Limen e destino: ipotesi per una fenomenologia della gaste terre in alcuni romanzi arturiani

The terre gaste constitutes a topical theme within the romances in verse and prose. Through the rewriting of the Lancelot-Graal cycle, the terre gaste is assimilated to the desolate realm of King Mehaignié, and has been the object of actualisations and attestations that are closely connected to the hero’s training path, for whom the encounter with the destroyed and abandoned moor plays the central role of adherence to his own destiny. In this direction, Wace’s rewriting of the Latin source (Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae) in the Roman de Brut, stands as a founding moment of a theme that runs through subsequent novelistic production. The essay intends to analyse and trace the occurrences of the gaste terre in some romances in verse and prose in order to propose an hypothesis on its phenomenology.