The Awntyrs off Arthure are still a largely unknown poem within the Iberian Arthurian discourse, likewise much of the English texts regarding the Morte Arthure are still paid little attention to when compared with their French counterparts. Our objective with this article is not limited to the promotion of lesser known or referred Arthurian texts, but rather to exhibit how even ideals eminently exterior to what we could consider the romantic tradition managed to assimilate with it, as is the case with the Contemptus Mundi within the Awntyrs. To this end, the Awntyrs proves itself to be a most appropriate poem due to its uniqueness; showing the reader how well-versed it is in the previously existing «Death of Arthur» narratives, as well as its knowledge and use of themes from moral literature, and its unusual structure,which has been aptly compared to a “diptych” contrasting both halves of the poem. Furthermore, we seek to demonstrate that the presence of the contemptus mundi within the poem not only recontextualizes the way the second half should be read, offering a new interpretative model towards the Alliterative Death of Arthur which already demonstrates a critical attitude towards the latter part of Arthur's reign. By laying the sin of greed upon Arthur the poem not only provides a moral rationale to the development of the events, but also reconstructs the narrative through a far harsher moral scheme with the intention of political and moral intervention.

Although all the Grail romances, from Chrétien de Troyes to the various forms of the prose cycle, contain narratives whose spiritualising resonance is evident, it has always been difficult to argue that they had a heterodox content, probably because the idea of Christian orthodoxy applicable to the 11th and 13th centuries is not as clear as it will become in more recent historical periods. In the final centuries of the Middle Ages, the variability of religious thought was great and, within it, the eschatological dimension and the global notion of human time stood out. It is worth revisiting these romances from this perspective, contrasting, once again, the Livro de Galaaz («Demanda do Santo Graal») and the Queste del Saint Graal.