Little is left today of the once flourishing literary activity in the South of France, and much debate has arisen as to what exactly has been lost. Given the scarceness of surviving testimonies regarding the matière de Bretagne in the South, especially compared with the mass of Arthurian texts preserved in the langue d'oïl, critics, particularly those who argue for the priority of Occitan literature over its northern rival, have attempted to make up for quantity with quality. They console themselves with the thought that the Arthurian tradition in the South may not be very visible today but might in fact be older than the one inaugurated by Chrétien de Troyes in the North.

The extant material does not offer much support for claims in one direction or the other. Most of the evidence is indirect: as early as 1170, Guiraut de Cabrera, in his famous Ensenhamen in which he tells a jongleur what he should improve, mentions stories of Arthur, Erec, Tristan and Gauvain, and numerous troubadours allude to Arthur and Guenièvre, Tristan and Isolt, Gauvain, Yvain and Perceval. Unfortunately, these instances consist only of titles, names or, at most, the ‘emblematic’ use of isolated features of the legends involved. The exact story to which they allude can no longer be deduced. On the basis of what can be gathered, though, nothing indicates that the Arthurian tradition circulating in the South prior to Chrétien de Troyes was essentially different from what was known in the North, and it is indeed most likely that the early allusions refer very much to the same kind of material Chrétien himself would use to elaborate his romances.