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The thirteenth-century Arthurian verse romance Floriant et Florete reflects what one might call an extreme case of textual reworking. That is, it has been shown to include a particularly large amount of material—from minimal formulaic expressions to multi-line passages—that can be found elsewhere in medieval French texts. Much remains to be said, however, about the complexity and extent of these phenomena, be it within the corpus of Arthurian romances or in medieval literature in general. By assuming a critical stance toward previous studies on the subject and discussing new examples of textual data, the present article aims to further elucidate the various types of ‘intertextuality’ and ‘interdiscursivity’ at play in Floriant et Florete and to reflect on the manner of its composition.

The white stag that appears in the 13th-century Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian romances is a symbolically many-faceted being, which looks back on a long series of textual antecedents. One of its most noticeable traits is its christological nature and the interpretation of its spotless white color as a sign of spiritual purity. These Christianized characteristics of the animal likely developed under the influence of various hagiographic and historiographic sources (among others), where one encounters cervids with similar or analogous attributes. The present study examines some such examples of white stags, focusing on a corpus of texts relating the founding legend of the Norman abbey of Fécamp, and aims at shedding light on the gradual Christianization of the white stag on its evolutionary path into and through the Vulgate Cycle.