The Origin of the Text and the Authority of the Word in Robert de Boron’s "Joseph d’Arimathie"

Paradoxically asserting a self-consciously fictional narrative’s participation in sacred meaning, the verse and prose versions of Robert de Boron’s Old French Joseph d’Arimathie (late 12^th-early 13^th c.) strategically repurpose and dismantle the romance topos of the ancient, authoritative source-text. They mix modesty and self-valorization in generating deliberately conflicted representations of the Joseph’s own origins and of its ability to contain or communicate, while also conducting an ethically charged negotiation between, different kinds of textual and spiritual truth, especially as modeled by evangelical historiography.