“ The special interest of Map lies in the perplexing question of his relation to the Arthurian legend and literature. He is invariably cited as the author of the Lancelot proper (consisting of two parts) , the Queste and the Mort Artus, all three of which are now generally found in one manuscript under the title of Lancelot. The Mort Artus, however, we know to be the prose working over of an earlier and independent poem. ”

“ Now it is practically impossible that one man, and that one an occupier of court and public offices, constantly employed in royal and public business, very frequently travelling abroad (e.g. we know he was at Limoges in 1173; at Rome in 1179; in Anjou in 1183; and at Angers in 1199) , could have found the necessary leisure. ”

“ Now this incident of the “Three Days’ Tournament” is found alike in the prose Lancelot and in the German Lanzelet, this latter translated from a French poem which, in 1194, was in the possession of Hugo de Morville. The Ipomedon was written somewhere in the decade 1180–1190, and there is no evidence of the prose romance having then been in existence. We have no manuscript of any prose Arthurian romance earlier than the 13th century, to which period Gaston Paris assigned them; they are certainly posterior to the verse romances. ”