Robert de Boron
sometimes "de Borron"
fl. ca. 1200

A Burgundian knight and poet. His only known work is Le Roman du Graal, consisting of three long poems--Joseph d'Arimathea, Merlin, and Perceval. Of these three poems, only the Joseph and the first five hundred lines of the second remain. However, there are prose versions, which some believe may have been written by Robert before he turned them into poetry. Of these, the best known is the Didot Perceval, so called for the man who owned the manuscript. Though Robert claimed to be the first to write about the Grail, his poems date later than Chretien de Troyes' Perceval, left uncompleted ca. 1191. However, Robert's romance is the earliest known source for the belief in the Joseph legend, which would later impact subsequent retellings of the myth of the Grail.