of this sort very soon became popular outside France — in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany; in England the French influence resulted in the Arthurian Christian parable, Sir Gawain arid the Green Knight.
In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, French verse romance gave way to prose and to still more ingenious and elaborate art. It was to this form, the prose romance, that Malory turned most often for his material. Whereas French verse romances were relatively straightforward with respect to plot, the prose romances became a gloomy medieval forest of complexity. A given romance might have dozens of main plots, hundreds of digressive episodes (indeed, main plots may be dropped and forgotten), and too many characters for the reader to keep in mind. Scholars are still uncertain about how these prose romances work, and anything we say must be speculative; but since they are Malory's point of departure, some speculation is necessary.
