“Remembering God: The Function of Memory in Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte del Graal”Lisa A. Nicholas, Ph. D.University of Dallas, 2007Dr. Theresa M. Kenney

This study of The Story of the Grail examines two aspects of memory: the

faulty memory of Perceval, who often seems to forget or ignore important

information while remembering, but misconstruing, trivial remarks; and the memory

of the reader, who is provoked by the structural and thematic disruption of the

Hermit episode to search his own memory to see whether he has misread what

seemed a conventional chivalric romance. Consistent with Chrétien’s earlier

romances, this romance presents a protagonist whose lapses of memory are willful

and therefore culpable; unlike the earlier poems, this one challenges the reader to

account for his own “bad memory.” In the prologue, Chrétien introduces the key

theme of Charity, as contrasted with vainglory, but quickly distracts the reader from

this theme as soon as the protagonist is introduced, leaving the theme “hidden in

plain sight” until it surfaces again in the Hermit episode, which causes the reader to

reconsider his reading up to that point. Perceval’s pursuit of chivalry is analyzed in

the light of the teachings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and revealed to be a willful

indulgence of curiositas, or distraction from the interests of Charity, encouraged by

the demands of the courtly code epitomized by Arthurian chivalry. The Bernardian

analysis continues in a more particular examination of Perceval’s personal misuse of

memory, when he deliberately rejects his own identity for a new identity as knight.

Examination of the Hermit episode not only finds Perceval suddenly “remembering”

his own faults but provokes the reader to “repent” of a faulty reading, by bringing

unexpectedly to light the important, but overlooked, faults of chivalry, particularly

vainglory and abuse of women. Reconsideration of the Grail Castle episode in light

of these neglected themes, particularly as they are reflected in analogous episodes,

demonstrates that this episode can be properly interpreted only in retrospect, by a

reader mindful of the Hermit’s revelations. Once the importance of memory in this

romance has been recognized, one can discern strong narrative, structural, and

thematic similarities between Chrétien’s romance and Augustine’s Confessions, the

work which first suggested the important connections between reading, memory,

and understanding.

THE BRANIFF GRADUATE SCHOOL

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS

Remembering God: The Function of Memory

in Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte del Graal

BY

Lisa A. Nicholas

B.A., Rockford College, 1980

M.A., University of Dallas, 1998

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Dallas in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in Literature in the Institute of Philosophic Studies.

30 November 2007

Approved by the Examining Committee

Lisa A. Nicholas, “Remembering God: The Function of Memory in Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte del Graal,” © 2007.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Enigma and Interpretation: The Critical Challenge of the Conte del Graal...................................................................1The Enigma of the Conte: Critical Controversies........................2

Intrinsic Difficulties: The Unfinished Work........................3Extrinsic Difficulties: The Problem of Anachronism...........6Fresh Approaches, New Problems......................................9

Memory, the Protagonist, and the Reader.................................15Memory in Chrétien’s Romances......................................16Augustinian Memoria.......................................................20Chrétien and His Audience...............................................23

Chapter 2 The Seed of Romance and the Reader’s Memory.....31Audience Collusion.....................................................................33

Prologue............................................................................34Point of View.....................................................................43

Form and Structure....................................................................52Analogous episodes..........................................................54Interlacement...................................................................61

Assessment and Reassessment..................................................65Cause for Reflection.........................................................68The Hermit’s Revelations.................................................74

Chapter 3 Aimless Pursuits: Chivalry and the Path Away from God...................................................................................80Curiosity and the Will.................................................................84

Wandering Down the Left-Hand Path...............................86Charity and Voluntas Propria...........................................89

Knights of the Wilderness: Unbridled Willfulness.....................96The Abuse of Women........................................................97Self-Will and Force.........................................................102“Volsist ele ou non”: The Language of Force.................106

Knights of the Court: Vilenie Restrained.................................112Defense of the Helpless..................................................120Mercy to the Defeated....................................................124Sins of Speech................................................................127

Chivalry’s Defects....................................................................132Self-Interest....................................................................133Idleness...........................................................................134Hypocrisy........................................................................137Curiosity..........................................................................138

Chapter 4 “Par le non conuist an l’hom”: Memory, Identity, and Self-Knowledge...............................................................143“You who have the name ‘knight’”...........................................148

“By the name the man is known”...................................149“Son of the widow lady”.................................................155“More beautiful than God”.............................................162“You’ll do everything rudely”.........................................167

“I know you better than you do me”........................................171“Perceval the Welshman”...............................................176“Perceval the Wretch”....................................................182“Fortune is bald behind”................................................185

“Call me Nephew”....................................................................194At Home in the Forest....................................................197Memory and Reconciliation............................................199Recalling Chivalry...........................................................204

Chapter 5 Remembering Charity: Signs Along the Path to God........................................................................................215The Way to the Hermit’s Chapel..............................................217

The Reader Repents.......................................................222Knotted Signs..................................................................223

Chivalry’s Defects....................................................................231Vainglory.........................................................................236Abuse of the Weak..........................................................244

Suffering Along the Way..........................................................252Woman of Sorrows..........................................................256Blinded by Beauty...........................................................268

Returning to Charity, Returning to God...................................276Humility and Penitence..................................................277

Stumbling over Charity............................................................283Chapter 6 Return to Grail Castle: A Reconsideration.............286

Blinded by the Light: The Meaning of the Grail Episode.........287Grail Castle: A Hall of Mirrors?...............................................294

Wealthy Hosts: Gornemant — Fisher King.....................298Distressed Hosts: Blancheflor — Fisher King.................301Damsels in Distress: Blancheflor — Germainne Cosine. 304Royal Receptions: Arthur — Fisher King........................305Journey’s End: Hermit — Fisher King............................307Suffering Kinfolk: Mother — Fisher King.......................312Finding the Center..........................................................319

Grail Castle Reconsidered........................................................322Unasked Questions.........................................................323“Why does the lance bleed?”: Chivalry’s Dangerous

Glamor........................................................................332“Who is served from the Grail?”: The Two Tables..........349“Fol san eus”: (Mis)Understanding the Significance of

Grail Castle................................................................369Chapter 7 Memory and the Ethics of Reading Romance........373

Perceval’s Memory...................................................................373The Bernardian Analysis.................................................376

The Reader’s Memory..............................................................378The Augustinian Connection...........................................379

Narrative Pattern..................................................380Typological Method...............................................381Reading Dynamic..................................................384

The Conte del Graal in Critical Context...................................387Works Cited.............................................................................392Index ..................................................................................................407

Chapter 1 Enigma and Interpretation: The Critical Challenge of the Conte del Graal

lthough Chrétien de Troyes was one of the most influential

writers of medieval romance and has even been called the

“inventor of the modern novel,”1 his most popular and influential work

remains an enigma. Li Contes del graal, Chrétien’s final Arthurian

romance, has exercised an irresistible attraction upon readers and

interpreters in Chrétien’s age as well as our own, yet the source of the

attraction is also the source of the enigma: the tale remains

tantalizingly unfinished, its mysteries impenetrable. The romance

seems to be an “open text,” which readers and writers alike have

sought to close since Chrétien drew his last breath, letting the pen

figuratively fall from his hand over the unfinished manuscript. While a

number of Chrétien’s near contemporaries quickly took up the

challenge to provide a conclusion to the tale, and later writers chose

to recast the story according to their own lights, critical readers

continue to labor to discern Chrétien’s own intentions in the

substantial fragment that he left behind. The result is a widely

A

1 Foster Guyer, Chretien De Troyes: Inventor of the Modern Novel (New York: Bookman Associates, 1957).

2

scattered critical field, lacking consensus even on such basic

questions as whether Chrétien intended to finish the romance.2

The Enigma of the Conte: Critical Controversies

With regard to any literary work, critical approaches fall into

two general categories: external approaches, which apply knowledge

and theories extrinsic to the text, and internal ones, which treat the

work as an artistic unity which can be understood by study of its

formal and thematic aspects, without necessary reference to external

factors. As with any key work that has enjoyed a lengthy critical life,

the critical history of the Conte del Graal includes multifarious

interpretations spanning both of these general categories, with

attention to extrinsic or intrinsic features ebbing and flowing

according to the passing currents of critical fashion. Unlike many

works, however, including Chrétien’s earlier romances, this romance

has a number of features which render it especially enigmatic and

resistant to easy interpretation and which have provoked a wide

range of critical approaches.

2 In the first half of the twentieth century, Ernest Hoepffner, inter aliis, made this argument, and Riquer has repeated it more recently in various articles, including “Perceval y Gauvain en Li Contes del graal,” in which he bases his argument on the time discrepancies between the two narratives.

3

Intrinsic Difficulties: The Unfinished Work

A large part of the enigma of The Story of the Grail is due to

internal difficulties that frustrate any reading that seeks to confine

itself to the formal features of the work. The most obvious and

inescapable of these is the fact that the romance is unfinished. Unlike

The Knight of the Cart, which Chrétien did not complete with his own

hand but entrusted, midway through, to a trained assistant, to be

completed according to a specific outline, The Story of the Grail drops

off in mid-sentence, as if Chrétien had literally gasped his last and

dropped his pen. This abrupt ending, which occurs in the midst of a

lengthy account of Gauvain’s adventures, leaves unresolved a number

of important questions. For instance, would a completed romance

have artfully interlaced the stories of Perceval and Gauvain to

produce a unified tale, or are these substantial fragments of separate

tales which Chrétien’s literary executor, or some later editor, rather

ineptly combined?3 Is Perceval destined to return to Grail Castle and

take up his role as heir apparent, as the Second Continuation

suggests, or did the hermit’s answers suffice to fulfill the unasked

questions? One can hypothesize how, or whether, a Conte del Graal

3 Among others who argue against the unity of the romance, Martín de Riquer, for instance, argues that the time discrepncies between the Perceval and Gauvain narratives are evidence of two separate tales ineptly joined.

4

finished by Chrétien’s hand would have resolved such questions, but

any conclusion reached must remain tentative and speculative.4

The unfinished state of the work raises other problems in

addition to questions of structure, unity, and plot. The most important

of these is the question of the meaning of the grail, a mysterious

object which appears only briefly and yet seems to have been

intended as a key to the romance as a whole. The grail, not Perceval

(or Gauvain, for that matter) is the announced subject of the

romance,5 yet the nature of its importance cannot easily be

determined. The grail appears only once, in the scene in which the

marvelously luminous platter processes in company with the

inexplicably bleeding lance while Perceval dines with the wealthy

fisherman. The elements of the grail procession seem marvelous and

intriguing, but of much the same category of phenomena as the spring

which Yvain disturbs at the beginning of his adventures in The Knight

with the Lion: fairy elements which add color and interest to the tale,

but do not require any extended exegesis of their meaning. Yet when,

4 Frappier, for instance, states with confidence that “on ne peut guère douter qu’il retrouvait le château du Roi Pêcheur” (Chrétien de Troyes 176), but even such an unremarkable claim is based on unspoken assumptions about Chrétien’s intentions.

5 In his prologue, Chrétien announces his intention “a rimioier le meillor conte / . . . / Qui soit contez an cort real: / Ce est li Contes del Graal . . .” [“To rhyme the best tale . . . ever told in a royal court: it is the Story of the Grail.”] (63, 65-66). The protagonist is not mentioned. (All quotations will be from the Pickens-Kibler Garland edition of Li Contes del Graal.)

5

at the end of the Perceval narrative, the Welsh knight meets his

hermit uncle, the hermit’s revelations about the grail procession raise

more questions than they answer, and his description of whom (and

what) the grail serves deepens rather than enlightens the mystery

surrounding these objects. Is the grail a “holy thing” because of whom

and what it serves, or is it, itself, a sacred, mystical object worthy of

veneration? By describing the grail as a “holy thing” bearing a

consecrated Host to sustain a most “spiritual” man (a personage not

previously alluded to) and by giving a spiritual explanation of

Perceval’s failure to ask about these objects, the hermit’s revelation

seems to confer upon the details of the grail procession a religious

significance which cries out to be explained. What explanation

Chrétien might have provided in a completed romance, however,

remains an obscure mystery.

The unfinished state of the romance and the interpretive

problems caused thereby have sharpened rather than dampened

interest in The Story of the Grail. The survival of a large number of

early manuscripts of this romance attests to its enormous popularity

amongst Chrétien’s early readers. The manuscripts also reveal that

those readers were not content to leave hanging the questions left

unanswered in the incomplete work, for many of these manuscripts

include various “Continuations” and “Terminations” of the romance,

6

written by other hands apparently without reference to any narrative

plan of Chrétien’s own, but presented as seamless additions to the

original fragment.6 In addition to the Continuations, a number of

independent works, in verse and in prose, fill out the grail story,

either retelling and completing it, as in the case of Wolfram’s Parzival

and the anonymously penned Perlesvaus, or supplying a back story to

Chrétien’s tale, as in Robert de Boron’s Le Roman de l’estoire dou

Graal. Indeed, Chrétien’s enigmatic Conte spawned so many

imitations and retellings that, within a century or two of its writing,

Chrétien’s own romance sank into oblivion under the growing

numbers of its literary offspring.

Extrinsic Difficulties: The Problem of Anachronism

Thus, the very popularity of Chrétien’s work caused further

problems, for when scholars resurrected interest in it centuries later,

The Story of the Grail inevitably found itself compared (often

unfavorably) to its more familiar literary descendents. By the

nineteenth century, when medieval literature became an object of

academic interest, the ornate platter which is Chrétien’s enigmatic

“grail” had long since been displaced by the “Holy Grail” of later,

better-known romances. Only when Chrétien’s work came to be

6 See Rupert Pickens’s introduction to the Garland edition of the Conte for a detailed discussion of the surviving manuscripts.

7

recognized and appreciated as the precursor of these later works did

the twelfth century romancier begin to attract critical attention in his

own right. Even then, however, scholars tended (deliberately or not)

to read Chrétien’s seminal work in the light of those later, more

familiar works, in this manner projecting onto Chrétien’s romance

expectations raised by later stories of the Holy Grail.7 This sometimes

resulted in harsh criticism of Chrétien’s work for not reflecting the

aesthetic norms or straightforward allegory of later writers.

Unfortunately, because inadvertent, the habit of confusing later

poets’ interpretations of Perceval and the grail with Chrétien’s own

intentions has frequently impeded an authentic understanding of The

Story of the Grail. For instance, well into the middle of the twentieth

century critics frequently discussed The Story of the Grail in terms of

Wolfram’s Parzival, without taking adequate note of the very

significant differences between the two. At first blush, it might seem

reasonable to assume that such near-contemporaries of Chrétien as

the authors of the Grail Continuations and Wolfram von Eschenbach

would have had some cultural intuition into Chrétien’s symbolic

references and source texts which then was reflected in their own

7 Urban Holmes, as late as 1970, in his Chrétien de Troyes argues that, since Chrétien’s earliest imitators transformed the grail into the Holy Grail, “it was natural for this Christian explanation to take the lead.” While I would agree with him that the romance has Christian significance, I do not believe that the assumptions of later writers provide a sound basis for establishing this fact.

8

works. If so, the interpretations of Chrétien’s romance implicit in their

own literary creations might have interpretive value for later readers,

who must approach Chrétien’s work across a cultural abyss of many

centuries. However, one can easily see that, even among Chrétien’s

near-contemporary imitators and continuators, there was little

consensus about the more mysterious aspects of his grail tale:

consider only the very different understandings of the grail illustrated

in Robert de Boron’s Joseph of Arimathea, which depicts it as a holy

relic, the chalice used at the Last Supper, and Wolfram’s Parzival, in

which it is a mysterious stone with healing properties. There is no way

to judge which of his literary inheritors (if any) grasped most surely

the implications of Chrétien’s unfinished work. Clearly, even a very

careful and deliberate comparison between Chrétien’s grail story and

the works of his nearest imitators is likely to shed more light upon the

interpretations of the later writers than it does upon the intentions of

the poet of Champagne. In recent years, a number of Chrétien

scholars have felt this problem of tainted readings to be of such

significant proportions that they each announce an explicit intention

to avoid such anachronism. Paule Le Rider expresses her intention to

“oublier dans toute la mesure du possible les continuations

médiévales du Conte du Graal. … Le confondre dans un ‘cycle du

Graal,’ l’interpréter à partir des allégories de ses épigones eût été,

9

m’a-t-il semblé, le trahir” (7). Per Nykrog, in his “effort pour dégager

les romans de l’emprise que les développements ultérieurs ont gardés

sur eux” (50), seeks to avoid not only the interpretations made by

continuators but also those of modern interpreters who

anachronistically impose upon Chrétien’s works ideological or

psychological schemata quite foreign to Chrétien or his original

audience.

Fresh Approaches, New Problems

Modern scholarship, as well, then, has obfuscated Chrétien’s

romance almost as frequently as it has clarified its meaning. Once

Chrétien’s oeuvre, and particularly his final romance, became the

object of scholarly attention, the field of scholarship opened into a

wide range of approaches, both external and internal. Early twentieth

century speculation upon Chrétien’s sources gave way in the middle

of that century to formal investigations using the techniques of New

Criticism. This period probably contributed the most toward the sense

of The Story of the Grail as a unified and intricately organized poetic

creation. The enigma of the grail procession, however, had not lost its

fascination, and this period also witnessed a number of attempts to

decode the symbolism of the grail procession, producing theories

which, while often impressive for their ingenuity, have failed to attract

much critical approval.8 The sometimes strained allegorical

interpretations that result from these theories has probably had a

greater negative than positive influence on the field of Chrétien

scholarship, deflecting attention from the grail event and religious

interpretations, and onto more accessible aspects of the romance

without, however, dampening critical interest in the work as a whole.

One consequence of this change of focus has been a proliferation of

new critical approaches in the latter decades of the twentieth century.

Many of these new approaches have thrown light on previously

obscure features, although none has succeeded in attracting critical

consensus by offering a convincingly definitive interpretation of any

single important aspect of Chrétien’s work. To the contrary, this

burgeoning of critical approaches, rather than clarifying, in some

ways has added to the confusion surrounding Chrétien’s final

romance. The cacophony of conflicting interpretations can seem quite

bewildering to the student seeking a coherent understanding of the

Conte. Particularly in the last two or three decades, the inherent

ambiguity of Chrétien’s style and the inconclusive form of the

romance have fed a post-modern tendency to view The Story of the

Grail as an “open text,” a work which cannot be assigned any

8 Notable among these allegorical readings are those of Holmes and Klenke (conversion of the Jews), Riquer (Christian redemption) and Olschki (against the Cathar heresy).

definitive interpretation, and which may, therefore, support almost

any reading, however painfully ingenious.9

Perhaps as a reaction against this trend, some scholars have

chosen to return to external approaches to the work, investigating not

source materials but cultural phenomena which may shed light on

themes treated in the romance, such as the depiction of Arthur and

his court, and Chrétien’s ambivalent portrayal of institutional

knighthood.10 This kind of historical approach is satisfying in that,

instead of imposing modern ideologies upon a medieval work, it seeks

to understand Chrétien’s work from within the context of his own

culture, and therefore helps to bring the modern reader’s experience

of the work closer to that of Chrétien’s original audience. Recent

decades have also seen a growing number of studies that examine

9 Per Nykrog states, “[L]’interprétation ne connaît en principe de bornes que celles qui limitent l’imagination de l’herméneute. Car une composante fondamentale de la gerbe méthodologique, ou théorique … soulignait que le discours critique ne doit pas être compris comme faisant référence à une «vérité» une et solide qui soit là, dans «le monde» dit réel. Puisque tout contact avec une «réalité» était a priori impossible, tout ce qu’on pouvait proposer était une «lecture», qui ne saurait être «référentielle» que dans la mesure où elle se référait au texte matériel qu’on a sous les yeux. Selon un bon-mot polémique souvent répété, le texte devint prétexte pour un exercice de l’ingéniosité du commentateur." (30) Brigitte Cazelles’ The Unholy Grail provides such a reading which, while brilliantly constructed, does little to advance our appreciation of the romance that Chrétien actually wrote.

10 The works of Jean Flori and Donald Maddox, for instance, apply historical insights into the practice of chivalry to Chrétien’s works. Sandra Hindman’s Sealed in Parchment suggests one way of trying to recapture the readings of early audiences by noting how surviving manuscripts of Chrétien’s romances reveal interpretation through their illuminations and division of episodes. Her work and that of others explore ways in which an oral presentation may have colored reception of the romances.

Chrétien’s final work in the context of his other Arthurian romances,11

countering the tendency of those critics who too frequently have

treated The Story of the Grail as if it were an anomaly among

Chrétien’s romances.12 While a number of these comparative studies

have been quite helpful in identifying points of continuity among

Chrétien’s romances, they have not always balanced that with a

detailed character study of Perceval or a careful investigation of the

grail theme. These latter aims have best been achieved in single-work

studies of The Story of the Grail, such as Barbara Sargent-Baur’s La

Destre et la senestre, which connects Perceval’s personal

development to the significance of the grail by examining it in the

light of Charity, the theme introduced by Chrétien in the poem’s

prologue.

One major division that remains in the field of Chrétien

scholarship, particularly with respect to The Story of the Grail, is that

11 Recent studies of this kind include Duggan’s The Romances of Chretien de Troyes, which examines “underemphasized features;” Maddox’s The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes analyses the depiction of chivalry and the Arthurian court; Nykrog’s Chrétien de Troyes: Romancier discutable attempts to recapture imaginatively the point of view of the twelfth century courtly audience; and Uitti and Freeman’s Chrétien de Troyes Revisited reads the romances in the context of Chrétien’s cultural milieu.

12 Most interpreters who treat the Conte as something sui generis do so because of the explicitly religious tone of the hermit episode, which they claim is entirely foreign to Chrétien’s earlier romances. William Comfort did not even include The Story of the Grail among his translations of Chrétien’s Arthurian Romances, perhaps because Perceval is technically an outsider to Arthur’s court and the romance therefore is not, strictly speaking, “Arthurian.” However, one may suspect that the choice to exclude Chrétien’s final romance was influenced by the attitude that views the final romance as “atypical.”

which divides “secularist” from “christianist” interpreters.13 Just one

of many critics who insist that Chrétien’s intentions were entirely

secular and his religious references employed only to rhetorical ends

is Tony Hunt, who in a 1971 study insisted that the many Scriptural

references in the Conte’s prologue are used facetiously to create a

Ciceronian captatio benevolentiae and should not be taken to indicate

any serious religious meaning. Opposing this kind of view are those

who, like Sargent-Baur, take the overt mentions of religious themes in

the prologue and hermit episode to be indicative of the poet’s true

intentions and important guides to the proper interpretation of the

romance. Such interpretations have traditionally been called

“Robertsonian,” in reference to D. W. Robertson who, in his 1962

Preface to Chaucer, emphasized the great extent to which Christian

understanding permeated all artistic production in the Middle Ages,

and insisted that medieval art cannot be properly understood unless

considered from the perspective of the aesthetic theory of St.

Augustine, whose ideas “enjoyed an authority second only to that of

the Bible” (52). Although during the 1970s and ‘80s, many critics

went out of their way to distance themselves from (or, more rarely,

13 Peter Meister, in his preface to Arthurian Literature and Christianity: Notes from the Twentieth Century (1999), coins the term “christianist” to describe a school of interpretation that has more frequently, but perhaps less accurately, been called Robertsonian. Meister argues that Robertson’s ideas were caricatured and largely dismissed without fair consideration in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but should now be given a fresh hearing.

align themselves with) the Robertsonian view, there has been a steady

trend in recent years toward acknowledging the pervasive presence of

a Christian moral view (which never emerges in overt didacticism) in

The Story of the Grail, and determined resistance to this idea has

abated somewhat, although there remains no real critical consensus

on this point.

The welter of critical voices announcing conflicting and

sometimes radically divergent interpretations of Chrétien’s work may

well leave one wondering what kind of approach will prove adequate

to the interpretive task. In The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de

Troyes: Once and Future Fictions, Donald Maddox discusses this

problem and suggests a way out of the jungle of critical opinion:

Paradoxically, however, apart from providing a rich and intensive program of reading and reflection on the periphery of a relatively brief tale, this abundant tradition of commentary often serves to render the story overly familiar and thus less ‘visible,’ even as it seeks to illuminate its obscurities. The cumulative opacity of the story’s reception, especially those portions pertaining to Perceval, necessitates a certain degree of defamiliarization in any attempt to see it anew. (90-91)

One might well ask: how may we “defamiliarize” the work without

distorting it? In the present study, I do so by addressing certain

features of the romance that puzzled me upon my first reading —

when, in fact, the romance was still unfamiliar to me — and which

subsequently were not adequately explained by the varied and

contentious interpretations of established scholars. In the end, I

believe that the study that unfolds in the following chapters not only

answers the naïve questions with which I began, but provides a

sufficient degree of defamiliarization to shed new light on many

important aspects of the romance, providing a fresh appreciation of

Chrétien’s masterful control of his material.

Memory, the Protagonist, and the Reader

Two key aspects of the romance, although at first glance

unrelated, attracted my attention and gave rise to the present study: the

first is Perceval’s obviously faulty memory —he is frequently given

significant information that he subsequently seems to forget or ignore

while, on the other hand, he frequently remembers in a very meticulous

way comments or sights that he later recalls clearly, but misconstrues.

This aspect of his character suggested a need to examine closely

Perceval’s exercise of memory. The second prominent feature that

stirred my interest was the strange intrusion of the hermit episode,

interjected into the story of Gauvain’s exploits in such a way that it

seems to reorient completely the trajectory of the romance, and to

disorient the reader, causing him to stop short and reconsider whether,

in fact, he has been reading the romance he thought he was. The

structural and thematic disruption produced by this episode will prompt

the attentive reader to search his memory to see whether he has

misread the signposts that seemed to be pointing toward a more or less

conventional chivalric romance. In this way, the abrupt intervention of

the Hermit episode seems to suggest something important about the

reader’s own (mis)use of memory — as if Chrétien wished to challenge

the reader to reconsider his reading practice and recognize that a

superficial or inattentive reading may cause him to miss “the spirit

beneath the veil of the letter.”14

Memory in Chrétien’s Romances

It is, perhaps, surprising that no critic heretofore has made a

careful study of memory in this romance, for one of the striking

characteristics of the young Welsh hero is the fact that Perceval,

contrary to the dictum his mother quotes, “does not learn what he

often hears.”15 Although easily impressed by striking sights, Perceval

seems to possess selective memory with regard to what he is told.

Because he is depicted as an ignorant fool, however, the casual reader

may not notice Perceval’s poor memory; i.e., Perceval’s forgetfulness

may appear to be due to naïveté or foolishness rather than culpable

14 I am indebted to John S[tephen] Maddux’s doctoral dissertation, “Sens et Structure du Joseph d'Arimathie: Essai d'Histoire Littéraire” (University of Chicago, 1979) for first suggesting to me the significant way that the Hermit episode forces the reader to reconsider what has gone before in the Perceval narrative.

15 In her parting advice to him, his mother remarks that, while he’ll probably be inept as a knight, since he hasn’t been properly trained, on the other hand “mervoille est quant an n’aprant / Ce qu l’an voit et ot sovant” (507-508: “It’s a wonder when someone doesn’t learn what he has often seen and heard”). This proves to be a rather ironic commentary on Perceval’s entire career.

willfulness. The thematic centrality of memory is, however, readily

apparent in Chrétien’s earlier romances, which treat failures of

memory not as an excusable lapse of mental recall, but as a deliberate

and willful failure to be properly mindful. Thinking about memory in

this way, we can see that “bad memory” is a fault that seems to plague

all of Chrétien’s protagonists: Erec (as well as Enide), Lancelot, and

Yvain all suffer personal crises because of their failure to be properly

mindful of some moral obligation, while they are distracted by more

worldly or sensual pursuits. Erec is distracted by the sensual delights

of the marriage bed, causing him to neglect his duties as feudal lord,

while Enide forgets her proper role as wife because she fears social

embarrassment. Yvain, on the other hand, forgets his domestic

responsibilities as he pursues the pleasure of chivalric honor, and the

crisis provoked by that neglect plunges him into such despair that he

loses his memory, his mind, even his identity. Lancelot, likewise,

suffers no end of trouble because, for but a moment, he put his love for

Guinevere out of his mind as he considered the loss of worldly esteem

that he would risk by stepping upon the cart. Even in Cliges, Chrétien’s

least “Arthurian” romance, the theme of memory and its moral

implications is not absent: Cliges and Fenice attempt to retreat into

their own private world, in which they hope to enjoy private pleasures

while they hide from the real world and forget their true obligations —

a practice which ultimately wins them censure rather than blissful

oblivion. In each of these romances, memory is an important theme,

one fraught with moral implications which bear significantly upon the

protagonists’ sense of identity and vocation. This theme is most deeply

embedded, and most vitally important, in Chrétien’s final romance, The

Story of the Grail.

Unlike his earlier works, however, Chrétien’s final romance

presents the theme of memory in close connection to that of Charity, a

theme introduced in the poem’s prologue. Charity, argued D. W.

Robertson, is frequently the central theme of medieval poets, yet

hidden beneath the surface of the story, in imitation of Scripture:

At the heart of mediaeval Christianity is the doctrine of Charity, the New Law which Christ brought to fulfill the Old Law so that mankind might be saved. … For St. Augustine and for his successors among mediaeval exegetes, the whole aim of Scripture is to promote Charity and to condemn cupidity: ‘Non autem praecipit Scriptura nisi charitatem, nec culpat nisi cupiditatem.’ Where this aim is not apparent in the letter of the Bible, one must seek it in the spirit beneath the veil of the letter. … Profane letters were thought of as being allegorical in much the same way as the Bible is allegorical. … it becomes apparent, I believe, that mediaeval literary authors frequently share the primary aim of Scripture, to promote Charity and to condemn its opposite, cupidity.” (“The Garden of Charity” 24).

As I will demonstrate in the following pages, Chrétien’s

prologue, opposing Philip’s Charity to Alexander’s vainglory

introduces this theme of Charity, and the hermit episode reminds the

reader of it, provoking him to revisit earlier episodes and, piercing

“the veil of the letter,” to reinterpret them in the light of this

opposition. While in Chrétien’s earlier romances the crisis of memory

was caused by forgetting moral obligations so that the protagonist

might indulge in sensual or secular pleasures, only in The Story of the

Grail does faulty memory cause the protagonist not simply to choose a

lesser good over a greater one but to neglect the greatest good of all,

which is love of God and of neighbor. Thus, the frame within which

the Perceval narrative is set — the context within which it must be

understood — is Charity, emphasized in the prologue and

reintroduced in the last episode in which Perceval appears, when the

pilgrim knights remind him of Christ, “who set forth the New Law,”

i.e., the double law of Charity: love of God and love of neighbor.16 The

reader who forgets to read the romance within this context does so to

his own peril.

Augustinian Memoria

To study the use of memory in this romance, it will be useful to

have some idea of how our twelfth-century romancier might have

understood this mental faculty. In two recent studies of the medieval

understanding of memory, Mary Carruthers draws attention to the

16 “Biax sire chiers, / Don ne creez vos Jhesus Crist / Qui la novele loi ecrist / et la dona as crestiens?” (6220-23). [“Fair dear sir, do you not believe in Jesus Christ, who set forth the New Law and gave it to Christians?”]

dynamic and spiritually-formative qualities of memory, as it was

understood during the Middle Ages. The Book of Memory examines

the general importance of memory in medieval culture and the

elaborate techniques used to develop memory, while The Craft of

Thought discusses the influence of monastic mnemonic practices on

literature, art, and architecture. Carruthers’ works show that, during

the Middle Ages, memory was regarded as an important factor not

only in intellectual but also in moral formation. This medieval view,

which emphasizes the active ethical and spiritual function of memory,

stands in stark contrast to the common modern concept of memory as

simply the exercise of mental recall.17 This may explain why modern

interpretations of The Story of the Grail that focus on Perceval’s

personal development either fail to consider or minimize the

importance of memory in the romance.

As Carruthers points out, the medieval understanding of

memory found its basis largely in the writings of St. Augustine of

Hippo. Augustine, in De Trinitate, identifies the “little trinity” in the

soul — memoria, intelligentia, and voluntas — as the closest analogue

17 In light of this, it seems ironic that Jacques Le Goff, in his History and Memory, when speaking specifically of the importance of memory in medieval culture, defines memory according to a modern psychological understanding: “Memory, the capacity for conserving certain information, refers first of all to a group of psychic functions that allow us to actualize past impressions ... ” (51) Perhaps he can be excused for this, since he speaks as a historian, interested primarily in past events.

21

to the divine Trinity that can be discerned in the created order.18 For

Augustine, the mind (or soul) is composed of these three elements

which, like the Persons of the Godhead, are distinct but

consubstantial: memory, understanding, and will are all equally

“mind,” and none functions except in relation to the others. As

Carruthers also indicates, memoria often was treated not simply as an

aspect of the soul or mind but as if it were actually synonymous with

anima (mind or soul).19 This tripartite conception of anima features

frequently in medieval spiritual writings.20 The importance of memory

is also emphasized in another of Augustine’s best known works (in the

Middle Ages as today), his Confessions, which illustrates the

important role that memory plays in the soul’s recognition of its own

nature (memoria sui) and its relation to its Creator (memoria Dei).

Pierre Courcelle, in Les Confessions de Saint Augustin dans la

tradition littéraire, emphasizes the enormous influence that the

Confessions had on the medieval religious imagination, providing as it

did one of the most common models for accounts of spiritual

conversion and self-examination. While the influence of this model is

easily discerned in religious autobiography, it can also be detected in

18 De Trinitate X.

19 The Book of Memory 43.

20 Robert Javelet’s Image et resemblance au 12e siècle traces, among other things, the various versions of the Trinitarian model of the soul treated by medieval spiritual writers.

22

what Douglas Gray calls the “diffused” Augustinian tradition, where it

may furnish either specific details or the basic pattern of conversion

narratives (“Saint Augustine and Medieval Literature” 32). At the end

of our analysis of the Conte del Graal, I believe that we shall be able

to see that Augustine’s Confessions may have shaped Chrétien’s

romance in some unexpected ways.

Augustine’s ideas on the role of memory in knowledge of self and

knowledge of God, while of fundamental importance, are not the only

ones that should be considered. The greatest spiritual writer of

Chrétien’s own century, St Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote extensively on

the need for self-knowledge in developing virtue and growing closer to

God. At least two Chrétien scholars have already examined some of the

ways in which Bernard’s teaching is reflected in Chrétien’s Story of the

Grail. Leslie Topsfield, in his 1981 study of Chrétien’s Arthurian

romances, first drew attention to the way Bernardian ideas influenced

the writing of The Story of the Grail; later, in a volume of essays

collected in tribute to the late Dr. Topsfield, Fanni Bogdanow expanded

upon Topsfield’s findings to demonstrate how Bernard’s writings,

particularly those on the dictum nosce teipsum (“know thyself”), can

illuminate many of the most enigmatic portions of the Conte. Both St.

Bernard’s spiritual writings and Topsfield’s and Bogdanow’s modern

analyses of his influence will be instrumental in our examination of the

23

role memory plays in the story of Perceval’s way of perfection as a

knight.

Chrétien and His Audience

In the following chapter, I will indicate a number of methods that

Chrétien employs not only to engage but to manipulate the reader’s

attention, leading the reader along one path only to show him later that

he has been misled to take the Conte as a light entertainment instead

of recognizing it as a study in moral failure. Some critics, who maintain

that the Conte del Graal is intended simply as a secular entertainment,

might reject this idea on the grounds that Chrétien wrote for a

literarily unsophisticated courtly audience who would have been ill-

equipped to recognize or respond to the narrative machinations that I

will suggest Chrétien employed. This attitude, however,

underestimates both the careful craft of the romancier and the aptitude

of his likely audience. On the contrary, what may be known of Chrétien

and his courtly audience (or postulated upon good evidence) supports

the likelihood that Chrétien would have been inclined to write, and his

audience equipped to interpret, this kind of multi-level romance.

Although there is much less historical data than one might wish on the

poet who called himself Chrétien de Troyes, it is very likely that he was

a cleric (possibly in minor orders, although perhaps even a canon of

24

Saint Loup de Troyes21), trained in one of the cathedral schools, and

attached, at least in his capacity as poet, to the court of Henry the

Liberal, count of Champagne.

Critics who seek to minimize any evidence of religious themes in

The Story of the Grail and who prefer to see Chrétien as a worldly man

of secular tastes frequently argue that his training would not

necessarily mean that he was what we might call “a man of the cloth”

or that he had any deep religious interests or intentions. However,

while Chrétien was not overtly didactic and moralizing, there is no

reason to assume that he was not a religious man, mindful of his moral

responsibilities as a poet. On this point, at least, we may agree with

Gerald Seaman’s contention that one may find a middle ground

between the extremes of “those such as Holmes and Klenke, whose

work contends that [Chrétien was] a ‘Christian poet’ bent on writing an

‘allegorical tale’ … filled with the popular liturgical symbolism of the

day” and “Tony Hunt, who believes there is nothing particularly

religious” about the prologue or the poem as a whole (87). Whether we

agree or not with Seaman’s assertion that Chrétien, as a writer

primarily “concerned with establishing a new literary paradigm,”

strove against convention and “deployed his Christian figures as a part

of an attempt to secure paradigmatic identity for his work” (88), I

21 See Benton 561.

25

believe that the available evidence suggests, at any rate, that Chrétien

was a poet who artfully contrived to comment obliquely on some of the

literary conventions of the day by combining an appeal to secular

tastes with a real interest in Christian morality.

Two studies that focus on the court of Champagne at the time

Chrétien was writing provide evidence that supports this latter view.

John F. Benton’s “The Court of Champagne as a Literary Center”

studies the signatories of court charters for evidence of the presence

of literary figures there during the period of Chrétien’s literary

activity. This study debunks the idea (suggested to some by the

prologue to The Knight of the Cart) that the court of Henry and his

wife Marie was a northern center of the cult of fin amors, the

adulterous love popularized by the Provençal troubadour poets.

Benton shows that there is no evidence that the court served as a

point of literary interchange between north and south, and he

discerns several other indications that the court of Champagne, and

those who frequented it, subscribed to conventional Christian morality

rather than to the morally dubious view of love and marriage

popularized by the troubadours — a view which Chrétien, in fact,

satirizes in The Knight of the Cart, the romance that he claimed to

have written at the behest of Marie de Champagne.22

22 Thus Marie, by providing Chrétien with both the matiere (content) and the san (meaning) of that romance, far from promoting “courtly love,” might have

26

Building upon the evidence offered in Benton’s article, Ad

Putter’s “Knights and Clerics at the Court of Champagne” draws a

more detailed picture of the members of the court who served as

Chrétien’s immediate audience. Putter finds that the membership of

the court included not only knights and nobles but numerous clerics,

and he suggests that such a mixed milieu would have caused members

of each group to acquire some of the tastes of the other, the clerics

gaining an appetite for tales of courtly chivalry and the knights

picking up “some of the sophistication and literary skills that clerics

thought peculiar to themselves” (245). Chrétien’s audience, then,

would include clerics who, trained in Scriptural exegesis, would have

been adept at recognizing allegorical meaning hidden below the

surface of the literal, and nobles who might have aspired to a similar

sort of literary sophistication.23 Furthermore, some of the cartulary

evidence studied by both Putter and Benton suggests that Chrétien

may have been an Augustinian canon (Putter 254)24 and, in any case,

probably was present at court only intermittently (Benton 562). This

suggests that Chrétien was a cleric who was sometimes at court and

suggested that he satirize the troubadour’s exaltation of adulterous love.

23 Putter notes that Henry himself was frequently praised as a man of great literary discrimination (262).

24 In addition to this evidence, Gouttebroze in “"Sainz Pos lo dit, et je le lui … “ argues that Chrétien may have been at least a sub-deacon, who would have served as lector in liturgical celebrations.

27

more frequently away tending to religious duties, rather than a man

who lived at court and shared the thoroughly secular tastes of courtly

knights. The evidence suggests, then, an audience which would have

been interested not only in courtly chivalry but also in sophisticated,

allusive stories that would provide an interpretive challenge, and a

clerical poet who sought to appeal to the tastes of that audience while

remaining true to his calling to be a moral guide.25

Such a view of Chrétien and his audience is assumed by the

study that follows. I believe that my analysis of the romance will

demonstrate the validity of that assumption.26 In the following

chapter, I will address the ways in which Chrétien engages and

manages the focus of his audience’s attention, introducing the key

theme of Charity in the poem’s prologue and later, somewhat

shockingly, reminding the reader of it in the final episode of the

Perceval narrative. The prologue also sets up an opposition between

25 Per Nykrog suggests that Chrétien may have presented his romances episodically to the audience at court, rather like the serial novels published in the nineteenth century. This would have allowed the audience to discuss the story as it progressed and Chrétien to work “en symbiose avec eux et façonner ses contes en vue de donner la plus grande satisfaction possible à ce public privilégié avec lequel il était en rapport personnel et direct.” (45) If Nykrog’s idea is correct, not only would it support the notion that “Chrétien de Troyes est un romancier qui voulait être et rester discutable,” (46) but also that such discussion was intended to allow the audience, collectively as well as individually, to work out the meaning that lay below the surface of the tale. (Nykrog insists that Chrétien wanted his romances to be “[d]iscutable et non pas indéterminé.”)

26 Other points of scholarly controversy, such as textual questions, will not be argued here; instead, in textual matters I defer to the editorial wisdom of Rupert Pickens in his edition of the romance for the Garland Library of Medieval Literature, which is the text to which I refer throughout.

28

two ways of life: the charitable life exemplified by Philip of Flanders

and the life of vainne gloire epitomized by Alexander the Great. In

Chapter 3, we shall examine the ways in which Perceval’s interest in

chivalry, although in its first moment prompted by an inchoate

religious impulse, quickly leads him away from Charity toward that

vainne gloire which is the fause hypocrisie of courtly chivalry. Chapter

4 will trace how the pursuit of chivalry not only distracts Perceval

from memoria Dei but also from memoria sui, causing him to forget

his own identity, along with its attendant responsibilities and

consequences. In Chapter 5, we will examine how the final episode of

the Perceval narrative, in which he meets a holy hermit who is in fact

his own uncle, reconciles the ruptures caused by Perceval’s pursuit of

worldly chivalry and reminds the reader of key themes that might

otherwise have been overlooked. Then, with these key themes in

mind, in Chapter 6 we shall reconsider the events at Grail Castle,

which has seemed to Perceval (if not to his hermit uncle), and to most

readers, to be the key to understanding his failure to achieve chivalric

perfection. I will demonstrate that a reader who reflects on the Grail

events, mindful of the key themes brought to light by the Hermit

episode, may find in this episode much that had earlier escaped him —

in fact, the events at Grail Castle can be properly understood only in

29

retrospect, by a reader mindful of what the Hermit reveals about who

(and what) is served by the grail.

In the end, I hope to demonstrate that Chrétien deliberately

created a reading dynamic that encourages the reader to revisit and

reflect on the true meaning of what he has read in the story of

Perceval, reaching a new understanding that will then color his

reading of the Gawain narrative, allowing him to reach an

understanding of the relationship between these two strands of

narrative and a sense of the meaning of the romance as a whole,

despite its unfinished state.27 Whatever lingering questions might

necessarily remain because of the poem’s fragmentary state should be

of minor consequence compared to the meaning Chrétien hoped the

thoughtful reader would be able derive from careful reflection upon

the substantial portion that he completed, an enigma which may shed

its veils before the eyes of one properly mindful of its subtleties.

27 My reading of the romance supports the critical consensus that, far from being a cobbled-together combination of Chrétien’s own Perceval story and a separate romance on Gauvain (written by Chrétien’s hand or that of another), The Story of the Grail can, and should, be read as a single masterly romance, unified in plan albeit unfinished in form.

Chapter 2 The Seed of Romance and the Reader’s Memory

Crestiens seme et fet semanceD’un romans que il ancomance,Et si le seme an si bon leuQu’il ne puet estre sanz grant preu … (7-10)28

rom the very first words of Li Contes del Graal, Chrétien

provides clues that this romance will be a departure from his

usual practice and that only a certain kind of reader will grasp his

true intention. Barbara Sargent-Baur recognizes this when she

acknowledges that the prologue

F

… apprend à l'auditeur ou au lecteur avisé que le récit à venir sera bien plus qu'un divertissement de cour, plus qu'un conte d'aventures comme tant d'autres. Il annonce que cet ouvrage marquera en effet une nouvelle façon d'écrire chez un romancier pourtant expérimenté et dont la manière habituelle est bien connue. (La Destre et la senestre 2)

Not only will this romance involve a “new manner of writing,” but it

will also require, correspondingly, a new manner of reading as well.

One can only guess how many of his contemporary readers may have

succeeded in reaching the sort of reading Chrétien hoped to

stimulate, although the early Continuations and re-tellings of

28 From the prologue: “Chrétien sows and cast the seed of a romance that he is beginning and he sows it in such good ground that it cannot be without great profit.” All quotations from the original Old French will be taken from Rupert Pickens’ Garland Ediiton, unless otherwise noted; however, because the accompanying English translation by William Kibler in that edition are not literal enough for my purposes, all English translations will be my own.

31

Perceval’s story can at least suggest the ways in which early readers

understood the Conte. Modern readers, who must artificially

reconstruct the medieval reader’s experience of romance, have

frequently experienced difficulty in discerning Chrétien’s intention, as

evident in the lack of general critical consensus on this work. This is

particularly true with regard to those features of the Conte most hotly

debated by modern critics, which have sometimes been identified as

“flaws” when no other cogent explanation could be found. I suggest,

however, that the features modern readers find most troublesome

would also have irritated Chrétien’s contemporary audience, and that

this discomfort is a part of Chrétien’s design.29 That is, Chrétien would

have expected his reader to notice these “awkward” features as

something unexpected and not immediately explicable, requiring

reflection and rumination for one to grasp their true significance.30 In

29 Although I shall refer to the “reader,” in doing so I include the likelihood that many of Chrétien’s first audience would, in fact have been “listeners.” In the prologue of his earliest extant romance, Erec et Enide, Chrétien emphasizes the specifically literary character of his romance, which is crafted so much more carefully than the cobbled-together efforts of public bards, and he seems always to assume that his reader (or listener) will take a corresponding amount of care to derive a full appreciation of the romancier’s efforts. In general, then, questions of “orality” seem of relatively little importance in discussing the audience’s reception of this romance and I, therefore, consistently refer simply to the “reader,” rather than making cumbersome references to the “listener” as well.

30 Augustine implies a similar kind of rumination when he famously refers to memory as “the stomach of the mind” (Confessions X.xiv.21-22), used to store what has been taken in through experience, until it can be brought back up to be chewed over (ruminated) to extract the full nutritive value. As we shall see, Chrétien exploits the reader’s memory in this way, causing him to recall from his memory details perceived earlier but not yet fully digested.

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this way, much as a pearl owes its genesis to an irritating morsel of

grit, an astute reading of The Story of the Grail is produced only by

the reader’s grappling with the very features which seem most

irritatingly inexplicable. Chrétien, in this last of his romances, wished

to create a specific kind of reading dynamic and to achieve this end he

creatively manipulated not only the conventions of romance generally,

but also his own particular practices as romancier, so that even (or

perhaps especially) readers quite familiar with, and appreciative of,

his earlier romances would be forced to reappraise their own habits of

reading and interpretation.

Audience Collusion

As David Fein discusses in “Vos qui les biaus mos entendez:

Audience Collusion in Twelfth-Century French Narrative,” a common

feature of twelfth century narrative generally, and Chrétien’s

romances in particular, is the author’s intimation that his reader is a

person of refined sensibilities and sophistication, capable of

appreciating the careful conjointure produced by the poet’s efforts.

This does not simply flatter the reader’s sense of his own

sophistication, but also suggests that he must be alert and “guard

against the temptation of superficial understanding” (Fein 53).31 In his

31 Fein identifies frequent “patterns of collusion between the narrator and the listener” not only in romance but in chansons de gestes as well, examining authorial interventions which address the reader. As we shall see, Chrétien’s engagement of the reader is much less overt in The Story of the Grail, but serves much the same

33

earlier romances, Chrétien referred openly to his own care in

composition and the reader’s need for careful attention, and he often

guided that attention through the intervention of the narrator. In this

final romance, overt addresses to the reader are very few indeed, but

this is not to say that Chrétien makes no effort to engage or guide the

astute reader. Quite to the contrary, in Li Contes del Graal, he makes

it clear (for those who have “ears to hear”) that not only careful

attention and understanding, but a proper disposition as well, will be

paramount to arriving at a correct interpretation of the romance.

Prologue

The prologue of the Conte is one of the features of this romance

which has proved most irritating for some modern critics, who object

that its overt religiosity seems out of keeping not only with the tenor of

Chrétien’s earlier works but with the major portion of this romance, as

well. A number of critics have insisted that the thoroughly secular

interests manifested in Chrétien’s earlier romances could not have been

so completely abandoned in The Story of the Grail, and they assume,

therefore, that the prologue’s apparently religious tone should not be

taken too seriously. Tony Hunt, in particular, has argued that the many

Scriptural allusions contained in the prologue serve simply as a

purpose; on the other hand, the narrator’s comments are often (deliberately) misleading.

34

“backcloth” to Chrétien’s encomium of Philip of Flanders, and that the

prologue’s function, as in The Knight of the Cart, is simply to serve as a

captatio benevolentiae of his patron, without reference to the content or

themes of the romance which follows.32

To read the prologue in this way, however, is to overlook a great

deal. Most critics acknowledge that the prologue introduces an

important theme which will be reflected in the romance, namely the

contrast between the kind of chivalry motivated by vainglory (as

exemplified by Alexander in the prologue) and that motivated by

Christian Charity, whose exemplar is Philip.33 This important theme

explains the use of Scriptural allusions, all of which relate more or

less directly to the theme of Charity. I would suggest, however, that

there is still another meaning in the prologue, inextricably linked to

the theme of Charity vs. vainglory, which has largely escaped critical

notice. That is, it contains a covert warning to the reader that he must

have not only the proper interpretive skills but also the proper

disposition if he, like Philip, is to prove rich soil for the seed of

Chrétien’s romance.

32 D. D. R. Owen also explicitly denies any connection between the prologue and the sen of the romance (The Evolution of the Grail Legend 130).

33 For a thorough but concise discussion of critical attitudes toward the relationship of the prologue to the romance proper, see Barbara Sargent-Baur’s lengthy footnote in La Destre et la senestre (2-4).

35

From the opening line of the prologue of The Story of the Grail,

Chrétien hints that this romance will present a different kind of

challenge to the reader. Although these first 68 lines ostensibly serve

to praise the virtue of Philip of Flanders, the nobleman “who gave him

the book” from which Chrétien will elaborate The Story of the Grail,

the dense layering of Scriptural allusion contained in them suggests

something more than a simple encomium of a patron.34 Philip is

referred to in two separate capacities: first as a reader of Chrétien’s

romance and then as an exemplar of Christian virtue. Chrétien

skillfully and seamlessly weaves these two separate references into a

single encomium, using a tissue of Scriptural references. The first

capacity, that of reader, is referred to in the opening lines:

Qui petit seme petit quialt,Et qui auques recoillir vialt,An tel leu sa semance espandeQue fruit a cent dobles li rande ;Car an terre qui rien ne vautBone semance seche et faut.Crestiens seme et fet semanceD’un romans que il ancomance,Et si le seme an si bon leuQu’il ne puet estre sanz grant preu … (1-10)

(He who sows little, reaps little, but he who wishes to gather something scatters his seed in such a place that renders him fruit a hundredfold; for on ground that is worth nothing good seed dries up and fails. Chrétien sows and casts the seed of a romance that he

34 See Claude Lutrell’s “The Prologue of Crestien’s Li Contes del Graal” for a full treatment of all the Scriptural allusions contained in the prologue. Only the most obvious ones are examined here, but the more oblique references that Lutrell notes also serve to underline the theme of Charity.

36

begins, and sows it in such a good place that it cannot be without great profit …)

Before the name of Philip is mentioned, Chrétien has already

suggested two possible kinds of readers for this romance: those who

prove to be “worth nothing,” in whom the seed of Chrétien’s romance

will “dry up and fail,” and those who are such good soil that they

“cannot be without great profit.” Only in the following lines does

Chrétien identify the latter sort with Philip, and explicitly link this

“fruitful soil” with the virtue of Charity:

Qu’il le fet por le plus prodomeQui soit an l’empire de Rome:C’est li cuens Phelipes de Flandres,Qui mialz valt ne fist Alixandres … (11-14)

(For he does it for the most worthy man there is in the empire of Rome: this is Count Philip of Flanders, who is worth more than Alexander …)

The rest of the prologue goes on to explicate the charitable motives

which underlie all of Philip’s actions, yet the connection between

Charity and the reader is implicit from the very first lines, as is the

link between the poet’s intention and the reader’s reception.

The opening passage quoted above may seem to contain a single

metaphor of sowing and seed, yet the alert reader will recognize that

two separate Scriptural references are conflated here. The first (“He

who sows little, reaps little”) is taken from 2 Corinthians 9, in which

St. Paul exhorts the Corinthians in their almsgiving to show a

generosity motivated by Charity. The second allusion, which refers to

37

the ground in which the seed is sown, is taken from one of Jesus’

parables, recorded in each of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew 13, Mark

4, Luke 8). We should note that the first allusion focuses on the

romancier as the “sower,” while the second emphasizes the one who

“receives” what is sown, with the seed (which not only links the two

separate Scriptural passages but also the poet and his reader) being

identified here as the romance itself. In the parable of the sower and

the seed, the seed which falls on good ground bears fruit thirty-, sixty-,

or a hundredfold, while the seed (“bone semance”) which is cast on

inhospitable soil (“terre qui rien ne vaut”) fails to take root and dies

(“seche et faut”). In the Gospel accounts of this parable, we are told

that immediately after Jesus tells the parable many in the crowd of

listeners wander off, contented to take the story at face value, while

only his disciples, remaining with him, ask what it means. He explains

that the parable refers to the difference between those who, having

“ears to hear” (Matt. 13.9, Mark 4.9, Luke 8.8),35 hear the word of

God and understand it, and those who hear but do not understand.36

The latter category includes those who are “choked by the cares and

35 New Testament quotations in English are taken from the Confraternity Version of the Challoner-Rheims translation.

36 Note that the explanation comes after the crowd of listeners has dispersed, leaving only those close followers of Jesus who want to understand what the parable means. The others, who left without asking the meaning, were presumably satisfied with a pleasant, but apparently meaningless, story. Thus, implicitly, Chrétien identifies the readers who seek the deeper meaning of his romance with the disciples of Christ who inquired into the meaning of the parable.

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riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not ripen” (Luke

8.14), while the “good ground” refers to those who, “with a right and

good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bear fruit in

patience” (Luke 8.15). This “fruit,” as the subsequent passage makes

clear, is Charity. Thus, these first ten lines refer twice to Charity: the

Charity of the sower, or Chrétien, and that of the reader “with a right

mind and heart” who provides good soil for the romance that Chrétien

sows.

In case the reader should have “heard and not understood, seen

and not perceived,” Chrétien drives the point home in his extended

comparison of Philip of Flanders and the legendary Alexander of

Macedonia, which is, on this level, an extension of the comparison

between the reader who proves a “bon leu” for Chrétien’s seed and

the reader who “rien ne vaut.” Drawing from Matthew’s gospel,

Chrétien characterizes Philip as the humble almsgiver who does not

let his left hand know what his right hand does (Matt. 6.3), while

Alexander’s legendary lavishness is associated with that of the

hypocrites who give openly “in order that they may be honored by

men” (Matt. 6.2). Continuing to comment on this distinction, Chrétien

quotes from Augustine’s interpretation of this passage, which

identifies the right hand with Charity (Philip) and the left hand with

39

vainglory (Alexander).37 He goes on to quote 1 John 4.13, which states

that he who lacks Charity lacks God.38 Thus, Charity, the fruit borne

by those who prove to be good soil for the word of God, is the

essential element which characterizes Philip’s virtuous character,

making him the exemplary prodome. Indeed, the connection between

these two levels — Philip as exemplary reader and as exemplary

benefactor — is underlined by the sustained contrast between

“worthy” and “worthless”: Philip is both “such a good place [for the

seed] that he cannot be without great profit (gran preu)” and “a most

worthy man (le plus prodome)” who “has more worth (mialz vaut)”

than Alexander, whose lack of Charity makes him, by implication, that

worthless soil upon which good seed shrivels and dies. In this way,

Chrétien identifies true nobility (being a prodome) with Charity.

The prologue, then, functions on several levels, not all of which

will be apparent to every reader. At its most superficial, it is an

encomium of Chrétien’s generous and virtuous patron, Philip of

37 This interpretation, which Chrétien refers to as the traditional one (39: “selonc l’estoire,” of “so the story goes”), is found in Augustine’s sermon 149, cap. xiv and in Chrétien’s own century was reiterated by Alanus de Insulis (Liber in distinctionibus dictionum theologicalium).

38 This reference is one of Chrétien’s famous “mistakes” often noted by critics: although the verse quotes the First Epistle of John, Chrétien attributes it to Paul (“Sainz Pos”). It is quite likely that this “mistake” was deliberate on Chrétien’s part. Rupert Pickens, in “Le Conte du Graal (Perceval),” suggests that Chrétien makes this obvious mistake as part of a general scheme to show the untrustworthiness of the narrator, whose interpretation of the events he recounts will prove misleading (237). Another plausible explanation for this apparent error is found in Gouttebroze’s “Sainz Pos lo dit, et je le lui …”

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Flanders. Those who would argue that this is the only level on which it

functions would seem to be rocky ground for the seed of Chrétien’s

romance, hardening their hearts so that they hear and do not

understand, see but do not perceive that there is more going on than

is evident on the surface. A more attentive and receptive reader may

notice that the dichotomy between the charitable prodome Philip and

the vainglorious and worldly Alexander introduces a central theme

that will be elaborated in the story to follow. Particularly astute

readers, however, will perceive that the prologue covertly suggests

two kinds of readers: those who, like Philip, will prove good soil for

the seed of Chrétien’s romance, and will hear and understand, and

others who may “hear and not understand, see and not perceive.”

What distinguishes these two classes of reader is, by implication, the

same disposition that distinguishes Philip from Alexander: Charity.

Readers who are preoccupied with worldly honor and deceitful riches

may read the romance as courtly entertainment, but they will miss its

true meaning. On the other hand, readers who, like Philip, are

grounded in Charity may perceive and understand the true

significance of what they read in Chrétien’s romance, “the best story

that has been told in a royal court” (63-5: “le meillor conte / … / qui

soit contez an cort real”). Thus, allusively, Chrétien suggests that in

this romance audience collusion will require something more than

41

mere literary sophistication and that the story which follows is not the

sort of romance to which his readers have become accustomed, but

something new: a parable which some may receive unprofitably and

accept at face value, but from which the astute and properly disposed

reader may draw the true meaning, reaping a rich harvest.39

Point of View

Chrétien knows, however, that a seed must be buried before it

can sprout. Therefore, he does not openly engage the reader as he

had done in earlier romances. Not only are direct addresses to the

reader and narrator’s interventions almost completely absent, but so

are any representations of the protagonist’s internal state of mind.40

Here we find no allegorical representations of Perceval’s internal

conflicts, such as appeared in the depiction of Yvain’s lovesickness.

39 Antonio Saccone, in “La Parola di Dio e la parola di Chretien nel Conte du Graal: La vera storia di Perceval,” uses this idea as the starting premise of his examination of the two kinds of chivalry typified by Perceval and Gauvain:

‘Parabola è racconto che in fatti ordinari nasconde insegnamenti di realtà superiori.’ Quest’insegnamento non è immediatamente comprensibile, ma il valore di racconto della parabola rimane inalterato, così come si può gustare il romanzo come ‘vain et plaisant’ senza preoccuparsi del ‘san’ che l’autore cela nella storia. [A parable is a story that conceals in ordinary occurrences instruction about a higher reality. This instruction is not immediately comprehensible, yet the value of the parable’s story remains unaltered, just as one can enjoy the romance as being vain et plaisant without worrying about the san that the author hides within the narrative.] (104)

40 The only two notable exceptions occur during the grail procession, when the narrator not only draws attention (more than once) to Perceval’s reticence in asking about the marvels he is seeing and to his cause for doing so, but also judges his silence to be wrong; and again in the “blood on the snow” scene, when the narrator advises us of Perceval’s reverie. As we shall see, however, the narrator is often misleading.

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The reader, it would seem, is left to his own devices to judge the

motives and manners of the nameless young hero. Indeed, the (at

first) anonymous protagonist seems to have been designed to put the

reader off: unlike the heroes of Chrétien’s earlier romances, he is not

(at least, at first) an accomplished and courtly knight of Arthur’s

court, the sort of figure who would immediately appeal to and

resonate with Chrétien’s readers at court. He is, rather, a comically

bumptious bumpkin who evokes laughter rather than admiration. Only

as the young Welshman becomes more polished and adept, a true

courtly knight, does the reader move from supercilious amusement to

admiring approval of Perceval.

While Perceval’s transformation is frequently remarked by

critics (often with unqualified approval), the gradual shift in the

reader’s sympathies is seldom noted, perhaps because it is so subtly

engineered by Chrétien. This manipulation can be discerned from the

very first scene, in the contrast between the unnamed young rustic’s

comical ignorance and the party of knights’ bemused frustration at

that ignorance. The irony created in this scene (what Peter Haidu

calls “aesthetic distance”) moves the reader to align his own point of

view with that of the knights, who find the ignorant youth, like

Welshmen generally, “stupider than beasts in the field (244: “plus fol

que bestes an pasture”). That aesthetic distance gradually contracts,

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however, as Perceval becomes less like an ignorant beast and more

like an accomplished knight. The strategic purpose of this carefully

manipulated shift in point of view is manifold. First, Perceval’s early

comical rudeness distracts the reader from the theme of Charity just

announced in the prologue. That seed, so recently sown, is quickly

buried as we judge the unnamed youth to be a laughable fool, not a

moral agent, and even his callous and egoistical treatment of his

mother is rendered comically innocuous by his absurd fervor to

pursue the glittering trappings of chivalry. In this way, Perceval’s

uncharitable behavior becomes associated with his naïve foolishness

and, as his later behavior becomes more courtly and socially

conventional (i.e., less “foolish”), his outward polish is accepted as a

surrogate for an inward moral growth more apparent than real. A

further purpose of the reader’s gradual identification with Perceval is

to produce a shock when, in the hermit episode, one learns that

Perceval has undergone a long process of spiritual desolation which

has remained entirely unapparent to the reader. At this moment, the

reader is suddenly removed to as great an “aesthetic distance” from

Perceval as he was in the opening scene — but in the opposite

direction, as it were, leaving the reader befuddled and wondering

what has happened. Chrétien designs this shock (which will occur to

every reader who has, until this point, happily noted Perceval’s

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“progress” and “growth”) to produce two effects: first, to cause the

reader to search his memory for any clues to the cause of Perceval’s

(apparently) sudden crisis of conscience — a search which will

necessitate, in fact, a review of the entire romance up to this point —

and then, when the cause is recognized, to acknowledge and repent

his own fault as reader. In other words, the reader experiences an

increasing degree of identification with Perceval so that both may

come to grips with their faults, and both are brought to a similar

moment of penitence, the one repenting his fault as a reader while the

other repents his fault as a man.

A variety of techniques is used to effect this shift in the reader’s

point of view. These will be examined in some detail in the course of

the following chapters, but it may be helpful, at this point, to look

briefly at a single example. For this purpose, let us consider two

similar passages in which Perceval is depicted approaching a strange

castle. The first is Perceval’s approach to Gornemant’s castle (1304-

30) and the second is his approach to the home of the fisherman who

invites him to stay the night (3001-23). In both, the scene is narrated

from the perspective of Perceval, which is similarly naïve in both, but

the reader’s perception of the two scenes is quite different because

his perception of Perceval has changed. In the first, the untrained

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youth is riding without direction and comes unexpectedly upon a

castle when:

Torna li vaslez a senestre Et vit les torz del chastel nestre, Qu’avis li fut qu’eles nessoient Et que fors [de la roche] issoient. (1303-08)

(The youth turned to his left and saw the castle towers being born, for it seemed to him that they were being born and issuing forth from the [rock].)

As Barbara Sargent-Baur points out in “‘Avis li fu’,” Perceval’s visual

perception of the castle is described in such a way that the reader is

“simultaneously informed of what he sees and how he interprets it”

(136). As Perceval rides nearer the cliff on which the castle is situated

and turns, the tops of the towers gradually come into view and (to

Perceval) seem to “be born” from the rock.41 The other parts of the

castle are then described in the order in which they come into

Perceval’s view as he approaches and as they claim his attention: the

barbican, the walls with their turrets, the castle (which, we are told,

seemed to him well-situated and comfortable), the entrance tower,

and finally the bridge connecting the castle to Perceval’s side of the

river. Both Chrétien’s emphasis that this is Perceval’s interpretation

41 In Roach’s edition, which adheres to the T manuscript, the last line reads “Et que fors de la roche issoient” (1328: “and that they issued forth from the rock”, the reading upon which Sargent-Baur bases some of her remarks). Guiot’s copy, upon which Pickens bases his edition, repeats “chastel” here. The T manuscript provides a more striking illustration of Perceval’s literal perspective in saying that the towers seemed to spring up from the rock of the cliff as Perceval turned his head. This point is somewhat blunted in the Guiot text saying that they spring up from the castle, which would not yet be visible to him.

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of what he is seeing (“avis li fu”) and his repetition of the term “born”

serve to emphasize the rather absurd naïveté of this perception. The

fact that Perceval is, at this point, still quite untutored and untested

as a knight — he is, in fact, just an ignorant bumpkin playing dress-up

— further underlines the discrepancy between how the scene appears

to Perceval and how it would be understood by a more worldly and

well-traveled person (such as the reader).

The account of Perceval’s approach to the fisherman’s home is

given in similar terms. The fisherman has just told him that when he

reaches the top of the hill, he will see a house in the valley before him,

near a river and some woods. Chrétien describes his approach:

Maintenant cil s’an va amontTant que il vint an son le mont,Et quant il fu an son le pui,Si garda mout loin devant lui,Et ne vit rien fors ciel et terre ………………………………Lors vit devant lui an un valLe chief d’une tor qui parut.L’an ne trovast jus qu’a BarutSi bele ne si bien asise:Quarree fu, de roche bise,S’avoit dues torneles antor;La sale fu devant la tor,Les loiges devant la sale. (3002-5, 3016-23)

(Now he went off uphill until he came to the top of the hill; and when he was on the summit he looked very far ahead of him and saw nothing but sky and earth. … Then he saw before him in a valley the top of a tower that appeared. One would not find from there to Beirut another so fine or so well-situated: It was square, of dark grey rock, and it had two turrets on either side. The hall was in front of the keep, and the galleries in front of the hall.)

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Again, Chrétien uses repetition for emphasis (“amont,” “mont”), but to

somewhat different purpose here, for his intention is not to draw

attention to Perceval’s rather self-centered perspective. Here he

emphasizes that Perceval is climbing and arrives at the top of a hill;

yet when he arrives at the top Perceval does not immediately look into

the valley. Instead he looks before him and sees “nothing but sky and

earth.” In other words, he gazes toward the horizon and finds no sign

of a house there. Only when his gaze drifts down toward the valley

below does the top of a tower “appear.” As his gaze continues

downward, Perceval notices the other features of the castle there: the

tower is square and built of dark stone, with two dark turrets. In front

of it is a hall, and in front of that, galleries. These features are

described in the order in which they would come into view as his gaze

drops from the horizon to the valley floor, yet Chrétien makes no overt

reference to Perceval’s literal perspective. He does, however, remark

upon the beauty and situation of the edifice, which echoes the

description of Gornemant’s castle as being “well-situated and well-

furnished within” (1320-21). This is a clue that we are seeing from

Perceval’s point of view, for he is interested in the castle chiefly as a

lodging for the night.

Two important differences between this scene and the previous

one affect the reader’s perception of the castle. The first difference is

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that, in the interval between the two episodes, the aesthetic distance

between reader and protagonist has been considerably narrowed.

Perceval is no longer viewed as a gawky outsider unused to the ways

of sophisticated folk, for at Gornemant’s castle he was taught proper

use of the weapons of a knight and he demonstrated a natural talent

in this art; he also gave up the last vestiges of his rustic origin in

relinquishing the rough clothes his mother made (as well as his

reliance upon her advice) and donned the fine garments of a courtly

knight, at which time Gornemant formally dubbed him. What is more,

since that time he has demonstrated his aptitude for deeds of prowess

and of love by rescuing Blancheflor and winning her druerie. Perceval

has become, by all conventional standards, an accomplished and

courtly knight, worthy of praise and socially acceptable. He has

apparently achieved the goal of becoming like the knights he met in a

Welsh wood, and his comically rustic aspect, which had created

aesthetic distance between him and the reader, has been erased.

The second significant difference between these two episodes

that affects the way one reads this scene lies in the lines omitted in

the passage quoted above, between the moment Perceval scans the

horizon and the moment he drops his gaze to the valley below. When

he first reaches the top of the hill and gazes before him, Perceval

bursts out in a temper tantrum, cursing the fisherman for having lied

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to him when he said he would find a house “up there.” Then, when the

young knight looks down and sees a fine castle, his curses turn to

praise and he “no longer called him treacherous … since he had found

a place to stay” (3028-30: “ne l’apele mais tricheor / … / Des que il

trove ou herbergier“). The reader, having come to identify with

Perceval’s point of view, may fail to recognize the absurdity of his

tantrum (the fisherman clearly told him that the castle lay in the

valley, not on the hilltop) and may be inclined to share Perceval’s

impression that the castle’s tower suddenly “appears” where nothing

had been before.42 This impression has led many modern readers

(including many literary critics) to assume that the castle is a faerie

place that can wink in and out of existence,43 but the text itself does

not support this interpretation — or rather, it supports it only if we

accept Perceval’s perception as astute. If we do, perhaps we should

also believe that the towers of Gornemant’s castle literally sprang up

out of the rock before Perceval’s very eyes.

A number of narrative techniques work to bring about this shift

in the reader’s point of view. While in earlier romances Chrétien

42 The narrator does not tell us directly that Perceval sees the castle when he reorients his gaze from the horizon to the valley — this is left to the careful reader to deduce, judging from cues in the narration.

43 Maurice Delbouille, in “Réalité du château du Roi-Pêcheur dans le Conte del graal,” suggests that the modern critics’ assumption that the castle is magical is heavily influenced by the celticizing tendencies of earlier interpreters who asserted that Chrétien adopted the motif of the faerie castle of the Celtic Other-World.

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“does not wish us to forget that it is he, the author, who narrates or

describes” and who wishes to “keep us aware that we are involved in

the story told by a ‘present,’ i.e., an eager and gently intrusive

narrator” (Dembowski 104), here he achieves his effect by

withdrawing, rather than intruding, the presence of the narrator.

Whereas in the approach to Gornemant’s castle a single comment by

the narrator (“avis li fu”) served to distance the reader from

Perceval’s perception, in the approach to the Fisherman’s castle the

narrator’s commentary is absent, replaced by Perceval’s own

comments in his ranting against the “lying, deceitful” fisherman.

Similarly, while the earlier passage repeats the term nestre (to be

born) to emphasize the absurdity of Perceval’s perception, in the later

passage emphasis is given to the fact of Perceval’s movement upward

(he goes “amont,” he arrives “an son la mont,” he is “an son le pui”),

so that the reader, accompanying him up the hill, becomes wedded to

Perceval’s point of view and therefore is similarly perplexed not to

find a lodging when he arrives on the hilltop. In this way, Chrétien

employs a number of narrative techniques, along with his

management of “aesthetic distance,” to manipulate the reader’s point

of view.

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Form and Structure

It is quite possible that Chrétien’s contemporaries would have

been more attuned to the similarities and subtle differences between

these two episodes than a modern reader is, simply because the

twelfth-century reader would have been more thoroughly accustomed

to the subtle uses of the episodic form. Although some attention has

been given to this question since Morton Bloomfield in 1971 noted the

lack of “any sustained analysis of the nature of episodes in narration”

(“Episodic Motivation and Marvels in Epic and Romance” 99), modern

Chrétien scholars have, for the most part, overlooked this important

aspect of Chrétien’s romance in their interpretations of the work. Yet,

simply because it constituted the customary form of fictional narrative

during this period, the episodic form begs serious attention. For

modern readers, however, the episodic form may seem

embarrassingly crude. In “The Episode as Semiotic Module,” Peter

Haidu notes that the term “episodic” often carries a pejorative

connotation and may suggest a careless form of construction (655).

This prejudice may have originated in Aristotle’s remarks on

disjointed plots in tragedy in his Poetics,44 and certainly the modern

readers’ unspoken (and often unconscious) Aristotelian expectation

44 Aristotle, analyzing the tragedies of his day, condemned episodic plots as the worst kind. He defined “episodic” as “a plot in which the succession of incidents is neither likely nor necessary” (420).

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that narrative should have a beginning, middle, and end unified in a

single action predisposes us to assume that episodes within this kind

of narrative have no logical or necessary connection to each other.

This assumption is strengthened by the fact that tales of errant

knights and their adventures are customarily episodic in form, for the

very term “adventure” indicates that things happen more or less by

accident, rather than by design. For this reason, the term “episodic”

may often suggest “unstructured” if not “haphazard,” yet this is

hardly the case in Chrétien’s romances, particularly in the Conte del

Graal. I suggest, rather, that the modern reader must have a basic

understanding of the way the episodic form structures and reveals

meaning if he is to gain a full appreciation of this romance.

Analogous episodes

The most prominent feature of the episodic form — other than

its apparent lack of a coherent plot-line — is the frequent repetition of

similar episodes. Much of the meaning produced by this duplication

can be discerned only if we recognize that the relationship between

similar episodes is generally not so much necessarily logical or

sequential but analogous. In The Rise of Romance, Eugène Vinaver

defines “analogous” scenes as those that are “parallel in content”

(104), and he identifies this as the dominant form of romance. While

Charles Ryding, in Structure in Medieval Narrative, contends that this

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use of similar scenes (what he refers to as “duplication of motif”) is

generally not used to create structure, Vinaver suggests that the

relative position of analogous episodes within the tale may be

significant, noting that “the juxtaposition of analogous incidents can

be used as a means of bringing to light something which would

otherwise have remained unknown or unexplained” (105). In “Spatial

Form,” however, Norris Lacy notes that similar episodes often are not

juxtaposed, but may be widely separated in the narrative. In such

cases, the use of analogous episodes becomes “a specialized form of

fore-shadowing in which earlier, frequently incidental passages

acquire structural significance only by their physical or thematic

similarity to later ones” (168). When a later event repeats the form of

an earlier one, the relationship between the two becomes apparent, so

that “while an event elucidates its antecedents … the antecedents also

prepare the reader for the event. The first of these processes is

primarily technical; the second is psychological” (164). The unity of

the episodic form, then, is created by this web of analogous

relationships between otherwise unconnected incidents.45

The two episodes already mentioned, Perceval’s visits to

Gornemant’s and the Fisher King’s castles, can serve as an illustration

45 Antoinette Saly, in “La Récurrence des motifs en symétrie inverse et la structure du Perceval de Chrétien de Troyes,” goes much further in discerning a complex pattern created by analogous episodes, in which she finds the formal unity of the romance as a whole.

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of this technique. What Lacy calls the “physical similarity” of the two

can readily be recognized: in both, Perceval approaches a castle

unknown to him and receives hospitality from the castle’s lord, who

gives him a meal and a bed for the night. Not only do similarities

between these episodes mark them as two in a long series of episodes

in which we see how Perceval approaches a strange abode and how

he responds to the hospitality offered there,46 but, as we have already

seen, differences in the details of otherwise similar episodes can

subtly advance our understanding of the action and character

development. We have already noted how both the similarities and

differences between the Gornemant episode and the Grail Castle

episode can affect the reader’s perception of Perceval and his actions.

Although the repetition of similar episodes might, in the hands of a

lesser romancier than Chrétien, become monotonous, suggesting

“paucity of imagination” on the part of the poet (Ryding 36), in the

Conte del Graal it will produce a rich and suggestive variety of

emphases.

Indeed, the degree of enjoyment that can be derived from the

Conte depends largely upon the reader’s recognition and

interpretation of both the similarities and the differences that

46 This series, for instance, includes such disparate scenes as Perceval’s approach to the colorful tent, his arrival at Carduel, and his visit to the hermit’s chapel.

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distinguish structurally similar episodes. Lacy notes that narrative

structured by the use of analogous episodes places special demands

upon the memory and attention of the reader, for while

intelligent reading of any kind of work requires constant reference backward and — during second readings — forward, … the romance offers a particular problem, because neither sequence nor causality is necessarily of any use. (“Spatial Form” 160)

In episodic romance, the reader “must keep the entire work in mind

and, by a constantly retrogressive method, relate each fragment to its

antecedent by other than sequential or chronological means” (168).

This retrogressive method of reading romance is not only thoroughly

exploited by Chrétien in The Story of the Grail but is a key element in

arriving at an appropriate reading.

It is important to understand that the episodic form creates an

“organic,” albeit non-linear, structure, because this understanding

will help the reader avoid the temptation to resort unnecessarily to

extrinsic systems of meaning in his interpretation. When the narrative

form itself, apparently lacking connections between episodes, does

not communicate meaningful relationships among the discrete

portions of a romance, one may be tempted to seek meaning in some

locus other than the narrative, resorting to the symbolism of medieval

bestiaries, Scriptural exegesis, allegories, or some other symbolic

system that would have been familiar to medieval readers and writers.

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This approach, however, has sometimes resulted in analyses that give

the reader

… the uncomfortable feeling that some of the more recent scholars, intent on discovering design where none has been perceived before, have occasionally been led to implausible hypotheses of extraordinary refinement and complexity. (Ryding 27)

This has often been true in the interpretation of Chrétien’s Conte del

Graal. Yet both Vinaver’s and Lacy’s analyses of the episodic form

acknowledge that the use of analogy, unlike the use of symbolism,

allows the nexus of meaning to be contained within the romance itself,

and obviates the need for an external key to unlock its symbolism.

This is particularly important in interpreting a work such as the Conte

del Graal, whose unfinished state leaves so much obscure, ambiguous,

and open-ended, since there can be no guarantee that any extrinsic

symbolic system could be consistently applied to the work as a whole.

Although a proper understanding of the episodic form may make

recourse to extrinsic symbolic systems unnecessary, Vinaver relates

the literary use of analogous scenes to the religious understanding of

the “symbolic method of persuasion”:

The symbol was the means by which [transcendent realities] could be approached; being homogeneous with them, it supplied a meaningful analogy. Secular prose and poetry followed the same pattern of elucidation, except that for the theological anagoge, or the upward reference to things, it substituted a horizontal reference from one theme to another. (105)

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This explanation, however, seems somewhat awkward and misleading.

Analogous episodes do not “symbolize” one another. Norris Lacy’s

reference to the role of “fore-shadowing” comes closer to explaining

why “the medieval reader would more likely see … a definite and

essential relationship between similar episodes” (168). Compare

Lacy’s definition quoted above (i.e., that an “event elucidates its

antecedents [while] the antecedents also prepare the reader for the

event”) with Erich Auerbach’s definition of figural interpretation:

“Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events

or persons, the first of which signifies not only itself but also the

second, while the second encompasses or fulfills the first” (“Figura”

53). Clearly, Lacy and Auerbach are describing similar phenomena,

although Lacy avoids using the term “figural” (or its synonym

“typological”) to refer to the relationship between analogous episodes.

47 Auerbach’s definition of figural interpretation derives from the

typological reading of Scripture, which was a predominant form of

exegesis throughout the Middle Ages.48 Perhaps Lacy hesitated to

47 The terms “figural” and “typological” are often used interchangeably when discussing this particular method of seeing Old Testament events as “figures” of Christ and the salvation wrought by him. The term “figural” has the prestige of ancient usage, while the more modern term, “typological,” is the one most often used in modern critical discussions of how this manner of reading became transferred into non-Scriptural works.

48 As Auerbach notes, Augustine was an important influence on the spread of this practice: “Augustine explicitly adopted the figural interpretation of the Old Testament and emphatically recommended its use in sermons and missions (e.g. De catechizandis rudibus, III, T), and developed on the method" (38).

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make an explicit connection between “analogous” episodes and the

figural or typological method (preferring instead to concur with

Vinaver’s rather strained explanation that the use of analogy grew out

of the symbolic medieval imagination) because he feared being

misconstrued: discussions of the use of typology in secular literature

usually refer to a parallels between a literary character or event and

an historical (i.e., Scriptural) one, while episodic romance creates a

typological structure which creates relationships between analogous

events within the same work, much as Scriptural typology identifies

analogies between different events in the Bible.49 In Literary Uses of

Typology from the Late Middle Ages to the Present, D. H. Green

refers to this as “extra-biblical typology,” which he indicates was

“employed by clerical authors [in which] both type and antitype are

still subservient to a Christian interpretation, but are taken from a

non-scriptural source” (104).

In fact, the rise of episodic narrative with its use of analogous

episodes may owe its genesis to the way the figural interpretation of

Scripture shaped how medieval Christians understood history and, by

extension, narrative generally. As Auerbach notes, “The figural

interpretation, or to put it more completely, the figural view of history

was widespread and deeply influential up to the Middle Ages, and

49 In the medieval Christian view, the Old and New Testaments were regarded as a single, continuous record of Divine Revelation and human history.

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beyond” (60). And, as he remarks later in the same essay, “The

analogism that reaches into every sphere of medieval thought is

closely bound up with the figural structure” (61-62). It seems that the

writers of episodic romance, among whom Chrétien was a pioneer,

being accustomed to viewing history in a figural or typological

manner, transferred that historical view to their fictional narratives.

In this way, as Earl Miner says in his preface to Literary Uses of

Typology, “like theological exegesis itself, literary practice … adapts

the strict sense to freer ends. The nature of the adaptation involves a

response by a writer to the literary as well as religious understanding

possible to a given age” (Introduction x). The result is an exegetical

method which refers only to personages and events within the

fictional work, without necessary reference to events contained in

Scripture.

Interlacement

While it should be understood that the typological reading of

romance does not refer to the content of Christian Scripture, there is one

important way in which the use of analogous episodes in Chrétien’s final

romance hews closely to the Scriptural method. Just as in Scripture there

is a central event (the anti-type) which reveals the meaning of analogous

events which prefigure and follow it (the types), in the Conte del Graal

there is a central episode which elucidates all earlier analogous episodes

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as well as those that follow. In both cases, the true significance of all the

types remains obscure unless understood in the light of the antitype. In

Scripture, the incarnation of Christ and his saving act constitute the

intersection of the eternal and the temporal which illuminates all of

salvation history. Similarly, in The Story of the Grail a single episode

elucidates the significance of all the rest of the romance, not only the

Perceval but the Gauvain narrative as well. This single episode is the

structural and thematic center of the work as a whole.

For decades, critics have searched for clues to the overall plan

Chrétien had for this unfinished romance. A number have asserted

that the two strands of narrative were never intended to form a

unified romance, but were fragments of two separate tales, stitched

together somewhat ineptly by an editor after Chrétien’s death.50 The

aspects of the work which seem to validate this view include the

awkward placement of the hermit episode, which interrupts the

Gauvain narrative, the time discrepancy (five years’ difference)

between the hermit episode narrative and the Gauvain story, and the

lack of clear connection between the two narrative strands.51 Yet the

50 Such interpretations include those put forth by Martín de Riquer(“Perceval y Gauvain en Li Contes del Graal”), Stefan Hofer (“La Structure du Conte del Graal examinee a la lumiere de l'oeuvre de Chretien de Troyes”), D. D. R. Owen(“From Grail to Holy Grail”), and Leo Pollmann (Chrétien de Troyes und der Conte del Graal).

51 Some critics also argue that the structure of the Conte as we have it is too different from the customary structure of Chrétien’s earlier romances, but such an argument can hardly be considered compelling, since Chrétien makes it clear from

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feature which these critics find most problematic is the very episode

which I will argue is absolutely crucial to understanding the romance,

namely, the hermit episode. 52

The hermit episode serves several important functions: not only

is it the pivot that turns the reader back upon his own reading of the

romance, to reassess that reading in the light of Charity, but it is also

the hinge that joins the two narrative strands into a unified whole.

Antoinette Saly’s study, “La Récurrence des motifs en symétrie inverse

et la structure du Perceval de Chrétien de Troyes,” provides a

compelling argument for the unity of the romance and the importance

of the Gauvain narrative. Beginning with a comparison of two episodes

that she describes as “pietàs” — Perceval’s meeting with his grieving

cousin as she holds the body of her decapitated lover at the foot of an

oak and Gauvain’s encounter with a maiden cradling the body of a

grievously wounded knight under an oak — she demonstrates how

Chrétien in the later episode seeks to remind the reader of the similar

earlier episode, and to “déclencher le mécanisme de la mémoire par la

répétition d’un mot propre [i.e., “chesne,” oak] à faire resurgir la

première vision” (24). From her analysis of these two scenes, she goes

the very first lines that he is doing something rather different in the Conte.

52 D. D. R. Owen (“From Grail to Holy Grail”) argues that the hermit episode is a late interpolation, written by an editor to bridge the two separate Perceval and Gauvain romances.

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on to demonstrate that they each form part of a series of analogous

episodes, in the Perceval and Gauvain narratives respectively, which

suggests a carefully planned structure that intimately links the two

narrative strands. Although her analysis is too complex and detailed to

recapitulate here (I will refer to some aspects of it in a later chapter), it

is worth noting several salient points: first, while, as Saly

acknowledges, the two narratives “ne se situent pas sur le même plan”

(32), they have a single link which ties them together: “L’ermitage,

dont le héros est Perceval, apparaît comme un épisode pivot qui

commande la distribution des aventures de Gauvain … et dispose en

chiasme les deux itinéraires” (29). This episode, which in the Gauvain

narrative occupies a position corresponding to that of the Grail castle

episode in the Perceval narrative, “occupe une place d’ordre

architectonique en rapport étroit avec le sen chrétien du roman” (29).

Second, she identifies the relationship between the two narratives as

being essentially typological — i.e., the Gauvain adventures,

“[chargées] d’une signification relative à autre chose qu’elles mêmes,”

seem to have importance only to the extent that they mirror those of

the Perceval story and prefigure Perceval’s eventual success in his own

quest. Finally she notes that, in this understanding of the romance’s

overall structure, a number of details which would otherwise seem

strange and inexplicable can be seen as integral parts of Chrétien’s

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overall design and, more importantly,

… la signification doit en être cherchée a l’intérieure du roman, qui a ceci de particulier qu’il ne saurait jamais s’expliquer que par référence à lui-même. La solution des problèmes qu’il pose est toujours interne. (40)

Assessment and Reassessment

All of the techniques discussed thus far are crucial to the

correct assessment of the hermit episode, the linchpin of the entire

romance. In these scenes, the seeds carefully sown in the reader’s

memory finally begin to sprout and bear fruit. Up to this point,

Chrétien, by his careful manipulation of point of view, has lulled the

reader into believing he is enjoying a conventional tale of chivalry and

adventure — a double pleasure, in fact, since Perceval and Gauvain

have set off from Arthur’s court on their twin quests to amend past

faults and restore personal honor. For some 3300 lines, the reader is

pleasantly distracted from Perceval’s story as he follows the

adventures of Gauvain. When the narrator turns once more to

consider Perceval’s progress on his own quest, the shift is deliberately

abrupt and disconcerting: “Perceval, the story relates, had so lost his

memory that he no longer remembered God” (6183-85: “Percevax, ce

conte l’estoire, / A si perdue la memoire / Que de Deu ne li sovient

mais”). Much as a sudden detour awakens the expressway commuter

from his driving daze, these lines jolt the reader from his pleasant

reverie of chivalrous adventures. Not only do they begin an abrupt

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detour away from the account of Gauvain’s adventures, back onto the

path of Perceval’s quest, but that path seems unfamiliar after the long

excursion into the Gauvain narrative. The reader’s sense of dislocation

is not only spatial, but temporal as well:

Cinc folz passa avrix et mais, Ce sont cinc anz trestuit antier, Einz que il antrast an mostier Ne Deu ne sa croiz n’anora.Tot ensi cinc anz demora … (6186-90)

(Five times April and May passed — that was five full years without his entering a church or adoring God or His Cross. Five years he tarried thus …)

The triple emphasis on the five years underscores the dislocation from

the narration of Gauvain’s adventures, which to this point have

spanned fewer than five days. This emphasis argues against any

suggestion that the temporal discrepancy between the Gauvain

interrupted narrative and the present narration is an awkward

oversight by the author (or a later editor). Rather, Chrétien has quite

daringly chosen to employ a technique which is familiar to modern

readers and movie-goers, but which must have been startling to

Chrétien’s early audience — the “flash forward,” combined with a

brisk cut-away. With very little warning, Chrétien has whisked the

reader five years into the future and away from Gauvain, back to

Perceval. The technique is doubly disorienting because, after this

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brief episode, the reader will shortly be sent back five years and

dumped back into the Gauvain story.

In addition to this spatial and temporal disruption, there is

also a sharp change in tone. The Perceval to whom the reader is re-

introduced so abruptly hardly seems the same knight who was

recently the darling of Arthur’s court nor, indeed, the victorious

champion with an unblemished five-year career attested to by the

narrator. Rather, this Perceval, riding through a deserted wood,

appears to be wandering in a fog of depression and spiritual

malaise. The narrator tells us that it has it been five years since

Perceval “worshiped God or His Cross” — but when had he ever

done so? And what has that to do with deeds of chivalry, in which,

as the narrator explains, Perceval has not ceased to excel through

all those five incongruous years? This detour back onto Perceval’s

path is as shocking as suddenly driving off a paved roadway into a

bumpy field, and, similarly, will take the reader through unexpected

country before returning him to the track of Gauvain’s wanderings.

It is a calculated jolt by which Chrétien seeks to awaken the reader,

much as Perceval will shortly be awakened from his daze of oblivion

by meeting penitent knights and ladies as he wanders through the

woods. This, the last episode in which Perceval figures, is designed

to set the reader on a new path of interpretation, with a new set of

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expectations, much as it will set Perceval (so one must suppose)

upon a new kind of quest, which promises to be more fruitful and

meaningful than the five amnesic years just completed. Chrétien

intends both Perceval and the reader to be awakened from oblivion

and restored to mindfulness of necessary things. And while, in

Chrétien’s fragmentary romance, we do not see Perceval again after

the scene of his Easter Communion, the reader will remain engaged

in his task of reflection even after being returned to the wandering

narrative of Gauvain’s exploits. The memory of Perceval’s final

episode will both accompany the reader as he goes forward in his

reading and urge him to retrace his steps to revisit earlier scenes.

Cause for Reflection

This final episode in the Perceval narrative provides ample

matter for the reader’s reflection, delivering several successive

shocks which reveal key themes that will guide the reader’s

reassessment of the tale. The first of these shocks is the spiritually

deleterious effect of the chivalry to which Perceval has devoted

himself. This is indicated in the verses which immediately follow those

quoted above, in which the narrator recounts that the five years in

which Perceval forgot God found him excelling in daring adventures

and feats of valor, sending a steady stream of conquered foes to

Arthur’s court: “Thus he filled five years and never bethought himself

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of God” (6202-03: “Ensi les cinc anz anplea, / C’onques de Deu ne li

sovint”). The very years of his sustained triumphs seem to be not only

equated with but perhaps even the cause of his personal and spiritual

amnesia: as he filled the five-year calendar with his worldly successes,

he emptied his mind of the Divine. This is the first overt indication

that his career in chivalry, in which he seemed so prodigiously

talented and by which he won the acclaim of Arthur and his court, has

not been a path of ascendance but a long downward spiral into

spiritual desolation. What had seemed thus far the story of his rapid

rise in prowess and social graces is now presented as a long series of

empty successes. Although the narrator affirms that Perceval has

sought out and mastered “unusual adventures, treacherous ones and

difficult” (6193-94: “les estranges avantures, / les felenesses et les

dures”), no further description of them is provided, as if they lack any

real interest or significance. From this perspective, it seems as if

Gauvain’s adventures have interrupted Perceval’s story, leaving a five

year gap, rather than the other way around. In place of those five

missing years, we have the account of Gauvain. As Rupert Pickens

notes:

Gauvain is Perceval’s double, and, seen in the light of the Hermitage episode, his adventures appear to be the kinds of exploits which Perceval may have undertaken during the years the narrator has passed over in silence. (The Welsh Knight 55)

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It is almost as if Chrétien makes these early adventures of Gauvain

merely an illustrative footnote on Perceval’s unremarked five years, as

if to say: “For five years, Perceval engaged in the usual sort of knight-

errantry. For examples, see Gauvain.”

Whatever may have happened during those five years, it seems

to have served no purpose in furthering Perceval’s quest, for he is no

closer to learning whom the grail serves and why the lance bleeds. As

he will confess to the hermit, Perceval’s adventures have been

aimless53 and his deeds, the very ones sure to win him high favor at

court, have been without merit54. Whatever he might have expected of

the pursuit of chivalry, certainly it was not this sense of desolation which

now troubles him.

That desolation is mirrored in the desert woods through which

he is riding when he undergoes one more adventure, quite different

from the rest:

Au chief de cinc anz li avintQue il par un desert aloitCheminant, si com il soloit, De totes ses armes armez,S’a trois chevaliers ancontrez,Et avoec dames jus qu’a dis,Lor chies and lor chaperons mis,

53 6330-31: “Sire, fet il, bien a cinc anz / Que je ne soi ou ge me fui.” (“’Sir,’ he said, ‘It’s a good five years since I have known where I was going.’”)

54 6333: “N’onques puis ne fis se mal non.” (“’Nor have I ever done anything but ill.’”)

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Et s’aloient trestuit a piéEt an langes et deschaucié. (6204-12)

(At the end of the five years it happened that he was going through a desert, on horseback, armed in all his armor as was his wont; and he met three knights and, with them, as many as ten ladies, their heads covered by hoods; they were all traveling on foot in hair shirts and shoeless.)

Five years earlier, a bright-eyed and lively rustic lad had come across

armored knights in glittering armor in a lonely wood and had

marveled at their equipage, desiring to become like them; now he

himself, dazed and lost, is marveled at by these humbly dressed

knights and ladies, who soon remind him that it is most unsuitable to

go about mounted and armed “au jor que Jhesu Criz fu morz” (6226:

“on the day that Jesus Christ was killed”). So dazed is he that Perceval

does not even know what day it is, yet he is deeply moved when one of

the knights explains to him the significance of Good Friday. And when

he learns that the band of penitents has visited a hermit to whom they

confessed their sins, he begins to weep and to ask the way to the

hermit’s lodge, so that he too may visit the holy man.

Earlier in the romance Perceval never evinced any signs of

sadness or pangs of conscience, not even when he learned of his own

mother’s death or the distress he had caused the Maiden of the Tent55,

55 He did blush with shame when the Tent Maiden — now more appropriately referred to as the Piteous Damsel — rebuffed his greeting (3751-52). That shame, however, was provoked by the knowledge that he had committed a social gaffe in greeting her in her wretched state, not that he had sinned in contributing to her wretchedness.

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but now he is moved suddenly to tears by a sorrow both profound and

sincere, flowing from an acute, if ill-defined, sense that he has sinned

against God, and is very sorry for it (6301-02: “… mesfez se santoit /

Vers Deu, don mout se repantoit”). Nothing in his demeanor hitherto

has suggested the deep suffering he now claims to feel. The reader

who watched with approval as Perceval mused pleasantly on the

image of his lady love’s complexion upon the late snow, and shortly

thereafter comported himself quite courteously before Arthur’s court,

cannot help being taken aback by this sudden claim that, even then,

Perceval had done nothing to please God or warrant his mercy. This

sense of spiritual affliction seems to have arisen after he passed from

the narrative, sometime during those five unchronicled years, a

hidden period into which the reader can have no insight. Whatever

crisis of conscience Perceval has suffered deep in his own heart

during those lost years, the reader sees only the moment when it

bursts onto the surface, provoked by the penitents’ account of a holy

man who can pronounce forgiveness of sins.

This scene is carefully structured to evoke Perceval’s first

encounter with knights in the woods. Then as now, he appears the

ignoramus, wondering at the way the strangers are garbed. Once

again, he must be instructed as if he were the most ignorant child,

and that instruction impels him to seek the man who can make him

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like these knights he has met. The great difference, of course, is

that earlier his ignorance had been innocent and comical while now

it is shocking, even scandalous, and the instruction he receives now

is of a spiritual and religious character. The content of his brief

catechism, however, brings to mind one other detail of his earlier

meeting, all but forgotten by either Perceval or the reader, who now

may recall that Perceval’s first attraction to the knights was

religious in impulse — a mistake that seemed laughable from the

point of view of the knights or of the reader, who regarded the

young Welshman from an ironic distance. It was, nonetheless, a

sincere impulse, and Perceval’s willingness to worship God and his

angels simply got diverted from its proper object when he learned

that the shining beings before him were mortal men. His whole

pursuit of chivalry began with that spontaneous impulse to worship

and only now, after years of meaningless adventure, does that

desire find its proper fulfillment. Perhaps Perceval instinctively

understands this, for his desire to meet the hermit who shrives

penitents is just as sudden and as fervent as his impulse, once upon

a time, to seek out Arthur, “the king who makes knights.” Here we

can see clearly the typological method of the episodic form at work:

the meeting with the penitents does not simply echo the earlier

episode but it is the fulfillment of it, illuminating the true

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significance of the earlier analogue and casting a new light upon

anything that Perceval may do in future adventures. What James

Earl says with reference to Augustine’s roundabout journey to

finding God in the Confessions can justly be applied to Perceval in

this regard:

A search is motivated by what it searches for, even though its object is only known in a partial or preliminary way. Only when the object is found can the stages of the search be understood, in retrospect; and only then can we see how our object guided us to itself, even while it remained hidden from us. (“The Typology of Spiritual Growth” 22-23)

The Hermit’s Revelations

Even if he does not yet realize that, in pursuing knighthood, he

chose to worship the creature rather than the Creator, Perceval

clearly perceives that his career as a knight has been grievously

flawed, for he tells the hermit that he has suffered such affliction that

he would rather have died (6348-49: “S’an ai puis eü si grant duel /

Que morz eüsse esté mon vuel”) since the day that he failed to ask the

necessary questions at the Fisher King’s castle. Perceval seems to

believe that that failure was the sin which marked the beginning of his

misery and poisoned all his subsequent deeds. The hermit, however, is

able to enlighten him on two important points about his experience at

Grail Castle. Both revelations are prompted by the penitent’s

identifying himself as Perceval. Upon hearing this, the hermit tells

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him that he is mistaken about the nature of his sin: his silence was not

the real cause of his misery; rather, his failure to ask appropriate

questions while dining with the Fisher King was caused by “a sin of

which you know not a word, which was the sorrow that your mother

suffered on account of you when you parted from her” (6359- 61: “uns

pechiez don tu ne sez mot, / Ce fu li diax que ta mere ot / De toi quant

tu partis de li”). The sorrow Perceval caused his mother when he left

her to become a knight was so great that it killed her, and this sin

against his mother, not his silence before the grail procession, was the

true beginning of his misery. His pursuit of knighthood, it seems, was

poisoned from its first moment by his careless disregard for his

mother, and his behavior as he dined with the Fisher King was just a

manifestation of that fact, for sin had “cut off his tongue” (6375:

“Pechiez la lengue te trancha”). Furthermore, Perceval would have

suffered even more because of his sin, had it not been for his mother’s

dying benediction, which has provided him divine protection and

saved him from death and imprisonment. If Perceval was unmindful of

his mother’s well-being, it is fortunate that she was not equally

forgetful of him, wishing him Godspeed with her dying breath.

While his abuse of his mother was sinful, Perceval’s failure to

ask about the grail and whom it served was folly (6380: “fol san eus”),

for it would have revealed surprising facts: the existence of an entire

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branch of Perceval’s family thus far unknown to him, and a manner of

life very different from the opulent and painful existence of the Fisher

King. The hermit reveals the answer to one of the unasked questions

when he tells Perceval that:

Cil cui l’an an sert est mes frere: Ma suer et soe fu ta mere, Et del Riche Pescheor croi Que il est filz a celui roi Qui del graal servir se fait. (6381-85)

(The one who is served from [the grail] is my brother. My sister and his was your mother, and the Rich Fisherman, I believe, is the son of the king who is served from the grail.)

Perceval previously had shown little interest in his own family, not

only neglecting his mother but ignoring her account of his father and

brothers, and showing no interest in the news that the sorrowing

maiden he met outside Grail Castle was his own cousin, raised in his

mother’s house. Now, however, he is eager to acknowledge the hermit

as uncle and to be called nephew (6403-04). It is as if his penitence

has healed his alienation not only from his mother but from his whole

family — one might even say from himself. The young man who once

had to guess his own name has discovered an identity he wishes to

embrace.

The hermit’s explanation of the events at Grail Castle reveal

another fact, which passes unremarked by Perceval but certainly not

by the reader: i.e., the man served by the grail (also an uncle) is a

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man of such sanctity that he subsists entirely on the Host which the

grail carries. While Perceval does not inquire into the significance of

this manner of life, he does respond readily to the counsel of his other

uncle, the hermit, also a holy man living a hidden life “solely by the

glory of God” (6272),56 and he shares his uncle’s ascetic manner of life

until, in our last glimpse of him, he receives Holy Communion on

Easter morn “mout dignemant” (6473).

This episode, then, shocks the reader by bringing into the

foreground several themes which were missing (or rather, hidden in

plain view) in the earlier portions of Perceval’s story: first, the

spiritually disastrous deficiency of the worldly chivalry in which

Perceval has excelled thus far; second, the crisis of conscience which

provokes a sense of spiritual desolation in a protagonist who

previously had displayed little or no capacity for self-examination or

religious feeling. The counsel and instruction which the hermit-uncle

provides offers further surprises: the news that Perceval’s critical

fault was not his failure to ask about the grail and lance but rather an

earlier sin against Charity in causing his mother deadly sorrow, a sin

which has tainted his entire chivalrous career. And whatever

importance the question of whom the grail serves may have had in

restoring the Fisher King’s health and realm, the answer to that

56 In 6271-72, the penitents identify the hermit: “Ne ne vit, tant par est sainz hon, / Se de la gloire de Deu non.”

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question, now supplied by the hermit, reveals two further mysteries: a

closely woven web of family connections which give Perceval an

identity he had not suspected or even felt the need of, and a divinely-

oriented way of life that contrasts sharply with the worldly existence

pursued by Perceval and his cousin the Fisher King. Perceval readily

embraces both revelations, but the reader must surely take pause to

consider the implications of these “new” themes.

That reflection will reveal that none of these themes is “new” at

all. Each of them has been alluded to by a variety of characters, and

each has been ignored by Perceval (and, quite likely, the reader as

well). His mother had tried to tell him about his family and the

disasters they suffered as a result of just the sort of chivalry that he

was so desirous to pursue — lessons that were repeated later by his

cousin. His mother and Gornemant both had tried to temper that

pursuit by instructing him to assist helpless women and to remember

to worship God: the double law of Charity adapted to the occupation

of the knight. All of this can be seen clearly enough in retrospect, just

as one can see how obstinately Perceval ignored and forgot the

lessons.

The clarity of this hindsight, however, can shed light not only on

Perceval’s earlier deeds, but on those of Gauvain as well. Although the

point is easily overlooked, when the narrator turns again to Gauvain,

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he is turning the clock back five years. The “flash forward” that

brought us to Perceval wandering through a desert wood is now

reversed with a “flashback” to Gauvain. By this temporal dislocation,

Chrétien creates a more marked parallelism between the exploits of

Perceval and those of Gauvain. The reader’s new perspective will

cause him not simply to reassess what he has already read, but also to

regard the continuing adventures of Gauvain with new eyes. As

Pickens notes, “The shape of the Gauvain section is not altered by the

intervening Hermitage episode, but perception of it certainly is” (The

Welsh Knight 54). This is precisely the intended effect of the Hermit

episode: to alter the reader’s perception of what he is reading; to jolt

even the laziest reader into the awareness that more is going on than

a literal, linear reading can reveal; to expose salient themes and

remind the reader that these have been present from the beginning,

apparent to anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear.

Chapter 3 Aimless Pursuits: Chivalry and the Path Away from God

La senestre, selonc l’estoire,Senefie la vainne gloireQui vi[e]nt de fause ypocrisie. (39-41)57

Torna li vaslez a senestre … (1305)58

he prologue of the Conte del Graal, as noted in Chapter 2, sets

up a contrast between the life motivated by Charity and that

motivated by vainne gloire. The difference between these two

manners of life — epitomized, respectively, by Count Philip of

Flanders and Alexander the Great — is one that is hidden, known only

to Him “who is called God and Charity” (46:“qui Deus et Charité a

non”), while the other is ostentatious. The narrator announces in the

prologue that his intention is to expose the difference between these

two, which on the surface seem so much alike:

T

Mes je proverai que li cuensValt mialz que cist ne fist asez,Car il ot an lui amassez Toz les vices et toz les maxDont li cuens est mondes et sax. (16-20)

(But I shall prove that the count is far worthier than he, for he [Alexander] has amassed in himself all the vices and all the evils of which the count is clean and free.)

57 From the prologue: “The left hand, so the story goes, signifies vainglory, which comes from false hypocrisy.”

58 Approaching Gornemant’s castle: “The young man turned to the left … ” As Per Nykrog notes regarding this, the beginning of Perceval’s first chivalrous adventure, “Cela suffit déjà pour nous avertir qu’il est dans la mauvaise voie” (191).

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The narrator goes on to enumerate the count’s superior virtues:

Li cuens est tex que il n’escoteVilain gap ne parole estote,Et s’il ot mal dire d’autrui,Qui que il soit, ce poise lui.Li cuens aimme droite justise Et leauté et sainte Iglise,Et tote vilenie het,S’est plus larges que l’an ne set,Qu’il done selonc l’evangileSanz ypocrisye et sanz guile, Qui dit: “Ne saiche ta senestreLe bien quant le fera la destre.”……………………………Donc sachoiz bien de veritéQue li don sont de charitéQue li bons cuens Felipes done,C’onques nelui n’an areisonneFors son franc cuer le debonereQui li loe le bien a fere.Ne valt miax cil que ne valutAlixandres, cui ne chalutDe charité ne de nul bien? (21-32, 51-56)

(The count is the sort who doesn’t listen to vulgar gossip or proud speech, and if he hears ill spoken of another, whoever it may be, it troubles him. The count loves true justice, and loyalty and Holy Church, and he hates all villainy. And he is more generous than one realizes, for he gives without hypocrisy or guile, in accordance with the Gospel which says: “Let not your left hand know the good that your right hand does.” […] Therefore know well and truly that the gifts which good Count Philip gives are gifts of Charity, for he consults no one except his honest, noble heart, which urges him to do good. Is he not worthier than Alexander, who cared not for Charity nor for any good deed?)

Thus, Count Philip is set before the reader as the standard against

which to judge a way of life that may seem admirable, and that

standard is clearly the one against which the reader may judge

Perceval’s pursuit of chivalry.

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As we will see, the promise of chivalry hinted at in the instant

that Perceval first lays eyes on a knight is left unfulfilled until the final

episode in which Perceval appears. His first glimpse of knights in

their shining armor may have elicited a religious awe, but that

attraction is in no way diminished when he learns that these were not

in fact divine beings. Perceval is attracted to their superficial beauty

without respect to their purpose or motivation and his ambition to be,

like them, “more beautiful than God” grasps only at a superficial

likeness. The next five years are spent in pursuit of that ambition, as

Perceval tirelessly strives to attain that perfection which he intuitively

discerned for a brief moment in the forest near his mother’s house. In

the end, even Perceval will come to recognize that his quest has gone

astray. When he kneels before the hermit on Good Friday, Perceval

will sum up his long career in this way: “’Sir, for a good five years I

haven’t known where I was, and I haven’t loved God or believed in

him; nor have I done anything but evil” (6330-33). Thus he sums up

his entire chivalrous career — not only his successful encounters on

the field of combat, but even the lives he has spared and the damsels

he has defended — as being devoid of any merit that would win God’s

approval. Despite the fact that his first glimpse of knights sparked in

him a religious impulse to revere God, Perceval’s five year quest for

perfection as a knight is, in fact, a long detour away from God.

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Perceval begins the oblivious path away from God the moment

he turns the eyes of his heart from the divine to the mundane, from

God to chivalry. Although chivalry quickly becomes an obsession that

squeezes out all other concerns, this obsession is born from a

momentary curiosity: “What is that beautiful creature moving toward

me through the woods?” This same curiosity that makes Perceval prey

to the lure of chivalry also occasionally, if only briefly, distracts him

along the way to attaining it: a beautiful pavilion, a lovely damsel, a

tasty meal will draw him briefly away from the road that leads to

Arthur, “the king who makes knights.” One might even say that

Perceval’s curiosity and propensity for distraction (we recall that the

clash and glitter of knights distracted him from an errand for his

mother) is one of the qualities that makes him peculiarly well-suited to

the wandering life of the errant knight. It is, however, a quality that

promises to lead him away from God, away from that first moment of

divine attraction.

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Curiosity and the Will

“Curiosity was the beginning of all sin …” St. Bernard of Clairvaux, The Steps of Humility and Pride

edieval monastic practice recognized the danger of

distractions in the pursuit of God. The basic impulse upon

which the monastic life was founded was the desire to avoid the

distraction of worldly concerns so that the monk could devote his

entire attention to God. Even within the walls of the cloister, however,

distractions could intrude into the monk’s meditations, and from the

earliest days of the eremitic tradition much attention was given to

developing disciplines against such distractions, one of the most

potent of which was curiositas. In his fifth century Institutes, John

Cassian included curiositas under the general heading of sins of

accidie (X.i), and in his Conferences he refers to it as a kind of mental

aimlessness (XIV.v) during meditation. In the highly structured

memorial practices of medieval monasticism, the great vice of

memory was not forgetfulness, but the wandering of the mind during

meditation (Carruthers 1998, 82). St. Augustine had designated

curiositas as one of the three prime sins (along with superbia and

voluptas carnis) and St. Bernard, in his treatise on The Steps of

Humility and Pride, goes so far as to designate curiosity as the first

M

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step of pride.59 St. Bernard follows in the tradition of St. Augustine

when he associates it primarily with visual and auditory distractions,

which divert the soul from knowledge of itself:

[The eyes and ears] are the windows through which death creeps into the soul, as death came into the world by sin. These are the flocks the curious man tends, while he lets his soul starve. … You wander away from yourself? Whom have you left in charge? Your eyes sweep the heavens. How do you dare, you who have sinned against heaven? (57, X.28)

This is precisely what happens to Perceval as a result of his first

hearing, then seeing, knights coming toward him through the trees:

captivated by chivalry, he wanders far from himself.60 In The Steps of

Humility and Pride, Bernard spends as much time discussing curiosity

as he does all the other levels of pride combined, concluding:

“Curiosity was the beginning of all sin and so is rightly considered the

first step of pride” (66, X.38). As Étienne Gilson notes in La Théologie

mystique de saint Bernard, Bernard taught that there are two paths

the soul may take: the one that leads to self-knowledge, which in turn

makes possible Charity and the soul’s salvation, and the path of

curiosity, which leads into sin and all manner of vices: “Nous sommes,

en face de ces deux méthodes, comme devant la bifurcation initiale

59 See Richard Newhauser’s “The Sin of Curiosity and the Cistercians” (73) and “Augustinian Vitium Curiositatis and its Reception” (110-11).

60 In the next section of his treatise, Bernard goes on to ask, “Are the eyes never to be raised at all? Yes, but only for two reasons: to look for help, or to help others.” Helping others was the proper purpose of the Christian knight, who at his dubbing was admonished to help orphans and helpless women.

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des deux routes” (Gilson 182). These two diverging paths correspond

to the two manners of life referred to in the prologue: that which

pursues Charity (associated with the right hand) and that which seeks

vainglory (associated with the left).

Wandering Down the Left-Hand Path

In the story of Perceval, curiosity and errantry go hand in hand,

and we should note that his wandering steps are often guided not so

much by a firm sense of purpose as by things that he sees or hears,

the two senses that both Augustine and Bernard associate

preeminently with the distraction of curiositas. Although he is at first

led on by his desire to acquire the arms of a knight (a desire aroused

by what he sees and hears) and later is moved by a desire to see his

mother, Perceval’s chivalric career becomes truly aimless once he

learns of her death:

“Et puis que ele est mise en terre,Que iroie ge avant querre,Que por rien nule n’aloieFors por li que veoir voloie?” (3587-91)

(“And since she has been put in the ground, what should I go on seeking, for I set out for no other reason than to see her?”)

Nor does his career become any more directed when he takes up his

quest for the grail and lance, for he has no idea how to find them. The

method of his quest is pure errantry, wandering through the forest

hoping he will come upon the object of his search par avanture; his

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vow not to rest until he completes his quest dooms him to constant,

restless searching. Only when he meets his hermit uncle and turns

back to God will Perceval’s aimless wandering cease.

The connection between chivalry and aimlessness, although

seldom indicated overtly, underlies the entire romance. Perceval sets

off in pursuit of knighthood without any idea of what it is that he is

seeking, and with no more idea of how to attain it than the vague

notion that he must find Arthur, “the king who makes knights.”

Throughout this romance, Chrétien plays the knowledge and

expectations of the seasoned reader of romance against those of the

ignorant young Welshman, who is attracted to glittering armor

without the merest notion of its purpose. Although Perceval never

asks himself or anyone else the purpose of knighthood, the reader

comes to this romance already possessed of certain ideas about

knighthood in general and about the sort of literary chivalry portrayed

in romance more particularly. As W. T. H. Jackson notes in “The

Nature of Romance,” these are two distinct institutions, romance

chivalry possessing “a code of behavior of its own, a set of values, a

set of ideals which are, in fact, unreal in the sense that they are not

directly connected with the life of twelfth century France” (15).

Indeed, much of the charm of romance is that it portrays an idealized

chivalry which seems far removed from the gritty, mundane details of

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the real-life practice of knighthood. Jackson asserts that “[u]nreality,

in fact, is the first principle of the romance genre.” He argues that by

the time Chrétien composed his romances “the world of the romance

had become an entity in itself. Chrétien saw that it must now be

compared with reality” (20). While all of Chrétien’s romances play

with this comparison, this is most significant in the Conte del Graal,

which in the first lines of the prologue introduce the idea of two kinds

of chivalry, one which gives with the right hand of Charity and the

other of which fosters “all manner of vices and wickedness.”

This opposition seems apparent in the contrast between the

rough and brutal chivalry practiced by men of the wastelands who

seem hardly better than outlaws and the soft-spoken chivalry,

restrained by convention, which is practiced by courteous noblemen

such as Gauvain, the finest exemplar of Arthur’s realm. The unwary

reader, familiar with the way romance tends to idealize chivalry,

might assume that the latter courtly practice is a superior form of

chivalry, which opposes and corrects the former kind of knighthood,

rough and “full of vices and wickedness.” However, it would be a

mistake too readily to equate this more polished courtly form of

chivalry with the right-hand path of Charity exemplified in the

prologue by Philip of Flanders. A close examination of both forms will

reveal that neither practice shows up well when examined in the light

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of Charity, for neither has much to do with the charitable motive of

protecting the weak and defenseless.

Charity and Voluntas Propria

In the prologue, Chrétien characterizes the life motivated by

Charity, exemplified by the virtuous Philip, as being genuine, i.e.,

being in fact what it appears to be: a concern for the well-being of

others. Liberality of the left hand, which seeks to win the approval of

onlookers, is called “fause ypocrisie” (41), because it only appears to

be generous while actually serving the cause of “vainne gloire,”

typified by Alexander (40). Although these two kinds of generosity

appear identical on the surface, they differ radically in their motives,

which can be seen by “God, who sees all secrets and knows all the

hiding-places there are in the heart and bowels” (34-36: “Dex qui toz

les segrez voit / Et set totes les repostailles / Qui sont es cuers et es

antrailles”). The man who follows the right-hand path of Charity

“remains in God, and God in him” (50: “maint an Deu et Dex an lui”),

as Chrétien quotes from the epistle. These two paths, then, diverge

radically: one follows the path of self-interest, while the other seeks to

serve God and neighbor. These motives correspond to the two motives

that St. Bernard delineates in his Sermons in Eastertide: voluntas

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propria, which wills nothing for anyone save itself, and voluntas

communis, which is better known as Charity.61

If we recognize that Perceval’s pursuit of knighthood leads him

away from God (and therefore away from the right-hand path of

Charity, for “Dex est charitez” [47]), and further acknowledge that, in

doing so, he also turns away from self-knowledge, which instills

humility and thus makes possible compassion, then it follows that the

left-hand path of vainglory necessarily leads away from compassion, a

virtue which would seem to lie at the very heart of chivalry’s charge

to aid and defend the weak and helpless. In other words, the selfish

pursuit of material gain and worldly acclaim make the main purpose

of chivalry impossible to achieve.

This turn away from compassion can be noted from the earliest

moments of Perceval’s obsession with becoming a knight, when he

returns home to find his mother in a panic over his prolonged

absence, a state of distress that becomes so acute that she drops into

a dead faint when he tells her that he has met knights. In all his

dealings with his mother, Perceval is callous and dismissive of her

fears, despite the visible signs of her anguish and her impassioned

pleas that he not proceed with his plans. We cannot know whether his

selfish disregard for her is habitual or caused by his new obsession,

61 “Porro communis voluntas charitas est…“ Saint Bernard, In tempore Resurrectionis, sermo II, 8; PL 183.286.

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but there are some indications that he has been, until this moment, a

dutiful son.

First, let us consider the signs that Perceval, until he met the

knights in the forest, had been obedient to his mother’s will. When the

vaslet is first introduced, he is identified as “the son of the widow

lady,” and he is dutifully about his mother’s business, on his way to

check on the progress of the field hands harrowing the oats. As he

lingers to enjoy the fine spring day on his way to the fields, he hears

the clashing of the armed men as they make their way on horseback

through the woods, and immediately thinks of his mother’s teaching

about the frightfulness of demons and the proper way to respond to

them (by making the sign of the cross). In the next instant, though, he

decides to ignore that teaching:

“Mes cest anseing desdaignerai,Que ja voir ne m’an anseignerai,Einz ferrai si tot le plus fortD’un des javeloz que je portQue ja n’aprochera vers moiNus des alters, si con je croi.” (119-24)

(“But I will scorn this teaching, and indeed I’ll not sign myself, but I’ll strike the strongest one so fast with one of the javelins I’m carrying that none of the others, I believe, will ever come near me.”)

This response indicates a willfulness and an aggressive tendency that

impulsively override his mother’s advice to caution, but it cannot be

attributed to any attraction to the knights, since he has not yet laid

eyes on them. At this moment, he believes that he is about to confront

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malignant beings against whom he must defend himself, and he

disagrees with his mother only with regard to what would be the most

effective defense. His mother has advised spiritual defense, and he

rejects that advice in favor of something more practical and proactive.

So we see in his first reaction to the crashing noise of the knights an

innate willful aggressiveness and a disdain for spiritual defenses, even

before he enters upon the course to knighthood.

This impulsive valor, however, is not necessarily identical to an

habitual disregard for his mother’s authority, much less for her well-

being. It seems to be, rather, a native boldness spurred by the

impulsiveness of youth rather than culpable disobedience. This

assessment is the one that the narrator seems to encourage, for he

chooses this moment to introduce a discrepancy between the reader’s

point of view and Perceval’s: the reader is told what Perceval cannot

guess, i.e., that the terrible racket he hears is produced not by

malignant demons but by quite ordinary knights making their way

through dense woodland. The narrator introduces an ironic distance

between the protagonist and the reader which causes the latter to

regard the vaslet’s antics with indulgent amusement. When the boy

catches a glimpse of the knights and assumes them to be God and his

host of angels, he once again recalls his mother’s teaching and

immediately complies with her advice that one should worship and

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adore God. It is this second instance, in which the vaslet obeys his

mother’s instruction, that makes him look foolish and comical, both to

the party of knights and to the reader. It would seem that Chrétien is

indicating not the boy’s disobedience to his mother’s teaching, but his

proclivity to ignore sound advice and to act upon his own will.

The comicality of the boy’s foolishness, however, cannot mask

his callousness when he deals directly with his mother. Her distress is

severe and, given the tragic character of the family history that she

outlines, not unjustified. But Perceval ignores her apparent distress

and, turning a deaf ear to her words and brusquely dismissing her

objections, he vows to carry through with his plan to become a knight

“no matter whom it grieves”:

“A manger, fet il, me donez.Ne sai de coi m’areisonez,Mes mout iroie volantiersAu roi qui fet les chevaliers,Et g’irai, cui qu’il an poist.” (473-77, emphasis added)

(“Give me something to eat,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re going on about, but I’m very eager to go to the king who makes knights, and I’ll go, no matter who is grieved by it.”)

The only thing that offsets his monomaniacal anxiety to become a

knight is his willingness to tolerate a short delay while his mother

helps him prepare for the journey by making him a suit of traveling

clothes and offering him a little motherly advice. Both the advice and

the clothes seem designed to restrain or mask his natural

aggressiveness. The mother’s instruction regarding proper

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deportment with young ladies goes beyond a simple exhortation to

give them assistance when asked. She seems to expect that her son

will “do everything rudely,” and cautions him not to be offensive: “Be

careful not to annoy her by doing anything that will make her

unhappy” (526-27: “Gardez que ne li enuiez / De nule rien qui li

despleise”). She phrases her advice as a series of maternal

permissions (“it will be fine with me,” “I give you leave”) and

restrictions (“I forbid you to go further, if you’ll stop for my sake”),62

and she makes it clear that the initiative in the relationship should

always remain with the pucele. The mother’s final adjustments to his

garb and gear also suggest that the veve dame is concerned about his

natural tendency toward impulsive aggression: we saw as he awaited

the approach of the “demons” that the widow’s son is wont to use his

javelins as offensive weapons (“I’ll strike the strongest of them with

one of the javelins I’m carrying”), and his mother’s desire to deprive

him of them before he sets off suggests that she fears he will only get

himself into trouble with them.63

62 “bon m’iert et bel” (535), “vos doin gié / … congié” (537-38), and “Le soreplus vos an defant” (530-31).

63 The futility of removing two while leaving one, and the dangerous potential of that one, was suggested by Perceval’s earlier comment to the knights in the wood when he remarked that “any one of these three javelins” is better than a single knight’s lance, because he can, with just one, kill as many as he likes, and do so from a distance (202-07).

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It seems, then, that the mother knows her son to be an

aggressive, impulsive, and inconsiderate young man and fears that his

desire to be a knight will only exacerbate these natural tendencies.

His treatment of her confirms this impression as, when he leaves her,

he ignores (for the second time) her falling into a dead swoon out of

anguish for him. Nor will the following episode do anything to

ameliorate the impression that he is a boorish and thoughtless young

man who prefers to do his own will, rather than show deference to the

desires or well-being of another.

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Knights of the Wilderness: Unbridled Willfulness

Einz vos beiserai, par mon chief,Fet li vaslez, cui qu’il soit grief (675-76)64

he following episode, Perceval’s first adventure in the pursuit of

chivalry, resembles in many respects the opening episode:

traveling through the forest, the lad encounters a vision of beauty

which awakens a desire to make that beauty his own (in this case, a

damsel). In seeking to fulfill his desire, he exerts his own will over the

objections of the woman and disregards the distress that he may be

causing her. Here, too, the reader will have an opportunity to judge

the behavior of this rudely-reared boy against that of an accomplished

knight. This episode differs from the earlier one, however, in two

important respects. The first difference is that, this time, there is no

marked contrast between the actions of the boy and those of the

knight: both treat the maiden with callous force. The second is that,

while Perceval leaves before the knight returns and thus cannot see

how his own behavior is reflected in that of the knight, the reader is

detained at the scene after Perceval leaves, and thus is forced to make

the inevitable comparison between the two. This is perhaps the most

obvious of many cases in which the narrator encourages the reader to

take note of details that entirely escape Perceval’s notice.

T

64 Perceval to the maiden of the tent: “’But I’m going to kiss you, by my head,’ said the lad, ‘No matter who it harms!’”(676-77).

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The Abuse of Women

The episode begins the morning after Perceval leaves home, and

the setting closely resembles that in which he first met the party of

knights in the woods. After spending the night in the forest, Perceval

sets out again on his journey accompanied by the singing of birds,

until he finds a beautiful tent set up in a lovely meadow. The striking

colors of the pavilion and their effect on the youth may remind the

reader of the similar effect caused by the bright and colorful armor of

the knights he met in the earlier scene. Once again, beauty puts him

in mind of his mother’s teaching about divinity — albeit only briefly —

and again it awakens desire. Believing that here he has stumbled

upon one of the beautiful houses of God of which his mother told him,

the boy determines to enter and pray to God for food, because he

hasn’t had his breakfast and he is hungry. Upon entering, however, he

quickly forgets all thoughts of God when he sees a sleeping damsel.

His mother’s fears about his behavior are confirmed as he forces his

attentions upon the young woman and, although he recalls that his

mother had advised him how to act with women, he manages to twist

her words to serve his own desires. The instructions she had intended

to curb her son’s willfulness and soften his uncouth manner are

employed to the opposite end, turning her permissions into mandates,

as Perceval forgets the proviso that the damsel must be willing.

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Instead of providing a veneer of good manners, the widow lady’s

instructions, distorted by the boy’s voluntas propria, provoke an

assault on the helpless maiden. Pinning her body to the bed with his

own, he forcibly extracts not only kisses — “la beisa, volsist ele ou

non”65 — but also a jeweled ring that he espies on her finger and

forcibly wrenches from her hand. In his garbled memory of his

mother’s words, the youth recalls her prohibition against taking

“anything more,” but he remembers it as a restraint not against

taking sexual advantage but rather against robbing a woman of

anything more than a ring. His ignorance in sexual matters apparently

prevents him from understanding what his mother was referring to in

forbidding him “le soreplus,” and he has simply transferred the idea of

self-restraint to more tangible gifts that he may receive from ladies,

just as naturally as he transfers his attention from the maiden herself

to her jeweled ring. But the brutal strength and willfulness with which

he forces the ring from the damsel’s hand suggest that only his

ignorance prevents the scene from escalating to one of all-out rape66.

At any rate, his physical hunger for food soon distracts him from any

65 “He kissed her, whether she wished it or not” (690).

66 In a later episode, in which he spends a night in the castle of the beautiful Blancheflor, the narrator emphasizes that the only reason he does not desire sexual companionship is that he is ignorant of such pleasures (1915-22: “All the comfort and all the delight that a bed may offer, the knight had that night, except only for the pleasure of a maiden, or of a lady, if it were permitted. But he knew nothing of such things, so he didn’t think about it one way or the other”).

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lingering sexual impulses, and he falls greedily upon the meat pies

and wine that he finds near the bed.

In a cursory reading, this shocking scene is rendered laughable

by the boy’s obvious ignorance and by his naively incongruous

comments. (For instance, having taken both the kisses and the ring,

he cheerily wishes the maiden well and compliments her that her

mouth is not bitter like those of his mother’s chambermaids.) Two

important aspects, however, prevent the attentive reader from

dismissing this exchange as mere buffoonery. The first is the damsel’s

constant and voluble objection that his actions will cause them both

untold grief. She writhes desperately in his grasp and repeatedly

entreats him to leave. Although he says he wishes her well, he ignores

her claim that she will be badly mistreated and that he will be killed if

he leaves with her ring. No amount of weeping and begging gets his

attention, and he cheerfully departs without a backward glance,

taking no notice of her anguished cry that he has condemned her to a

life of shame and grief.

One might argue that, in both this episode and the earlier one at

home with his widowed mother, there is a degree of comic excess, both

in the hysterical reactions of the women to apparently innocent words

and actions and in the failure of those demonstrations to elicit a

response from the oblivious young nice. In the mother’s case, her

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terror over her son’s late return home may have seemed

disproportionate to the “danger” suggested by the boy’s dawdling to

enjoy a fine spring day on his way home from the fields and, given his

innocuous exchange with the knights he met while he tarried, the

widow’s panicked swoon upon hearing her son pronounce the word

“chevalier” may have seemed, at the moment, a ludicrous over-

reaction. However, the widow’s explanation of why she dreaded the

thought that her son might become interested in so dangerous a

profession compelled the reader to take note of her words, even though

her son did not, and the vaslet’s adventures thereafter are tinged with

the possibility of danger. Perceval, ignoring what his mother has told

him, carries on with little sense of the real danger that may befall him;

he seems equally insensible of possible unfortunate consequences for

himself or for others. Similarly the narrator, by describing the return of

the maiden’s knight-companion and his outraged reaction against

Perceval’s “violation” of her, quickly provides information that

counteracts the reader’s tendency to excuse the ignorant youth’s

actions as comically innocent gaffes.

Just as Perceval simply ignored his mother’s words, dismissing

any danger to himself and ignoring the devastating effect of chivalry on

his widowed mother, so in the case of the maiden of the tent the boy

turns a deaf ear to her protests and a blind eye to her suffering. Now,

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as earlier, he abandons the abused woman without a backward glance.

Yet, while the mother’s swoon at his departure remained ambiguous —

both Perceval and the reader had seen her faint before, with no

lingering ill effects — this time the reader will not be allowed to

overlook the truth in the maiden’s anguished cries that she will suffer

grievously because of the vaslet’s thoughtless abuse. As Perceval

continues on his way, the reader’s attention is detained at the tent until

the damsel’s lover returns:

Ensi remest cele plorant.Puis n’ala gueres demorantQue ses amis del bois revint.Des vaslet qui sa voie tint Vit les escloz, si li greva … (761-65)

(Thus she stayed behind, weeping. Then, with hardly any delay, her lover returned from the woods. He saw the tracks of the boy who had gone on his way, and they troubled him …)

This knight, seeing signs that a horseman has visited the tent in his

absence, accuses his lady of having entertained another knight while

he was away. The damsel denies this, saying it was just “a young

Welshman … a bothersome and base fool” (771-2: “un vaslet galois …

enuieus et villain [et] sot”), who not only ate part of the knight’s lunch

but also stole her ring and kissed her against her will. The knight

ignores her protestations that she is the innocent victim of these

predations, and launches a jealous and vindictive tirade, directing his

anger not only at the man who perpetrated these “crimes” but also

against the helpless damsel, who, he insists, enjoyed the young

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Welshman’s kisses and never resisted his attentions — which the

knight is sure went further than mere kisses. After vowing to submit

the young woman (and her horse) to physical abuse and public

degradation, and to behead the man who assaulted her, the knight

calmly sits down and eats his lunch.

Self-Will and Force

There are a number of obvious parallels between the behavior of

the outraged knight and that of the foolish Welsh boy: both ignore the

protestations of the damsel, and both interpret events in a way that suits

their inclinations; then, having done so, they turn to satisfying their own

stomachs, putting the woman’s trouble out of mind. The knight’s

callousness toward his lady love is reminiscent of Perceval’s toward his

mother — neither shows any compassion toward the woman who

presumably means the most to him. Yet there is a clear difference in

their motives, if not in their actions: although both act brutishly,

Perceval’s behavior can be attributed, at least partially, to his being

young and a galois, the Welsh being proverbially “stupider than the

beasts of the field.” Although Perceval acts selfishly and thoughtlessly,

he does not behave maliciously. Compared to this brutal knight,

Perceval behaves badly but relatively innocently, and he is apparently (if

incongruously) sincere when he says that he wishes her well. Yet the

striking similarities between his own crude and aggressive behavior and

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the jealous, self-centered conduct of the knight suggest that the practice

of chivalry will tend only to reinforce and codify his innate willful

aggression. The rough-mannered Welsh youth and the irate, vindictive

knight seem to present “before and after” images of the rash young man

in pursuit of chivalry.

Except for the armed party Perceval met in the Gaste Forest, this

is the first depiction of how knights comport themselves in the world,

and the exchange that transpires between the knight and the pucele is

the reader’s first view of how a knight treats a lady. It is significant

that Perceval does not witness the knight’s behavior, because he

therefore is not influenced by it in his own conduct.67 The similarities in

the behavior of the two is owed, then, not to Perceval’s conscious

adoption of a particular mode of conduct but to a basic self-serving

aggression common to both men, which may seem excusably

adolescent in the youth but becomes dangerous when sanctioned by

the practice of chivalry. Although it may seem that the behavior of the

maiden’s paramour violates chivalry’s code of courtesy, it will

eventually become clear that the brutal lover typifies, in many respects,

the depiction of knights throughout the romance, who are frequently

shown imposing their own wills by force of arms.

67 Perceval apparently models his own behavior closely on that of the knightshe has met. We may note, for instance, that Perceval does not dismount, upon entering either the tent or Arthur’s hall, because, as he says, “The knights I met … never dismounted” (966-67).

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This idea is reinforced as soon as the reader catches up to

Perceval in his journey to find Arthur and demand of him the arms of a

knight. Approaching Arthur’s castle, Perceval meets a mounted knight

in brilliant red armor waiting outside the fortress. Just as when he

first saw the glittering, colorful armor of knights, Perceval again is

completely captivated by the sight and so overcome by the desire to

have such armor for his own that he ignores the words the knight

directs at him. But even if Perceval ignores him, the reader cannot fail

to note that this Red Knight is a direct threat to Arthur and his

kingdom, for he states that he is awaiting a champion to come out of

the castle and challenge his claim against Arthur’s kingdom.

The most outrageous of all the self-willed knights portrayed in

this romance, the Red Knight in many ways typifies them. Although

Perceval neither knows nor inquires about the identity of this knight

(except marking him as the current owner of the coveted red armor),

Arthur will shortly identify him as “li Vermauz Chevaliers … de la

Forest de Quinqueroi” (930-31). The exact location of Quinqueroi is

open to debate, but it clearly designates a distinctly “foreign” and

obscure region outside of Arthur’s realm. Throughout this romance,

the most dangerous and threatening knights are identified with the

forest or wasteland. In The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus,

Broceliande, Arden, Corinne Saunders discusses the connotations

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stirred by the multivalent term “forest.” “Forest” did not necessarily

indicate the vast expanse of unbroken woodland that this term

suggests to modern readers, but denoted, rather, large tracts of land

untouched by the farms and cities that are the mark of human society.

“Forests” would have included a variety of terrains, including both

dense woodland such as that surrounding Grail Castle and open

meadows such as the one in which Perceval finds the tent with the

sleeping maiden. Saunders traces the medieval image of the forest to

a variety of ancient antecedents, including the dangerous hyle or silva

of classical poetry, the Biblical wilderness or desert in which one

might encounter either God or the devil, and the uncivilized expanses

to which outlaws historically escaped or were exiled. Thus the term

“forest” thus may suggest isolation, danger, absence of civilization,

spiritual encounter, or some combination of these. With respect to

these rude knights who roam through the wilderness imposing their

will upon the defenseless, the forest becomes not a secluded retreat

nor a place of oblivion but a lawless underworld peopled by rough

characters who live and operate outside the boundaries of the

civilized life of the court, men who verge upon outlawry in their

threats against ordered courtly life. Thus, like the tent maiden’s

paramour, later identified as “li Orguilleus de la Lande,” or the Proud

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Knight of the Wasteland,68 the Red Knight of the Forest of Quinqueroi

stands outside the conventions of courtliness and politesse that are

the hallmarks of Arthurian society, just as he stands outside the walls

of Arthur’s castle, threatening Arthur’s rule both literally and

figuratively. His presence there is iconic, a figure of all the knights

depicted in this romance who seek to exert their wills through force of

arms.

“Volsist ele ou non”: The Language of Force

In addition to his forest home, the Red Knight shares a number of

other characteristics with the various arrogant knights Perceval meets

in his adventures. Like the brutish paramour of the pucele whom

Perceval assaulted, the Red Knight is disrespectful of the ladies that

chivalry’s code demands he aid and defend. When Perceval meets him,

the Red Knight is grasping a golden cup which he says he snatched

from Arthur himself with the wine still in it. He does not add (although

Arthur will) that, in snatching it, he slopped some of the contents onto

Queen Guinevere (940-41). Presumably the Red Knight, like the tent

68 The term is usually translated as “heath.”Greimas’ Dictionnaire de l’ancien français gives the meaning of “lande” as “contrée boisée.” Perceval refers to the knights he met “an la lande,” i.e., in the Waste Forest near his mother’s house (967). In modern use the English word “heath” seems to have lost much of its original primary sense of “uncultivated land,” and is more frequently associated with the kind of low, scrubby vegetation often found in such places. I translate “lande” as “wasteland” to preserve the sense of “un-peopled woodland,” an important recurring motif throughout this romance, and to link the Waste Forest in which Perceval was raised with the kind of country that has produced some of the most threatening figures of knighthood, including li Orguilleus and the Red Knight.

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maiden’s lover and Perceval himself, takes no notice of the damage he

inflicts on ladies in his arrogant willfulness. Although that splash of

wine may seem a trivial matter to him, it does not strike Guinevere as a

small insult. On the contrary, Arthur declares:

“Ci ot oevre laide et vilainne,Que la reïne an est antree,De grant duel et d’ire anflamee,An sa chanbre ou ele s’ocit:Ne cuit pas, se Dex m’ait,Que ja an puise eschaper vive.” (942-47)

(“This was an ugly and base deed, and because of it the queen, burning with rage and great sorrow, has gone into her chamber where she is going to kill herself. And, so help me God, I don’t think she’ll ever come out of there alive.”

The ludicrous excess of Guinevere’s over-reaction to this slight should

not, however, overshadow the very real threat this knight poses to

Arthur and his realm. Arthur calls him:

“... li pire anemis que j’aieQui plus me het et plus m’esmaie,M’a ci ma terre contredite,Et tant es fos que tote quiteDit qu’il avra, ou vuelle ou non.” (925-29, emphasis added)

(“… the worst enemy I have, who hates and distresses me the most, who has disputed with me for my land and who is so crazy that he said he’ll have it all for himself, whether I like it or not.”)

This last phrase is another characteristic of arrogant knights. Perceval

frequently expresses himself in such terms: he told his mother that he

would go to become a knight “cui qu’il an poist” (477), he wrenched

the ring from the maiden’s hand “volsist ele ou non” (690), and he

eventually vows to bring his mother back to Biaurepere “voile ele ou

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non” (2926). This kind of language, in fact, is so characteristic of the

way Perceval habitually expresses himself that the reader should take

notice when others use similar expressions. Such language is

characteristically uttered by arrogant knights who, seeking to bend

the weak or defenseless to their overweening wills, also often express

their intentions in absolute terms. For instance, the outraged lover of

the tent maiden, after describing how he will wreak his vengeance,

exclaims, “Ja n’an ferai autre justise” (812), a phrase that

reverberates in Perceval’s determination to have the red armor (“Et

dahez ait qui alters quiert!”),69 and both Clamadeu and Anguingueron

will present their arrogant demands with similar force of will.

All of these knights seem to operate on the principle that might

makes right. The Red Knight offers no evidence of any legal basis to

his arrogant demand that Arthur cede him his kingdom; rather, he

simply challenges him for it, and then waits outside the castle until

Arthur sends a champion to oppose him. The Red Knight and others

like him engage in feats of arms apparently not for fame but for booty

(or, in the case of the Proud Knight, for revenge). Both here at

Carduel and later at Biaurepere where Clamadeu and Anguingueron

69 858: “And damn anyone who desires any other!” The exclamation by the tent maiden’s lover that he will not seek “any other justice” may remind the reader that “other justice” may be the “droite justise” that Count Philip loves, as we are told in the prologue (25). This is just one more small indication that the offended lover, and others of his ilk, are aligned with the vices of Alexander rather than the virtue of Philip.

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have besieged fair Blancheflor, the spoils of battle promise to be

considerable. We see these knights engaging not in stylized jousting

but in battles to the death: Clamadeu and Anguingueron, we will

learn, have killed more than two hundred knights in their assaults on

Blancheflor’s castle and, after Perceval’s abuse of the maiden of the

tent, her knight-companion will “seek nothing but battle and combat”

and will behead every knight who speaks to her (3783-92). Perceval,

however, so is obsessed with the thought of possessing the other

man’s glittering vermillion armor that he seems unaware of the mortal

danger presented by the Red Knight. For the same reason, he later

seems oblivious to the sarcastic malice that underlies Keu’s words

when, after Perceval demands that Arthur grant him the Red Knight’s

armor, Kay snidely exclaims:

“Amis, vos avez droit.Alez lui tolir orandroitLes armes, car eles sont voz.Ne feistes mie que sozQant por ce venistes ici.” (983-87)

(“Friend, you’re right! Go straightaway and seize those arms from him, they’re yours! You weren’t at all foolish when you came here to get them.”)

Perceval, as ever, hears what he wants to hear and, ignoring Arthur’s

rebuke of Keu for promising the boy a reward he is powerless to

provide, rushes out of the castle to claim the armor Arthur has “given”

him. When he reaches the Red Knight, arrogant force meets rash

violence, and rashness wins. Both the Red Knight and Perceval act in

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anger, and that anger gets the Red Knight killed by a Welsh javelin.

So instinctively does Perceval retaliate against the Red Knight’s

thumping him with the butt of his lance, that it quickly becomes clear

why Perceval’s mother had tried to get him to leave his javelins at

home. The lad gives no more thought to killing the knight than he

would have given to downing a deer for dinner.70

By defeating the Red Knight in single combat (of a thoroughly

unconventional sort), Perceval inadvertently frees Arthur’s kingdom

from a grave threat. However, by donning his victim’s red armor and

assuming the persona of the “Red Knight,” he also becomes, at least

potentially, an even greater danger to himself and others. With the

armor covering his rough Welsh garb, Perceval appears to be a

knight, even while he remains ignorant of the purpose and practices

of chivalry. His rash and impulsive aggressive tendencies are given

the protection, and the greater potential for harm, afforded by the

chain mail that will make him impervious to arrows and by the lance

that will extend the reach of his offensive thrusts. Mounted upon a

knight’s powerful charger, the new Red Knight is potentially as

dangerous as the former one, the potency of his threat mitigated only

by his ignorance of the weapons he bears.

70 When he tries unsuccessfully to claim the coveted booty of the red armor, he even contemplates jointing his victim as he would slaughtered game.

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Knights of the Court: Vilenie Restrained

C’est l’ordre de chevalerieQui doit estre sanz vilenie . (1617-18)71

erceval, in his condition as the new Red Knight, is a very figure

of the dangers of chivalry unfettered by the restraints of

convention: moved by force of will, lacking any compunction in using

force to achieve that will, equipped with both arms and armor that

maximize the damage he can inflict and the punishment he can

withstand, Perceval is utterly aimless, his steps and his purpose

equally undirected. He is the very embodiment of that errantry, both

of the body and of the will, that we have termed curiositas: distraction

from the path of Charity. Wandering about in this state, Perceval is a

danger to himself and to others, a fact that Gornemant recognizes

when the crude young “knight” shows up outside his castle.

Gornemant quickly offers him the rudiments of chivalric training and,

while Perceval quickly demonstrates a natural aptitude for skill in

arms, this is not the only skill Gornemant hopes to impart, for he

knows that there is more to chivalry than physical prowess.

P

Before Perceval, by virtue of Gornemant’s instruction and

patronage, reaches the point at which the rest of the world will

recognize him as a knight (before he even realizes that such

71 “This is the order of chivalry, which should be without villainy.”

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recognition is necessary or desirable), he has already achieved what

he himself believes to be the essential marks of knighthood, although

to all educated eyes he remains a “Welshman” in every meaningful

sense of the word. From the first moment, Perceval equated the

essence of being a knight with “wearing armor while mounted on a

horse.”72 Once Gornemant has shown him the proper use of arms,

Perceval is more or less the peer of the knights we have already

examined: possessed of arms, knowledgeable and skillful in their use,

he also has a tendency to use them to exert his own will upon others.

Only superficially does he resemble the conventional courtly knight,

however, for his aggressive potential has, as yet, no limits or

restraints.

Gornemant is the first knight of courtly mold that Perceval meets

(aside from the wounded knights in Arthur’s great hall, whom the

ignorant youth perhaps did not recognize as knights at all), and he

presents a marked contrast to such crude figures as the jealous

paramour of the maiden of the tent and the threatening Red Knight of

Quinqueroi. Gornemant is settled: unlike the mobile pavilion of the

72 That Perceval perceives being mounted is an important aspect of knighthood is attested by his refusal to dismount, even when requested to do so, in Arthur’s great hall (“The knights I met on the heath never dismounted” etc., 966-70). Although he must perforce dismount to achieve certain desires (kisses from the maiden of the tent, the armor off the Red Knight’s corpse), the first time he dismounts at the behest of another is when Gornemant asks him to get down so that he can instruct him the use of arms. He seems to have taken a very literal understanding of the name “chevaliers” (i.e., horseman).

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errant Orguilleus (who, one suspects, roams about looking for trouble),

Gornemant’s castle is so well-seated that it seems to grow up right out

of the rock on which it is founded, and its lord gives the air of being

equally settled, as he calmly strolls out to meet Perceval robed in

ermine and attended by two squires. Gornemant is clement: his

willingness to indulge the rudeness of the strange young Welshman, to

tutor him and lodge him, stands in sharp counterpoint to the

impatience and irascibility of knights previously met. One senses

immediately that the rustic youth, upon entering Gornemant’s domain,

is entering a life hitherto unsampled: comfortable, secure, ordered,

even lavish. The tutelage that Gornemant offers the boy will teach him

finesse not only in arms but also in manners, for Gornemant realizes

that technical skill must be restrained and guided by social principles.73

Thus, although his young protégé is determined to leave him as soon as

he has gained some skill in the use of arms, Gornemant insists that he

accept a cursory lesson in the comportment of the well-mannered

knight.

This further tutelage begins Perceval’s transition from rough

bully to courtly knight. Many critics have considered this process of

73 As Donald Maddox shows in The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes: Once and Future Fictions, even willful and aggressive knights who operate outside the Arthurian system know how to manipulate the customs of knighthood: the Orguilleus uses and abuses the so-called “custom of Logres” in his persecution of knights who approach “his” maiden, and the Red Knight similarly makes ill use of the custom of single combat — both of these conventions are designed to keep armed men from running rampant without the restraint of law or custom.

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transformation to be the central theme of the romance: the gradual

progress from a state of uncultured adolescence to the point of being

recognized as the epitome of courtly chivalry, equally skilled in feats

of arms and social graces.74 It remains to be seen, however, whether a

close examination of the effects of Gornemant’s ethical and social

instruction will reveal it to be more than a superficial improvement

over the willful arrogance of the knights encountered up to this point.

Impressed with Perceval’s natural aptitude for the martial

aspects of knighthood, Gornemant is prepared to invest him formally

with the order of chivalry, but Perceval’s speech and dress indicate

that he lacks the social polish that would allow him to mix easily in

polite circles. The young man’s superficial crudeness, however, belies

an innate quality of character which seems to shine through his rough

manner, as noticed by the members of Arthur’s court when he burst

into the hall to demand that Arthur knight him: “No one who saw him

considered him wise, but all who saw him held him to be handsome

and noble” (956-58: “Nus qui le voit nel tient a saige, / Mes trestuit cil

qui le veoient / Por bele et por gent le tenoient”). Arthur himself was

impressed by the raw potential he discerned in the boy, as he said

when he reprimanded Keu for his sarcastic treatment of the lad:

74 Maddox points out that this tendency to read the Perceval narrative as a Bildungsroman is unnecessarily reductive, and obscures other important considerations (88 n. 13). My own reading shows that Perceval’s “development” as a knight is both limited and illusory.

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“… se li vaslez est nices,S’est il espoir mout gentix hom,Et se ce li vient d’aprisonQu’il ait esté a vilain mestre,Ancor puet preuz et saiges estre.” (992-996)

(“Although the lad is ignorant, he may be a very well-born man, and if this [i.e., his ignorance] comes from instruction that he had from a vulgar teacher, he may yet prove brave and wise.”)

Arthur seemed to discern some innate nobility in the boy, and

therefore assumed that his rude behavior reflected the influence of a

vilain, or low-born, teacher. In the light of Arthur’s words, then, it is

likely that Gornemant is motivated by a measure of self-interest in his

determination to tutor the boy in social skills, for Perceval’s manners

from here on out will reflect upon “the vavasor who attached [his]

spur” (1666-67). In fact, Gornemant refuses to give Perceval his spurs

until he has cast off his rustic garb and consents to wear the fine

clothes that his mentor provides. Only when Perceval has donned the

daintier garments does Gornemant invest him with arms and the

instructions of knighthood.

Gornemant seems to mix practical social tips indiscriminately

with more formal ethical rules: in addition to sparing conquered foes,

aiding women in distress, and praying for God’s assistance, Perceval

must refrain from idle chatter and from the constant references to his

mother that make him sound naive. Perceval’s inept interpretation of

how to implement these instructions provides a good deal of comedy in

the following episode at Biaurepere, and in the episode at Grail Castle

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the narrator will draw attention to Perceval’s inappropriate obsession

with the prohibition against talking too much. The impression thus

created is that Perceval’s ignorance prevents him from discerning the

difference between mere social tips and serious principles of conduct.

However, a close look at the passage in question reveals that, while the

admonition not to go on quoting his mother may simply be good

advice,75 the prohibition against talkativeness is presented as being just

as binding upon a knight as the rules of showing mercy and assisting

helpless women. After noting that the order of chivalry must be kept

free of any vilenie, Gornemant elaborates on how this is to be

accomplished:

“Biau[s] frere, or vos sovaingne,Se il avient qu’il vos covaingneCombatre a aucun chevalier,Ice vos voel dire et proier:Se vos an venez au desus,Que vers vos ne se puisse plus Desfandre ne contretenir,Einz l’estuisse a merci venire,Qu’a escïant ne l’ociëz.Et gardez que vos ne soiezTrop parlanz ne trop noveliers:Nus ne puet estre trop parliersQue sovant tel chose ne dieQu’an li atort a vilenie;Et li saiges dit et retret:‘Qui trop parole pechié fet.’Por ce, biau[s] frere, vos chastiDe trop parler. Et si vos pri,Se vos trovez pucele ou fame,

75 1672-73: “… li est vis / Que ce est biens qu’il ansaigne” (“What he was instructed to do seemed good to him”).

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Ou soit dameisele ou soit dame,Desconselliee d’aunune rien,Conselliez la, si feroiz bien,Se vos consellier la savezEt se le pooir en avez.” (1619-42)

(“Fair brother, I remind you now, if it happens that you are forced to do combat with any knight, I tell you and beg of you this: If you gain the upper hand so that he no longer can defend himself or hold out against you, but he is forced to beg for mercy, certainly do not kill him deliberately. And be careful not to be too talkative or too gossipy; no one can be too talkative without often saying something that people consider rude; and the wise man says and recounts: ‘He who talks too much commits a sin.’ For this reason, fair brother, I forbid you to talk too much. And I also bid you, if you find a maiden or a woman, be she damsel or lady, who is in need of any help, assist her and you’ll do well, if you know how to help her and if you have the power to do so.”)

All of this seems to be presented as a single rule with three parallel

clauses that deal with how to behave toward others, while a second,

separate rule relates to religious observance:

“Autre chose vos apraing,Et nel tenez mie a desdaing,Car ne fet mie a desdaignier:Volantiers alez au mostierProier Celui qui tot a faitQue de vostre ame merci aitEt qu’an cest siegle terrïenVos gart come son crestïen.”

(“I’ll teach you another thing, and by no means regard it with disdain, for it should certainly not be scorned: Go willingly to church to pray Him who made everything to have mercy on your soul and in this earthly age to keep you as his Christian.”)

At first glance, these two rules seem to correspond to the double law

of Charity — virtuous behavior toward one’s neighbor and toward

God. If this is a correct assessment, then the conventions of chivalry

provide more than a simple mitigation of the willful aggression of rude

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knights such as the Orguilleus and the Red Knight — they actually

instill Charity. But is this in fact the case?

Almost immediately, we have an opportunity to test the

hypothesis that the chivalrous code (as articulated by Gornemant) is

designed to instill Charity. The episode that follows Perceval’s

departure from Gornemant’s castle shows the new knight putting into

practice for the first time the instruction he has received from the

vavasor. Putting aside, for the moment, the complex question of

Perceval’s personal character and motivation, let us consider more

generally the practice of courtly knighthood and judge whether the

code of chivalry, as iterated by Gornemant and generally practiced by

himself and others, provides a sufficient corrective to the outrageous

exercise of voluntas propria that characterizes the aggressive and

willful exemplars of knighthood that we have already seen. Perceval’s

arrival at the besieged Biaurepere gives us ample opportunity to see

these chivalrous principles in practice.

Defense of the Helpless

One of the most important of these principles is the defense of

helpless women, “whether they be damsels or ladies.” The mistress of

the castle at which Perceval arrives after leaving Gornemant has been

besieged for many months and her defenses have been sadly reduced,

leaving only a handful of knights and four men-at-arms, who are

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enfeebled by famine and long watches (1725-28). We learn, however,

that the maiden is not entirely bereft men who might assist her — she

mentions that the fine gentleman with whom Perceval spent the

previous night, Gornemant de Gohortz, is her own uncle, who appears

to be thriving while his niece, less than a day’s ride away, languishes

in famine and peril:

“Mout lié ostel et mout joiant Vos fist, que il le sot bien faire Come prodom et deboneire,Puissanz et aeisiez et riches.Mes ceanz n’a mes que cinc miches …” (1887-90)

(“He showed you very happy and joyful hospitality, as he knows well how to do, being a worthy and well-born man, powerful and comfortable and rich. But here there are no more than five crumbs … ”)

The contrast between the pitiful state of the maiden and her

dependents and the ease and comfort of her uncle could hardly be

starker. One must wonder why this fine gentleman, who taught

Perceval that a knight must aid women in distress, has not himself

rescued his niece who lives so nearby.76 “But,” the maiden says, “I’ve

not seen him for a good long while” (1882: “Me je nel vi mout a grant

piece”).77 One can hardly excuse Gornemant by saying that the

76 As Per Nykrog points out in Chrétien de Troyes: Romancier discutable (191-92), Gornmenant’s deficiencies as a knight and a gentleman are noticeable only in retrospect, when the reader realizes the prodhom’s apparent detachment from his niece’s plight.

77 We should recall that Gornemant couched his instruction to render aid in terms that suggested that the knight should not indulge in rash heroism (“Do so if you know how and if you are able”). Self-interest is always hovering in the background of these rules of chivalry.

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situation is too much for one man to make any difference, for even the

“five crumbs” that she does have to eat (along with a small cask of

brandy) have been sent by another uncle, not a rich nobleman but “a

prior, a very holy and religious man” (1891-92: “prïeus, / Mout sainz

hom et religïeus”).78 If a man vowed to a life of religious poverty can

spare food from his table, surely the uncle who is “powerful, well

cared for, and rich,” who “knows well” how to dine and lodge chance

guests, should be able to make some effort, but apparently he has not

done so.

The maiden, however, does not speak harshly of her rich but

neglectful uncle Gornemant. Perhaps she has learned to expect little

help from knights. She allows Perceval to go to bed without his

expressing any concern for (or even notice of) her sad plight, but she

herself remains sleepless, tormented by her desperate situation and

the knowledge that her handsome young guest may leave without

offering any help. Again, the narrator creates a sharp contrast

between an unhelpful knight and a desperate maiden:

Si s’andormi auques par tans, Qu’il n’estoit de rien an espans. Mes s’ostesse pas ne resposeQui an sa chanbre estoit anclose.Cil dort a eise, et cele panse … (1923-27)

78 Note the adjectives used to describe the two uncles: Gornemant, a knight and a prodom, is “powerful, comfortable, and wealthy,” while the prior is “very holy and religious.” It is clear which is in a better position to render aid to this besieged young niece.

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(And he fell asleep quite promptly, for he hadn’t a care. But his hostess cannot rest, closeted in her chamber. He sleeps at ease, and she frets …)

Again, the maiden does not blame the knight for failing to rush to her

defense — she seems to understand that she must engage his self-

interest before she can hope to win his assistance. First she tries the

lure of sex-appeal, arriving at his bed scantily dressed, and she

deliberately draws attention to her state of déshabille by apologizing

for it and for her copious tears which wakened him as they dripped

onto his face. Fortunately for her, Perceval knows nothing of sexual

pleasures (see 1920-21) and fails to take full advantage of the situation,

but neither does he make any pledge to defend her.79 However, when

he invites her to sleep beside him, the young woman knows that she is

on the point of achieving her purpose:

Par tans se porra aloserLi chevaliers, se fere l’ose, C‘onques cele or autre chose Ne vint plorer desor sa face,Que que ele antandant li face,Fors por ce qu’ele li meist An corage que il anprïestLa batille, s’il l’ose anprandrePor sa terre et por li desfandre. (2019-26)

(Soon the knight will be able to win himself glory, if he dares, for she never wept over his face for any other reason, whatever she may have led him to believe, except to encourage him to undertake the battle for her lands and to defend her, if he dared to do so.)

79 One might also say “unfortunately,” for he fails to rise to the bait that she dangles in front of him. There is some ambivalence in her tactic, for the young lady finds herself compelled to offer in payment for his assistance the same sexual favors that she has vowed, upon pain of death, to deny to the knight who holds her besieged.

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Although Perceval seems oblivious to her purpose, the maiden is clear

in her own mind what her game is: she will dangle before him not only

the promise of winning fame, but also the lure of her lands and her

druerie, prizes that she would expect to tempt any knight to take up

her cause. Perceval seems to have little interest in acquiring her

property but, the next day, he does agree to defend her, on one

condition:

“ … se je l’oci et conquier, Vostre druërie requireAn guerredon qu’el soit moie:Autres soldees n’an prandroie.” (2083-86) 80

(“If I kill and conquer [your enemy], I demand that your love-service be mine, as recompense; I’ll take no other payment.”)

Both parties seem to be agreeing to a transaction that benefits each

side: she gets a protector and he gets a lady-love. There is no

suggestion on either part that he is acting out of kindness, or even

under obligation to the chivalric code. Furthermore, the maiden

herself seems to accept the mercenary character of their agreement

just as equitably as she does the fact that her rich uncle never

troubles himself on her account — she could not, after all, offer her

uncle the same recompense that she agrees to pay Perceval.

80 This last phrase, echoing as it does the Proud Knight’s “Ja n’an ferai autre justise,” sounds more like an ultimatum than a courteous appeal.

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Mercy to the Defeated

The courtly code of chivalry, then, in its expectation that knights

will assist helpless females does not demand that the champion go

unrewarded: he is entitled to both her property and her person. Is there

a similar element of self-interest in the rule of mercy toward conquered

opponents? Perceval’s engagement with Anguingueron seems to suggest

that there is. The rule of mercy is tested as soon as Perceval sallies out

to engage Anguingueron, who holds the castle under siege.

Anguingueron greets him haughtily and the boy quickly takes offense.

Newly schooled in the art of chivalrous combat, the boy does not strike

his opponent as impulsively as he launched a lance through the

unprotected eye of the Red Knight, but rather he takes the time to set

himself up for a proper joust, setting his lance and charging against

Anguingueron. After he unseats his opponent, Perceval remembers that

Gornemant taught him that the combat should be continued on foot and

he dismounts to attack with his sword. Thus, Perceval’s following the

approved form of battle probably saves Anguingeron’s life, for had

Perceval simply reacted in the heat of anger, he might have dispatched

his opponent as impulsively as he did the Red Knight. Instead, he uses

the techniques he has been taught, drawing out the combat until the

wounded Anguingueron falls under Perceval’s repeated blows and begs

for mercy. Perceval at first refuses, but then remembers that his mentor

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told him never to kill a bested knight who pleads for mercy.

Anguingueron takes advantage of this moment of hesitation to argue the

benefit of sparing his life — namely, that his victim will become a

walking advertisement of Perceval’s prowess:

“Biax amis dolz,Or ne soiez pas si estolz81

Que vos n’aiez merci de moi.Je vos creant bien et otroiQue ja en est li miaudres tuensEt chevaliers iés tu mout buens,Mes non pas tant qu’il fust creüD’ome qui ne l’eüst veüEt qui nos coneüst andeusQue tu par tes armes toz seusM’aüsses an bataille mort.Mes se je le temoing t’an portQue tu m’aies d’armes oltréVean mes genz, devant mon tré,Ma parole an sera creüeEt t’enors an sera seüe,C’onques chevaliers n’ot greignor.” (2207-25)

(“Fair sweet friend, now don’t be so haughty or foolish that you fail to show me mercy. I concede and grant you that you have the better of me and you are a very good knight, but not so good that a man who hadn’t seen it and who knew us both would believe that you had killed me single-handed in armed combat. But if I testify and bear witness that you have bested me at arms with all my men watching, in front of my own tent, my word will be believed and your fame will made known, greater than any knight has ever had.”)

Anguingueron is as crafty in his manipulation of Perceval as the

besieged maiden was: both appeal to Perceval’s sense of self-interest by

81 Note that estolz can mean either fierce/arrogant (a synonym of orguilleus) or foolish (derived from Latin stultus, synonym of nice). From what we know of Perceval, we have every reason to suspect that Chrétien is playing with both meanings, thus drawing yet another parallel between the rash young Welshman and more arrogant and brutal knights such as li Vermauz Chevaliers de la Forest de Quinqueroi (whose identity Perceval unwittingly assumed when he donned his armor) and li Orguilleus de la Lande.

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promising him fame and glory if he will accede to their requests.82 Both

cases, also, can be read as transactions that have benefits on both sides:

here, Anguingueron retains his life and Perceval advertises his own

prowess. It takes some negotiating to make the transaction work out to

the satisfaction of both parties, because they are operating according to

two separate sets of principles: Perceval’s first thought is to hand his

prisoner over to Blancheflor, since she is the person whom he most

wishes to please and since he implicitly trusts that she will respect the

principle of mercy; Anguingueron protests, because he assumes that she

would act on the motivation of revenge. Perceval’s second choice, to

send Anguingueron to his mentor Gornemant, creates a similar impasse.

The bargain is not struck until Perceval remembers that he has vowed to

avenge the maiden Keu struck for predicting his supremacy and,

accordingly, he decides that the conquered knight must go to Arthur.

Anguingueron apparently has not killed anyone closely connected to

Arthur’s court, and thus fears no violent reprisals there, for he willingly

agrees to this arrangement.

Sins of Speech

In the end, Perceval’s decision to send Anguingueron to Arthur’s

court could hardly have served the cause of his fame better. When

82 We should note that Perceval does not necessarily respond to their enticements for the reasons they expect; nonetheless, it is important to recognize that both Blancheflor and Anguingueron expect the young knight to respond to an appeal to vainglory.

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first Anguingueron and, shortly thereafter, his master Clamadeu

arrive at Arthur’s court, Arthur immediately recognizes in their

descriptions of the red-armored knight who defeated them the brash

young Welshman who so effortlessly liberated Arthur’s realm from an

imminent threat. By the time the Orguilleus de la Lande arrives a few

days afterward, defeated by the same young knight, Arthur’s interest

in Perceval will be so piqued that he will set off in quest of this

anonymous young man of prowess, and take his whole court with him.

As Arthur becomes aware of each of Perceval’s conquests, he

berates Keu for alienating such a promising young knight through his

rash and imprudent speech. Misuse of his tongue seems to be Keu’s

besetting sin, for every mention of him in this romance includes some

reference to his felon gap, his malicious and sarcastic comments which

the whole court fears (see 2776 ff). Polite speech is highly valued at

Arthur’s court, as attested early in the narrative by Arthur’s rebuke of

Keu after he maliciously urges the Welsh boy to go seize the Red

Knight’s armor as his own:

“Kex, fet li rois, por Deu merci!Trop dites volantiers enui,Si ne vos chaut onques a cui. A prodome est ce mout lez vices. Por ce, se li vaslez est nices,S’est il espoir mout gentix hom,E se ce li vient d’aprisonQu’il ait esté a vilain mestre,Ancor puet prez et saiges estre. Vilenie est d’autrui gaber

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Et de prometre sanz doner.” (988-98)

(“Keu,” said the king, “For the love of God! You are too eager to speak ill, and it doesn’t matter to whom. This is a terrible vice in a gentleman. So, even though the lad is ignorant, yet he may be a very well-born man, and if this [i.e., his ignorance] comes from instruction that he had from a vulgar teacher, he may yet prove brave and wise. It is wicked to mock another and to promise without giving.”) 

Vilenie is mentioned twice in this passage, once with reference to

Perceval’s rude behavior, and once to describe Keu’s sarcastic and

spiteful words. The message is clear enough: an ill-educated boy may

get away with rudeness, but in a courtly knight it is downright

shameful.

The connection between rude speech and vilenie is an important

one, first introduced in the prologue when Chrétien is praising the

virtue of his patron Philip. After stating that Alexander “had amassed

in himself all the vices and all the evils of which the count is clean and

safe” (18-20), Chrétien specifies one of the vices that Philip shuns:

““The count … does not heed vulgar gossip or arrogant speech83 … he

hates all vulgarity [tote vilenie] … “(21-22, 27). The clear implication

is that those who do pay attention to low talk, slander, and gossip are

vicious, like Alexander. We have already noted that Alexander is

closely associated with vainglory and worldly concerns — such a man

is concerned about his reputation and others’ opinions of him;

therefore it is understandable that he would pay heed to gossip about

83 Here Chrétien uses the phrase parole estote, which as mentioned in an earlier note, may be rendered either “foolish” or “haughty” speech.

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himself and others. Philip, however, not only refrains from such vulgar

practices himself, but doesn’t like to hear of others engaging in them,

either. Gossip and arrogant talk are counted among the tote vilenie

that Philip hates. Arthur’s court, however, is apparently not able to

take the virtuous high road of ignoring malicious gossip; everyone at

court fears Keu because of the harm his nasty speech can do them:

Ses felons gas, sa lengue maleDotent trestuit, si li font rote,Qu’il n’est pas sages qui ne dote, Ou soit a gas ou soit a certes,Felenies trop descovertes.Ses felons gas trop redotoientTrestuit cil qui leanz estoient,C’onques nus a lui ne parla. (2776-83)

(Everyone fears his cruel mockery, his evil tongue, and they make way for him; for he is not wise who fails to fear maliciousness made too public, whether it be said in jest or in truth. Everyone who was nearby was feared his cruel wit too much, so no one ever spoke to him.)

Arthur blames Keu for the way his mockery of Perceval drove a

potential ally from the court (2846-47), and the maiden Keu struck

considers his insult a more grievous injury than the blow itself:

De la bufe que ele ot priseEstoit ele bien respassee,Mes oblïess ne passeeLa honte n’avoit ele mie,Que mout es malvés qui oblieS’an li fet honte ne leidure:Dolors trespasse et honte dureAn home viguereus et roide,Et el malvés muert et refroide. (2863-72)

(She had recovered completely from the blow she had received, but she had not at all forgotten or recovered from the shame, for anyone who forgets that someone has done him shame or injury is very

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cowardly: pain passes away and shame endures in a vigorous, hardy man, but in a coward it grows cold and dies.)

What makes public insults both a fearsome weapon and a serious

social infraction, then, is the wound to reputation that they cause:

honte or shame. Keu’s vile insults are condemned as vilenie (997:

“Vilenie est d’autrui gaber”), a term which encompasses all sort of

social faux pas, which range in severity from the oafishness Perceval

exhibits when he first clatters into Arthur’s hall on horseback to the

deliberate maliciousness of Keu’s cruel insults, a whole range of

offenses against the code of polite conduct implicit in courtly life. On

the most literal level, the vilains is the man of low birth, living below

the social stratum of corteisie — when Perceval meets a charcoal-

burner on his way to find Arthur, he greets the man as “vilains” or

peasant; by transference, when applied to a person of noble birth

and upbringing, vilenie becomes a reproach against the person’s

behavior and can refer simply to bad manners (as in the reference to

Perceval above) or to outright wickedness. In its most grievous

forms, vilenie can be considered a deadly offense: when Perceval

first meets Arthur, the king explains that he is distracted because of

the Red Knight’s offense against the queen, who, in carelessly

spilling wine on her when he snatched Arthur’s golden goblet,

committed an “oevre villainne et laide” so serious that Guinevere

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was on the point of suicide and the king was distracted from the

imminent threat to his kingdom.

Chivalry’s Defects

In light of the importance of this kind of social infraction, we

should re-examine the code of chivalrous conduct that Gornemant

teaches Perceval. As noted earlier, that instruction falls into two

parts, the first of which refers to behavior toward others while the

second deals with religious observance. Both are prefaced by the

statement that the order of knighthood must be maintained sanz

vilenie. If we read “vilenie” in its generally applicable sense of

“socially unacceptable behavior,” it becomes clearer why Gornemant’s

prohibition against gabbiness is wedged between the rule of showing

mercy to the defeated and that of assisting distressed women: all

three are guidelines designed to keep the knight from committing

vilenie. They restrain the knight from the kind of violent excesses of

force and willfulness that characterize the opponents Perceval defeats

— the Red Knight, Anguingueron and Clamadeu, the Proud Knight of

the Wilderness — by placing social constraints on their speech and

actions. Yet these rules cannot, nor do they pretend to, affect the

knight’s motivation — only his behavior. The motivation of the courtly

knight, like that of wilderness knights, remains essentially selfish, for

each of the rules of chivalry can easily be interpreted (and frequently

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is) in terms of self-interest: advertising one’s prowess by sparing

defeated opponents who can attest to that prowess; protecting one’s

reputation by avoiding loose talk that might cause offense; increasing

one’s worldly goods by defending women who reward the successful

protector with their lands and their love-service.

Self-Interest

Our analysis of the rules of chivalry articulated by Gornemant

suggests that even courtly chivalry, which is superficially superior to

the rough practices of the ignorant young Perceval and the unbridled

excesses of self-willed knights, falls short of the criterion of Charity.

Courtly practice may look like Charity, but it is truly nothing more

than fause ypocrisie motivated by la vainne gloire. It is, in fact, a life

motivated by voluntas propria, superficially generous in its defense

of the helpless and clemency toward the defeated, but far removed

from the charitable life which is truly concerned with the good of the

other. In light of this, the brief passage quoted at the beginning of

this chapter (1305: “Torna li vaslez a senestre …”) takes on a truly

sinister ring: when Perceval turns to the left to approach the castle

of Gornemant, the vavasor who will instruct him in the way of courtly

knighthood, he is in fact turning away from the life of Charity.

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Idleness

Even if we failed to notice this serious defect at the core of

courtly chivalry, we could hardly fail to be struck by the ineffectual

character of Arthurian chivalry. In our first real glimpse of it,

Arthurian chivalry seems curiously inert and incapable of responding

to an immediate threat presented by a single knight: as the Red

Knight waits outside the castle walls for a champion to oppose him,

Perceval wanders into the great hall unannounced and unchallenged.

No one even seems to notice the young horseman riding among the

tables full of knights enjoying their dinner:

Jus qu’a la cort n’a atanduOu li rois et li chevalierEstoient asis au mangier.La sale fu par terre aval,Et li vaslez antre a chevalAn la sale qui mout fu leeEt longue et de marbre pavee.Et li rois Artus fu asisAu chief d’une table pansis;Et tuit li chevalier manjoient,Et li un as autres parloient,Fors lui qui fu pansis et muz.Li vaslez est avant venuz, N’il ne set le quel il salut,Que le roi miene conut,Tant qu’Yonez contre li vintQui an sa main un costel tint. (880-96)

(He didn’t stop until he reached court, where the king and the knightswere seated to eat. The hall was on the ground level, and the lad entered on horseback into the hall, which was wide and long, and paved with marble. And king Arthur was seated at the head of a table, preoccupied; and all the knights were eating and talking to each other, except for him, as he sat mute and distracted. The lad came forward, and he didn’t know whom to greet — for he certainly didn’t

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recognize the king — until Yonet came toward him, holding a knife in his hand.)

The contrast between the mute king and the knights pleasantly

chatting and eating only underscores the inertia of the sovereign and

the knights’ lack of concern for the brooding menace lurking outside.

The Red Knight’s rude entrance into the hall, when he brashly

demanded Arthur’s kingdom and snatched the cup from his hand, is

now echoed by the arrival of the boorish young Welshman, demanding

to be knighted and knocking the cap from the king’s head. This court

seems doomed to be overrun by anyone with the will to do so, and we

must agree with Perceval that this glum, pensive Arthur seems no

king at all. The significance of Perceval’s inadvertent act of salvation

in killing the Red Knight is undercut by the fact that he has simply

done what none of Arthur’s knights bothered to do, i.e., respond to the

Red Knight’s insolence.

One might defend the court against the charge of lassitude by

arguing that all the knights in the hall are wounded and therefore

unable to joust against the Red Knight, while the able-bodied knights of

the realm are away tending to affairs on their own feudal estates. If this

were the only glimpse we had of Arthur’s court, such an argument might

have some force, but we have other opportunities to judge the integrity

and salubrity of this society-in-miniature. We have already noted that

Gornemant seems to neglect his niece, whose fortress has been under

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siege for many months; Gornemant may also be one of the knights

whose absence from court makes the king angry, as related by the

peasant Perceval met along the road on his way to find Arthur:

“Li Rois des Isles fu vaincuz, Et de c’est li rois Artus liez;Et de ses conpaignons iriezQui as chastiax se departirent,La ou lemeillor sejor virent,N’il ne set comant il or va:De c’est li diax que li rois a.” (832-38)

(“The King of the Isles has been vanquished, and about this King Arthur is glad; but he’s angry about his companions who have left for their castles, where they find the stay more pleasant, and he doesn’t know how they are faring: that’s why the king is troubled.”)

It seems that Arthur is no better served by his knights away from court

than he is by those present. Gornemant is apparently aware of Arthur’s

troubles, for when Perceval claims that Arthur has knighted him,

Gornemant replies, “So help me God, I shouldn’t have thought that he

would remember such things at this time. I’d think he would be occupied

with other things than making knights”84; nonetheless, he does not stir to

help Arthur, any more than he goes to the aid of his niece Blancheflor.

Hypocrisy

At least two other charges, in addition to that of idleness, may

be leveled against Arthur and his knights. The first is that they

tolerate, in the very bosom of the court, a man who repeatedly and

84 1352-55: “Se Dex bien me doint, / Ne cuidoie c’or an cest point / De tel chose li sovenist. / D’el cuidoie qu’il li tenist / Au roi que de chevalier faire.”

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continuously commits hurtful “sins” of speech, in violation of one of

the three cardinal rules of chivalrous behavior. The members of the

court seem to fear Keu’s insults more than they would an armed

opponent. Although Arthur complains bitterly of the cost of Keu’s

caustic comments, he does nothing to correct or punish him. He does

not even upbraid him for his brutal treatment of the laughing maiden

and the court fool, whom Keu kicked into the fireplace. Far from being

censured, Keu is one of the king’s favorites, as we learn after Keu’s

arm and collar bone are broken by Perceval: “And the king, who felt

very tenderly toward [Keu] and loved him dearly in his heart, sent him

a most learned surgeon …” (4304-06: “Et li rois, qui mout l’avoit

tandre / Et mout l’amoit an son corage, / li anvoie un mire mout sage

…”). Keu’s privileged position at court is a public testimony to the

fause ypocrisie of the court.85

Curiosity

The court suffers also from a fault alluded to at the beginning of

this chapter: curiositas. It seems that Arthur has an insatiable

appetite for novelty, to such an extent that he frequently moves the

court from one location to the next. When Perceval first meets up with

him, Arthur is at Carduel; by the time Clamadeu and Anguingueron

85 See Saccone’s “La Parola di Dio e la parola di Chrétien nel Conte du Graal: La Vera storia di Perceval” for one possible explanation of Arthur’s tolerance of Keu. Saccone draws interesting parallels between Arthur’s relationship to his favored underlings and the Biblical account of King David’s indulgence of his children.

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reach the court to turn themselves over as prisoners, Arthur and his

entourage are at Disnadaron; a few days later, the Proud Knight and

his damsel catch up with them at Carlion. One must wonder how any

of them knew where to find Arthur, whose vagrancy might otherwise

seem designed to elude pursuers. Within a week or two, Arthur has

changed the seat of his court several times, and after the Proud

Knight’s testimony to Perceval’s prowess the king is ready to set off

again, this time in quest of the mysterious young Red Knight.

Explaining to Gauvain (who was absent when Perceval stumbled into

the great hall at Carduel) that this young Welshman once amazed the

court by single-handedly defeating the threatening Red Knight of

Quinqueroi, Arthur vows to go in quest of him:

“Puis m’a si bien a gré serviQue par mon seignor saint DaviQu l’an aore et prie en Gales,Ja mes an chanbres ne an salesDeus nuiz pres a pres ne girraiJus qu’atant que je le verraiS’il es vis, an mer ou an terre,Einz movrai ja por l’aler querre.” (4099-4106)

(“'Since then he has served me so willingly that, by my lord St. David, whom they worship and pray to in Wales, I’ll never again lie in the same chamber or hall two nights in a row until I see him, if he’s alive on sea or on land. Rather, I’ll set out at once to go looking for him.”)

This vow to go questing is framed in terms quite similar to the those

that Perceval will propose for his own quest to learn about the grail

and lance. Arthur’s quest, however, seems quite silly, because the

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entire court packs up to go with him, which the narrator relates in

such a way as to make sure the reader notes the humor:

Lués que li rois ot ce juréSi furent tuit asseüréQu’il n’i avoit que de l’aler.Qui lors veïst dras anmalerEt covertors et oreilliers,Cofres anplir, trosser somiers,Et chargier charretes et charsQu’il n’ an mainent mie a escharsTantes et pavellons et trez:Uns clrs sages et bien letrezNe poïst escrire an un jorTot le hernois et tot l’ator Qui fu aparelliez tantost.Ensi con por aler an l’ostSe part li rois de Carlion,Si le sivent tuit li baron;Neïs pucele n’i remaintQue la reïne ne l’i maintPor hautesce et por seignorie. (4107-4125)

(After the king had made this oath, they were all assured that there was nothing to do but go. You should have seen them packing bed clothes and coverlets and pillows, filling trunks and packing bags, and loading carts and wagons, for they certainly didn’t skimp on tents and pavilions and shelters: a wise and learned clerk wouldn’t be able to write down in a single day all the equipment and provisions that were quickly made ready. Thus, as if he were setting off for war, the king took leave of Carlion, and all his barons followed him. Not a single maiden stayed behind, for the queen, as befitted her majesty and nobility, would not leave without them.)

In this ludicrous scene, we see that the entire court, from Arthur on

down, is driven by aimless curiosity to wander the countryside in

hopes of running across the young knight who has so captured their

imaginations, when one might suppose that the king and his court had

concerns of greater weight to occupy them.

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The lasting impression made by Arthur and his court is one of

utter frivolity: they greet Perceval’s hostages not as vicious criminals

subdued but as interesting new additions to the courtly scene; they

wander vaguely about the countryside with apparently no more

purpose than to vary the scenery; and even Arthur’s “quest” to find

Perceval seems to be motivated by nothing more than a restless desire

for novelty. Arthur and his knights may lack the ruthless purpose of

those rough knights who roam the countryside seeking victims, but

they are, finally, no closer to the right hand path of Charity.

We may acknowledge that the Arthurian court can rightly claim

ethical superiority to the practices of arrogant, self-willed knights, if

we understand “ethics“ to mean “commonly-accepted conventions of

behavior that serve the common good”; however, on the level of

morality, whose basic criterion is defined in the prologue as charitez,

both the arrogant knights and the court of Arthur must be found

deficient. Whether moved by voluntas propria or by curiositas, both

the rude and forceful knights who threaten Arthur’s court and the

knights who find their home in that court seem to base their practice

of chivalry on self-serving motives that keep them firmly on the left-

hand path of fause hypocrisie epitomized by Alexander, rather than

the right hand of Charity which the prologue ascribes to Philip. Thus,

by making the transition from rustic boor to polished courtly knight,

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Perceval actually achieves no real progress on the moral plane: his

manner of dress, speech, and behavior may have improved, but that

improvement is entirely superficial.

Critics who have made the opposite argument, citing specific

examples that purport to show Perceval’s progressive growth in

compassion and thoughtfulness toward others, are often the very ones

who find the hermitage episode to be an awkward disruption of the

development the story. In later chapters, we shall demonstrate both

the superficiality of this change and the necessity of the hermitage

episode to expose the falseness of that image. Ultimately chivalry, as

constituted in the Arthurian realm, refashions the outer man by

restraining and channeling his pride and selfishness, but it remains

incapable of improving the inner man by converting those selfish

motives into charitable ones. As the prologue reminds us, only God

can judge the hidden motives of the heart, and, as the hermitage

episode will demonstrate, only by turning back to God can Perceval,

or any knight, leave his errant ways and return to the right-hand path

of Charity, which will transform all his words and deeds.

Chapter 4 “Par le non conuist an l’hom”: Memory, Identity, and Self-Knowledge

N ’il n’est mervoille, ce m’est vis,S’an ne set ce qu’an n’a apris;Mes mervoille est quan[t] an n’aprantCe que l’an voit et ot sovant. (506-08)86

s we saw in the previous chapter, Perceval’s pursuit of chivalry,

from the moment of its inception, led him away from Charity (or

voluntas communis) and the love of God and into a self-serving way of

life motivated by voluntas propria. This fact, however, is disguised by

the fact that Perceval is not, on the face of it, arrogant like the many

proud and violent knights he meets in his adventures. In fact, the

reader of the Conte del Graal can hardly fail to be struck by the

unusual character of its protagonist. Aside from the fact that he is not

a typical romance hero, his naïveté and ignorance at the beginning of

the story mark him as a comical figure and earn the reader’s amused

indulgence of his foolish actions. As the romance progresses, the

young Welshman’s naïveté gives way to social sophistication and

professional prowess, and the reader’s indulgence turns to approval,

even admiration. However, one important aspect of Perceval’s

ignorance is not dispelled by his growth in courtly and chivalric

A

86 The mother’s fretful words to her son as he sets off to become a knight: “It’s no wonder, it seems to me, if someone doesn’t know what he hasn’t learned; but the surprising thing is when someone doesn’t learn what he has often seen and heard.”

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acumen — quite to the contrary, his stubborn refusal to absorb or

retain any information about his own personal history leads him into

an ever deeper and more disastrous self-ignorance, causing him to

wander away from himself as well as from God. Perceval’s lack of and,

worse, refusal to acquire self-knowledge not only damages his

relationships with those closest to him, but even threatens his most

cherished ambition to be a knight.

Fanni Bogdanow draws our attention to the significance of self-

knowledge in her essay, “"The Mystical Theology of Bernard de

Clairvaux and the Meaning of Chrétien de Troyes' Conte du Graal."

Although the theme of self-knowledge was treated by a number of

twelfth-century spiritual writers87, Bogdanow sees particularly close

correspondences with ideas found in the writings of St. Bernard of

Clairvaux,88 who regarded self-knowledge as a key to even the most

elementary spiritual growth:

Referring in one of his sermons specifically to St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and the Galatians, [Bernard] warns against being too concerned with worldly matters

87 Pierre Courcelle traces the development of the moral precept to “know thyself” from the Delphic oracle up through the Middle Ages in Connais-toi toi-même de Socrate à Saint Bernard. In the Christian tradition, the topic has its origin in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo (see, e.g., Book X of De Trinitate, in which he discusses memoria sui as the necessary basis of self-knowledge) and was extensively developed by twelfth-century writers, including Richard of Saint-Victor, William of Saint-Thierry, and Bernard of Clairvaux.

88 Bogdanow takes her lead from Lesley Topsfield, who in Chrétien de Troyes: A Study of the Arthurian Romances first noted correspondences between the Contes del Graal and Bernard’s spiritual doctrine.

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at the expense of spiritual ones, for one “can only reap what one has sown.” “No one” he stresses, “is saved without self-knowledge, since it is the source of that humility on which salvation depends, and of the fear of the Lord that is as much the beginning of salvation as of wisdom.” (Bogdanow 249)

The passage St. Bernard quotes from Paul’s second letter to the

Corinthians is the same one alluded to in Chrétien’s prologue to the

Conte del Graal, in which the poet hints that “hearing” is not the

same as “understanding.” Certainly one of the striking features of

Perceval’s character is that he can hear some things — particularly

those that most closely touch upon his own identity and actions —

time and again without heeding them in the least. The prologue, then,

by holding up Philip as the exemplar of knighthood — a man who “has

all the qualities of a man who knows himself, namely humility and

Charity” — also serves as a “prophetic warning” of the outcome of

Perceval’s quest for chivalry:

He will fail in the high adventure of the Grail for, although by the time he reaches the Grail Castle he will have achieved the height of chivalric perfection, and so will be the equal of Alexander, yet unlike Count Philippe, he will nevertheless still be as ignorant of self and of God as he was the day he set out for Arthur's court. (Bogdanow 250)

Although Perceval is portrayed as a young man utterly unused to

the habit of reflection, he at least has the benefit of others repeatedly

reminding him of key facts about himself and his situation. The

episodes in which these reminders occur take the form of what Donald

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Maddox calls “specular encounters.” In Fictions of Identity in Medieval

France, Maddox studies the frequent use in medieval French lais and

saints’ lives, as well as in romance, of episodes in which a major figure

is unexpectedly confronted with some new information about his own

identity or situation which profoundly alters his subsequent

development. Maddox calls these disclosures “specular” because “the

informant places the addressee before a speculum that mirrors [his]

discovery of a modified self-image” (11). In Chrétien’s romances, this

kind of episode frequently marks the crucial moment in the

protagonist’s development, provoking a profound crisis which “ushers

in a quantum change of orientation” (84). One example of this is the

moment when Erec awakes to hear his new wife Enid lamenting over

the damage to his reputation since he abandoned chivalry for a life of

amorous seclusion with her. The “negative self-image” provoked by this

specular encounter spurs Erec to return to the active life, ultimately

winning even greater honor for himself and enriching his marital

relationship. In Erec’s case, the speculum is the opinion of others, but

in other cases it might be objective information — such as the

revelation of a character’s true identity or lineage — that provokes

reflection and moves the character to a new level of self-

understanding. Readers of the Conte del Graal will be able to identify

several such “specular encounters” in the course of the romance. With

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regard to Perceval, two aspects of this use of specular encounters

should be of particular interest: first is the fact that they are so

frequent in the Conte del Graal; second, that they so seldom have the

customary effect of provoking reflection or changing the course of

Perceval’s development. Quite to the contrary, close examination

reveals that Perceval obstinately ignores these moments of revelation

and resists (or fails to experience) any reflective impulse that one

might expect them to provoke. The act of reflection that can illuminate

the significance of Perceval’s actions is, most frequently, left to the

reader to accomplish, bringing about what Maddox (14) calls “a

virtually specular relationship” between the reader and the romance.

Indeed, the attentive reader may feel himself to be standing in a virtual

house of mirrors as he considers the many reminders — explicit as well

as subtle — that give constant emphasis to important considerations,

which Perceval, just as consistently, willfully ignores. Charles Méla

calls the Conte del Graal “a story where the infinite reflections of what

can only ever be written as pure loss are mirrored,” in which “the very

style of the work perfectly imitates the adventure, just as the hero’s

gaze takes in our desire” (“Perceval” 257). Thus, through the frequent

use of episodes that hold up a revealing mirror to Perceval’s life and

actions, Chrétien constantly reminds us that we as readers are

implicated with Perceval in a quest for identity and self-knowledge.

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“You who have the name ‘knight’”

Estes vos Dex? — Nenil, parfoi.— Qui estes dont? — Chevaliers sui.— Ainz mes chevalier ne conui,Fet li vallez, ne nul n’an viN’onques mes parler n’an oi,Mes vos est plus biax que Dex.Car fusse je or autretex Ausi luisanz et ausi fez! (174-81)89

he opening episode of the Conte del Graal presents us with the

first of a long series of specular encounters, one which will truly

provoke a “quantum change” in the course of the life of a nameless

Welsh boy who seems to see himself reflected in the polished surface

of a knight’s armor. For the son of the widow lady of the lonely Waste

Forest, this encounter with a band of armed and mounted men is a

moment of profound identification. Whatever these shining beings

may be, he means to be like them. This sudden conviction that he, too,

must be a knight — impulsive, obsessive, and unreasoned as it is —

utterly supplants his own true identity. For the unnamed youth (and

for the reader, as well), it is as if he has no identity until he claims the

name of knight.

T

This is not, in fact, the case — we should remember, even if the

vaslet does not, that he is “li filz a la veve dame de la Gaste Forest

89 Perceval’s exchange with the knight in the wood: “Are you God?” “Nay, by faith!” “Who are you then?” “I’m a knight.” “I’ve never known a knight,” said the youth, “Nor seen one, nor ever heard of one, but you are more beautiful than God. Would now that I were one as well, so shiny and so well-formed!”

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soutainne” (74-75). To the casual reader, this appellation may suggest

simply that the boy is a nobody; certainly, his identification as “son of

the widow lady of the lonely Waste Forest” makes him a most unlikely

candidate for the role of protagonist in what its author promises will

be “le meillor conte / . . . / Qui soit contez an cort real” (62, 64). But it

would be a mistake to assume that the youth’s pursuit of knighthood

is no more than an effort to “make a name for himself”; his impulse is

much more complex than that, but it will take him (and the reader)

the whole course of the narrative to understand what moves him, and

to reconcile the identity he rejects with the new one that he claims.

“By the name the man is known”

In our first glimpse of the young man who will occupy the center

of our attention for much of the poem, we learn none of the customary

identifying marks of the hero; his name, his lineage, any reputation

for courtesy or valor which might mark him as someone worthy of a

tale all remain unmentioned. Instead, he is only “the son of the widow

lady of the lonely Waste Forest.” Whatever gloss of reputation his

father’s name might have lent this anonymous young man living far

from the life of the court has apparently been dimmed to the point of

total obscurity by the father’s death. Instead, the only significant

relationship mentioned is that with his mother, “the widow lady.” The

mother is as anonymous and obscure as her son, nor does the family

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seat distinguish them in any way, being equally nameless and remote

from human society. These two people seem to be of importance only

in relation to each other.

For the reader familiar with Chrétien’s earlier romances, this is

a very odd introduction to the romance’s hero, if such the widow’s son

is. Of course, it is not yet clear that this young rustic will be the

central figure of the romance, for often enough Chrétien has chosen

to delay the introduction of his hero until the knight’s relation to

Arthur’s court has been established. Before meeting Cliges, the

reader must first hear the story of his parents; Erec is introduced only

after Arthur revives the Hunt of the White Stag; Yvain’s adventures do

not commence until his cousin Calogrenant has recounted his own

experience at the marvelous spring. These precedents might suggest

that the widow’s son is of no direct consequence, a bit player used to

set the scene for the hero’s entrance. Only when it becomes apparent,

as it shortly does, that the widow’s son is indeed the tale’s central

figure will the reader sense just how odd the hero’s introduction is, in

this romance whose author has promised it will be “the best story

ever told in royal court” (62, 64).

Although The Story of the Grail begins, unusually for Chrétien,

outside the context of Arthur’s court, the poet’s tactic is as purposeful

as the widowed mother’s, in removing Perceval as far as possible from

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courtly and chivalric life. Like Yvain in his madness, the young

Welshman is disconnected from the courtly society which would

furnish him an identity prescribed by lineage and defined by

reputation. Yvain sought the obscurity of the forest in order to forget

his own trespass and shame, to flee the judgment of the court, and to

abandon all memory of a self he had cause to hate, descending to a

level of a bestiality at which he kills his own meat and eats it raw. This

view of the forest as the scene of Yvain’s oblivion and madness — and

of his healing and restoration — should not be forgotten when reading

the story of Perceval. The widowed mother of the anonymous youth

has chosen this refuge for reasons similar to those of Yvain: to be

forgotten by the world, to escape the court and the life of chivalry.

She has done so, however, not to obliterate but to preserve herself

and her young son, not out of shame but out of fear of the violent and

destructive consequences of knighthood. Having chosen for her sole

surviving son a life of deepest obscurity, she hopes to protect him

from the glamour and deadly lure of chivalry.

Consequently, the widow’s son has grown up knowing himself

not as “Perceval, son of Sir X, a knight of Pendragon’s court,”90 but

90 In point of fact, the reader will never learn the name of Perceval’s father, mother, or any other family member. The importance of family identity is not framed in references to fame or worldly honor.

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only as “fair son,” “fair brother,” “fair lord.”91 These familiar

appellations, however, seem to contribute little to the youth’s sense of

himself. That is, he acknowledges them glibly enough but

demonstrates little appreciation for the relationships, and attendant

responsibilities, that they signify. On the surface, this indicates only

his youthful naïveté and limited circle of social contacts (for who

needs a name, when the summons “son” or “sir” can be addressed to

no one but him?); however, his actions later in this section will make it

clear that there is a more serious moral component to his lack of self-

awareness. He may recognize that he is often called “biax filz” or

“biaus sire,” but his behavior shows that he is not mindful of the

bonds of affection and duty that those forms of address imply.

“Fair son” and “fair brother,” however, are not names by which

he can introduce himself to strangers, and the lack of a name that

might have earned the strange knights’ respect causes both the

knights and the reader to take the boy at face value. The knights

regard him as a “galois,” someone who is “par nature / plus fol que

bestes an pasture” (243-44). Although Perceval does not show any

91 See Pickens and Kibler, Appendix I, for Perceval’s account of his “names.” This interpolated passage appears in only two of the surviving manuscripts, and thus is not included in Pickens’s reconstructed edition of the now-lost Alpha text, but in fact it reflects the usage found in the authentic portions: we hear his mothercall him “biax filz” several times, the chief knight himself addresses him as “biaus frere,” and the field hands address him as “sire.” Méla says of these titles, which seem to hold little meaning for the youth, “[O]ne slips from one to the other as if nothing can anchor his identity which is subject to the will of his fantasy” (“Perceval” 260).

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reaction to being identified in this way, the pejorative sense of the

label “galois” remains in his memory and will surface later, the next

time someone asks him to name himself. Meanwhile, his ignorance

and obtuseness certainly seem to warrant the knights’ assessment of

him as a fool and a waster of sensible people’s time (246-48), since he

obstinately ignores their questions while insisting that they answer

his own persistent queries about articles of their armor. More notable

than his ignorance of the accoutrements of chivalry are his

determination to amend that deficiency and his subsequent obsession

with possessing those accoutrements as his own, so that he, too, may

call himself a knight. Yet even this ambition does little to elevate him

in the reader’s esteem, for the reader, unlike the young Welshman,

realizes that the boy’s grasp of the nature of “knighthood” extends no

further than its glittering trappings: he seeks something he does not

understand, something for which he seems singularly ill-suited.

The mindful reader may at this point ask why, in all his

persistent questioning, the boy does not ask more pertinent questions

about knighthood. Although he asks of shield and hauberk, “What are

they and what is their purpose” (see 214 and 268), it seems odd that

he never asks similar questions about knighthood itself. He seems to

assume that the answer to “What is a knight?” would be simply:

“Someone who wears such armor;” and there is no indication that it

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ever so much as dawns on him to ask, “What purpose does a knight

serve?” nor even the more practical question, “Why does a knight

need to wear such armor?” The fact that he fails to ask crucial

questions on the one subject that is of such blinding importance to

him sheds a good deal of light on his character: he is eager to acquire

the trappings of knighthood yet little suspects or cares that the

glittering armor serves a purpose and carries a heavy responsibility.92

“Son of the widow lady”

If the unnamed youth is ignorant of that which he would

become, he is equally unmindful of what he already is, an identity he

will thrust aside in order to take up the role of knight. In an important

sense, he puts aside everything that he truly is, the day he lays claim

to knighthood. The scene enacted upon his return to his mother’s

house after meeting the band of knights illustrates the fact that the

youth has already ceased to be, in any meaningful sense, “li filz a la

veve dame,” having cast off both his duty of filial obedience and his

responsibility to look after his mother’s well-being. Upon first

glimpsing the knights, while he was still under the impression that

they were God and his angels, the boy had followed his mother’s

instruction to worship God, and had thrown himself down in prostrate

92 What Leslie Topsfield says of his behavior later at Grail Castle seems equally true here at the birth of his quest, namely that Perceval reflects “a nominalist view of material things,” rather than that of the realist, who recognizes that there are “spiritual values which underlie surface appearances” (213).

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adoration before them. Now, however, when, at his prompting, his

mother repeats her assurance that there is no creature more beautiful

than God and his angels, her son rudely shuts her up:

— Tesiez, mere! Ne vi ge oreLes plus beles choses qui sontQui par la gaste forest vont?Il sont plus bel, si con je cuit,Que Dex ne que si enge tuit. (372-76)

(“Be quiet, mother! Didn’t I just see the most beautiful things there are who are going through the waste forest? They are more beautiful, so I believe, than God and all his angels.”)

In one breath, the boy rejects both his mother’s authority and God’s

supremacy, announcing that both his filial and his religious piety have

been subsumed in his idolatrous zeal for knighthood. A moment later,

when his mother tells him that what he has seen might more

appropriately be called angels of death, he contradicts her and

ignores everything further that she has to say on the matter.93 The

mother’s reaction to his news makes it clear that his new ambition is a

rejection of everything she ever hoped to do for him. Only now does

she explain, in one last desperate attempt to save him, the true reason

that she has raised him in such an obscure and secluded environment.

Still hoping to dissuade him, she gives a tragic account of the

93 Even before he pronounces the fearful name of “knight,” his mother suspects what he has seen and exclaims, “Tu as veu, si con je croi, / Les enges don la gent se plaignent, / Qui ocient quan qu’il ataignent” (380-82: “You have seen, I believe, the angels people complain of, who kill everything they touch.”). Mario Roques (“Les Anges exterminateurs de Perceval”) suggests the widow is invoking the Biblical bogey of the avenging angels God sends to visit plague upon the earth.

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destructive effect chivalry has had upon their family and her own

desperate efforts to preserve him from a similar sad fate. Recognizing

that her effort to shield him by concealing the past from him has

failed, she now reverses her strategy and hopes that she may protect

him by revealing the family history. In doing so, she uncovers the

depths of meaning hidden in the simple appellation “son of the widow

lady of the lonely waste forest”:

As her son, he is her only surviving child, two other sons

having been killed immediately after being knighted;

She is a widow because she lost her husband to the ravages

of chivalry;

A lady, she is descended from knights and married to the

scion of a chivalrous clan;

And in an isolated forest, she hoped to find oblivion and make

a lonely refuge where she could preserve her only surviving

son from any taint of knighthood.

Remarkably, in this family portrait of sorrow and loss that his

mother paints, the boy fails to see himself. He averts his attention

from her words, and thus fails to recognize in her account either his

own true heritage or the potential consequences of his aspiration to

knighthood. Instead, he brusquely shuts her up and makes it clear

that he will do as he pleases:

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Li vaslez antant mout petitA ce que sa mere li dit.“A mangier, fet il, me donez. Ne sai de coi m’areisonez,Mes mout iroie volantiersAu roi qui fet les chevaliers,Et g’irai, cui qu’il an poist.” (471-76)

(The boy hardly listens to what his mother is telling him. “Give me something to eat,” he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, But I would very willingly go to the king who makes knights, and I will go, no matter whom it displeases.”)

Neither his mother’s desperate pleas nor his family’s tragic history

will dissuade him, as he brusquely orders her to feed him quickly, so

that he may be on his way to find “the king who makes knights.”

After all, why should he care about his birth or lineage when the

knight in the woods told him that knights are made, not born?94 His

insistence that he must go find “the king who makes knights” confirms

that he has failed to take in any of the information his mother

provides, including the news that his father and brothers were all

dubbed by other kings than Arthur. It never occurs to Perceval, then,

that his family background could be an important factor in realizing

his plan to be a knight. Similarly, he does not think to ask the names

of his father or brothers, or even his own name, even though his

mother in her parting instructions, hoping to keep him from making

94 As further events shall show, the foolish youth retains a clear but un-reflective memory of his first encounter with knights, which he uses as a rigid template for his own behavior. In Arthur’s hall, the vaslet refuses to get off his horse because “those [knights] I met on the heath never dismounted, yet you want me to get down! No, by my head, I’ll never get down.” (966-69).

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grievous gaffes, advises him always to ask the names of his

companions because “par le non conuist an l’ome” (544: “by the name

one knows the man”).

His mother’s account, then, is the second “specular encounter”

in the story of Perceval. Yet while in the first he glimpsed a vision of

himself that no one else might have imagined, here he finds nothing to

interest him. Confronted with the speculum of his own identity,

Perceval averts his eyes. In doing so, he clings to the ignorance that

will allow him to cherish the fantasy of a knighthood which is all

splendor and no sorrow, depriving himself of the benefits of that

knowledge and effectively disowning his own family. His new identity,

claimed but not yet assumed, already has quite thoroughly supplanted

the old.

If the ignorant youth cares nothing for his own family history,

this information cannot fail to tantalize the courtly reader, who would

be well aware of the significance of the boy’s lineage, particularly

since he intends to present himself for knighthood without

credentials. To the reader familiar with the ways of the court, the

boy’s assumption that a bumpkin with no family connections can

demand to be knighted is at least as absurd as his idea that an

identity can be put on like a suit of armor. On a purely practical level,

it is foolish of the youth to ignore what his mother tells him about his

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own family circumstances, because this information could be very

useful in helping him to realize his desire to become a knight. Yet

although Arthur will remain ignorant of — and therefore uninfluenced

by — the boy’s lineage, the reader does not. Long before the laughing

maiden prophesies the boy’s destiny to become the finest knight the

world has ever seen, the reader has reason to believe that, although

the young man remains unnamed, he is certainly not a “nobody,” but

perhaps a hero in the making, whose name, when finally revealed, will

be as illustrious as that of a Lancelot or a Gauvain. In this way, the

information revealed in his mother’s account of the family history,

ironically, puts the reader in the position of knowing more about the

young man than the rustic youth knows about himself, simply because

the reader will take note of it while the boy does not.

Even here, however, the poet will turn the irony back upon the

reader. The device of revealing the boy’s family background while

keeping the youth himself effectively ignorant of it has the effect of

heightening the reader’s anticipation of the moment when his true

identity — i.e., his name — will be fully revealed.95 Meanwhile, not

only has Perceval fallen into the trap of romance, but he has dragged

95 This anticipation will never be fully satisfied, for the youth’s name, when it finally is pronounced, will have little effect on the reader, the court, or the youth himself. Reader and youth alike will quickly forget the significant facts of the boy’s true identity and will accept, rather, the new identity he creates for himself as chevalier.

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the reader in with him: the ignorant lad who has never heard a courtly

tale of chivalry does not hesitate to cast himself in the role of the

heroic knight whose adventures begin one fine day when he happens

upon a mervoille in the forest. The worldly reader readily recognizes

that what Perceval mistakes for a theophany of godlike beings, arrived

as if ex machina, is in fact “a most banal and not at all supernatural

matter: armed knights in search of adventure” (Méla 258); ironically,

however, that same reader, once informed of the boy’s family legacy,

is likely to embrace him in the role of knight and follow his adventures

with enthusiastic approval.

Thus, by revealing the boy’s family background but concealing

his name, the narrator heightens the reader’s sense of anticipation

and leads him down the left-hand path of romance that leads to a tale

of worldly honor and vainglory. The boy’s anonymity also acts as a red

herring to attract the reader’s attention to the relatively insignificant

question of his name — how he is known by others — in order to

deflect it from the deeper question of identity — the extent to which

Perceval knows himself and is known by others.96 The confusion of

these two matters is compounded by the tantalizing revelations

contained in the widow’s account, suggesting that the young bumpkin

will eventually be revealed to be the scion of a noteworthy chivalrous

96 As noted earlier, this ploy is strengthened by the mother’s advice to her son to inquire after his companions’ names because “par le non conuist an l’ome.”)

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line. Attentive readers, however, will not fail to recognize that the

mother’s account of the family lineage is intended as a caution, not a

boast —a tragic tale which emphasizes her utter dependence,

emotionally as well as practically, upon her only remaining son. The

son, however, shows no interest in either level of meaning, and takes

no more notice of his dead father and brothers than he does of his

responsibilities toward his mother. By ignoring his mother’s account,

the young man ignores the identity summed up in the phrase “son of

the widow lady of the lonely Waste Forest” — that is, he chooses to

remain ignorant of himself, in any meaningful sense.

“More beautiful than God”

This choice is not inconsequential but rather, as Fanni Bogdanow

points out, it lies at the root of Perceval’s failure as a knight. Analyzing

Perceval’s actions in the light of Bernard’s teachings on the importance

of self-knowledge as the basis of all virtue, Bogdanow finds that

Chrétien’s portrayal of Perceval corresponds closely to Bernard’s

teaching that the man who lacks self-knowledge is therefore incapable

of judging himself, having compassion for others, or fearing God. While

such an assessment of the ignorant youth may seem harsh to the reader

who delights in the accounts of Perceval’s success on the battlefield and

at court, the careful reader will notice that, in his eagerness to claim the

name of knight, Perceval has not only rejected his own identity but

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overthrown both filial and religious piety. Thus, “the hero comes into

being in a way which is impious, deviant and, as the rest of the story

demonstrates, profoundly culpable” (Méla 259).

The significance of this fact is illuminated in writings of a number

twelfth-century writers on the importance of self-knowledge, any or all

of whom would have been known to Chrétien, his patrons, and many of

his readers at court. The topic of the importance of knowing oneself,

which dates as far back as the Delphic oracle, found its flowering in the

Christian Middle Ages and was frequently treated in Chrétien’s own

century by spiritual writers, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux, who

recognized self-knowledge to be fundamental to the life of virtue

because it leads to humility, which in turn makes possible Charity

toward others and love of God. Even as exalted a figure as the Pope

himself was adjured by St. Bernard “[to know] what you are, who you

are, and what sort of man you are: what you are in nature, who you are

in person, and what sort of man you are in character.” 97 Perceval

would have been well-advised to do the same but, as we have seen, he

turns a deaf ear to information that would help him achieve even the

most rudimentary knowledge of himself, and he shows no sign of the

97 Bernard’s De Consideratione Libri: Quinque ad Euqenium Tertium, translated by J. D. Anderson and E. T. Kennan (C.F.S., 57, Kalamazoo 1976), Book 2, §6, qtd. in Bogdanow 250.

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introspective practices that would prick his conscience and teach him

humility.

Perceval, as we first see him, is not humble but bold and brash,

defying his mother’s instruction and daring to confront what he

believes to be demons when he first hears the party of knights

crashing through the forest:

“[Ma mere] dist por moi anseignierQue por aus se doit an seigneier;Mes cest anseign desdignerai,Qu ja voir ne m’an seignerai,Einz ferrai si tot le plus fortD’un des javeloz que je portQue ja n’aprochera vers moiNus des alters, si con je croi.” (117-24)

(“[My mother] taught me that one should make the sign of the cross against them [devils], but I will scorn this lesson and indeed I’ll not cross myself; rather, I’ll strike the strongest of them all with one of the javelins I’m carrying so that none of the others will approach me, so I believe.”)

His boldness is barely abated even when, upon seeing the knights, he

decides that they are not devils but angels, led by God himself.

Although he briefly prostrates himself before them and gabbles the

few prayers he knows (the knights thinking, ironically, that he is

frightened by them), he quickly denies that he feels any fear before

them and impudently begins to quiz them on their glittering equipage.

Far from fearing (what he believes to be) God, he arrogantly aspires

to be like them, “plus biax que Dex” (179: “more beautiful than God”).

Very quickly Perceval has fallen into the vice that plagues the man

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who lacks self-knowledge, namely pride, which blinds him to the fact

that “he lives in a region where likeness to God has been forfeited”

(Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in cantica, 36 §5).98 Instead, Perceval

will pursue the external beauty of the armed knight, forgetting that

his first impulse was toward God, not the shining creature called

“knight.” In this, he is like the youthful Augustine, who recognized

only much later: “… you were within and I was in the external world

and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those

lovely created things which you made. You were with me and I was

not with you” (Confessions 201; X. 27). Perceval’s interest in the

knights at first is simply curiosity, the first step of pride, which, as

Bernard notes, “may not itself be a sin but [leads one] on to sin” (The

Steps of Humility and Pride 59; X.30). The curious man “models his

conduct on the object of his senses. Led on by curiosity, he becomes

like any other animal since he does not see that he has received more

than they” (On Loving God 96; II.4).99

98 Quoted by Bogdanow (253). Only when he meets the penitents, after years of empty adventures, will Perceval reach the level of self-knowledge at which, “groaning from the depth of a misery to which he can no longer remain blind … he will cry out to the Lord and say: ‘Heal me because I have sinned against you.’”

99 We may recall that Perceval’s appreciation of the knight’s armor lies not only in its beauty but also in the qualities that make it like a tough hide. Upon being told that a hauberk makes the wearer impenetrable to javelins and arrows, the boy exclaims, “Danz chevaliers, de tex haubers / Gart Dex les biches et les cers, / Qu nul ocirre n’an porroie / Ne ja mes après ne corroie” (271-76: “Lord knight, may God keeps the hinds and stags from such hauberks, for I wouldn’t be able to kill any, nor would I ever hunt them again.”) He seems to view the knights as particularly well-equipped animals.

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Perceval’s ignorance, then, is not simply the comical foolishness

which makes him seem to the knights “plus fol que bestes an pasture”

(244). Bernard would say, rather, that Perceval, in his prideful

ambition to become “more beautiful than God,” violates two important

principles of self-knowledge, “that you should know: first, what you

are; secondly, that you are not that by your own power … ” (On Loving

God 96; II.4). More than this, however, Perceval has fallen into

arrogance, which is

worse and more dangerous than the second kind of ignorance, in which God is ignored, because it makes us despise him. If ignorance makes beasts of us, arrogance makes us like demons. It is pride, the greatest of sins, to use gifts as if they were one’s by natural right and while receiving benefits to usurp the benefactor’s glory. (On Loving God 97; II.4)

This arrogance arises out of Perceval’s imperfect knowledge of

himself, which is, as we see here, closely connected with his

ignorance of God. In Augustinian terms, we may say that the Welsh

youth possesses memoria sui only in its most basic, unreflective state:

i.e., he is self-conscious enough to insist on pursuing his own desires

but he does not reflect on the cost and consequences of that pursuit.

In his attraction to the superficial beauty of the knights he is like the

infant discussed in Book VIII of Augustine’s De Trinitate:

What then are we to say of the mind of the child, as yet so small and so profoundly ignorant that its mental darkness is almost frightening to the more or less instructed adult? Perhaps even the child’s mind may be thought to know

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itself, but to be so preoccupied with experiences of the pleasures of sensation, all the greater for their novelty, that it cannot reflect upon itself, though unable to be ignorant of itself. (104, XIV.v.)

This is to say that Perceval is mindful of himself to the extent that he

is selfish, but he lacks the reflexive habit that would allow him to be

mindful of his own selfishness, a fault that will plague him throughout

his chivalrous career. As Fanni Bogdanow notes:

Chrétien builds up the picture of a youth who initially is both self-ignorant and ignorant of the world, but who, perfecting himself on the latter plane, will fail to do so on the spiritual level and so will be unable to do any good deeds before his conversion. (253)

This problem of self-ignorance underlies the story of his adventures,

which plainly details his growth in worldly knowledge and polish and,

in doing so, obscures his lack of moral growth.

“You’ll do everything rudely”

By the time Perceval leaves his mother’s house, Chrétien has

firmly established this dangerous discrepancy between appearance

and reality, made graver than it might have been by his mother’s

futile attempts to protect him from the truth. To this extent, perhaps,

his mother may be blamed, that in her desire to protect her son from

the world she kept him too ignorant of it. When finally revealed,

chivalry’s tragic legacy in his own family is too unattractive to

compete with his beautiful fantasy of knighthood, so it is hardly to be

wondered at that the boy prefers to cast himself in the role of the

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shining knight rather than that of the impoverished refugee. His

mother, however, is deeply ambivalent about her son’s ambition —

still wishing to protect him, yet realizing that he is headstrong and

undeterred. The veve dame’s parting gifts to her son illustrate her

ambivalence toward his determination to seek out Arthur and be made

a knight. The first gift is a suit of traveling clothes that seems

designed to mark him out as a harmless rustic — protective coloring,

as it were, which should prevent any knight from regarding him as a

potential threat until Arthur may knight him and equip him properly.

Thus he will set off on his quest dressed “a la meniere et a la guise /

de Galois” (584-85: “in the manner and fashion of a Welshman”),

wearing a coarse canvas shirt and breeches, cloaked and hooded in

buckskin, with rawhide brogans on his feet. Although the narrator

tells us that the widow removes two of the three javelins that her son

means to take with him because they make him “seem too Welsh,”

this is just one of many instances in which we must doubt the

narrator’s assessment of the situation. Dressed as he is, the son can

hardly look “less Welsh” by the subtraction of a javelin or two; it

seems more likely that his mother fears that her rough-mannered son

may put those javelins to dangerous use — for this reason, “she gladly

would have done so with all three, if it were possible” (592-93: “Si

eust ele fet totz trois / Mout volantiers, s’il poist estre”). This suit of

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clothes is apparently the mother’s way of extending the protective

obscurity of their secluded retreat in the Gaste Forest soutainne, as if

to say to the world, “He’s just a backward boy, don’t expect too much

of him.”100

The fact that his mother reluctantly recognizes the futility of that

attempt is illustrated in her second parting gift: knowing that, once

Arthur grants him arms, her son will outwardly resemble a knight but

will lack the social graces with which noble-born men are normally

imbued, she bestows on him a parcel of advice intended to smoothe the

rough manners of the backward boy. Even this is a rather forlorn

gesture of maternal protectiveness, for she knows that in both the

martial and the social aspects of knighthood the boy is utterly

unprepared:

“Mal seroiz afeitiez del tot,N’il n’est mervoille, ce m’est vis,S’an ne set ce qu’an n’a apris; Mes mervoille est quan[t] an n’aprantCe qu l’an voit et ot sovant.” (504-08)

(“You’ll be awkward at everything, nor is it any wonder, I think, for a person doesn’t know what he hasn’t learned; but the wonder is when someone doesn’t learn what he has often seen and heard.”)

Ironically, her son will pick up combat skills with marvelous ease, but

will utterly fail to take note of the most important things that he “has

often seen and heard.” Yet, while his mother can hardly teach him

100 Ironically, by removing two javelins and leaving him with one, his mother actually transforms him into a caricature of a knight with a lance.

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combat techniques, she can at least give him a crash course in social

skills that will stand him in good stead, if only he will remember them

(511-12: “’Et s’il vos plest a retenir, / Granz biens vos an porra

venire’”). The advice she gives is, for the most part, the same that any

mother might urge upon a son she feels is leaving the nest too soon:

don’t take advantage of women, be careful in choosing your friends,

and don’t forget to go to church! In the case of another young man,

however, such advice might simply reinforce the manners his parents

had tried to impress upon him during the course of his upbringing;

but Perceval, reared outside of society, has never had occasion to

meet ladies or gentlemen, or even to attend church, and will be able

to make little sense of this maternal counsel. The thin veneer of social

polish the widowed woman had hoped to impart by her motherly

advice will not suffice to cover the his rough, unformed character.

Both the name and the characterization of “Welshman” will cling to

the boy in his pursuit of knighthood, excusing him for his uncouth

behavior in the eyes of his courtly admirers and accusing him of

hidden faults recognized by those who know him better than he knows

himself. As soon as he meets Gornemant and begins to learn the skills

of the courtly knight, the young Welshman will reject the socially-

unacceptable identity his mother so carefully constructed and

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preserved, rejecting as well both her parting gifts as he doffs his

rustic garb and abandons her instruction.

“I know you better than you do me”

“Je te conuis mialz que tu moi,Que tu ne sez qui ge me sui.Ensanble od toi norrie fuiChiés ta mere mout lonc termine:Je sui ta germainne cosineEt tu es mes cosins germains.” (3562-74)101

ritics often cite Perceval’s sojourn with Gornemant as one of

three key moments of instruction that mark stages in his

development, the first being his mother’s parting advice and the third

the hermit’s instruction assigned as penance. They assert that these

three key moments indicate a gradual but steady development of

Perceval’s character: the mother’s advice is that directed toward an

ignorant child; Gornemant’s is the instruction given to a new knight;

the hermit’s finally adds a religious dimension, like a final coat of

polish on a finished product. There is at least one serious problem

with this view, however, for it fails to acknowledge that these three

instances of instruction cover essentially the same ground, albeit from

different points of view: namely, the proper treatment of others and

the importance of religious observance. Rather than seeing these

three instances of instruction as a series of increasingly sophisticated

C

101 The words of Perceval’s cousin: “I know you better than you do me, for you don’t know who I am. I was brought up together with you for a long time, in your mother’s house: I am your first cousin and you are my first cousin.”

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tutelage marking the vaslet’s gradual development as a man of

manners,102 we might more appropriately note that Perceval seems to

need repeated instruction in the most basic principles of decent

behavior. To view these three episodes as structural keys is to read

the romance only on the level of conventional entertainment. This

level, as we have already seen, corresponds to Perceval’s apparent

social “ascent” rather than the deeper reality of his moral state, which

is one not of gradual development and enlightenment finally capped

by spiritual perfection but rather of obstinate and willful ignorance

finally conquered by deep contrition.

This deeper reality depends on the state of Perceval’s self-

knowledge; therefore, if we would understand it better, we should

consider a alternate series of “instructive” episodes, that is, specular

encounters in which Perceval is instructed in his true identity and

character. The first we have already examined: his mother’s account

of the family history, which he ignores in his impatience to seek out

Arthur. The second occurs when he leaves the home of the Rich

Fisherman and meets a grieving maiden who turns out to be his

cousin, while the third takes place in the hermit’s chapel, where a

whole network of familial relationships and personal truths is

102 Madeleine Cosman even suggests that Gornemant’s instruction is a necessary corrective to the mother’s “defective” teaching and blames the mother for Perceval’s literal-mindedness. I would argue that the blame lies with Perceval, in his selfish and selective retention of both his mother’s and Gornemant’s teaching.

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exposed. In both these series of episodes reflecting (or seeming to

reflect) Perceval’s development, his mother’s home in the Waste

Forest and his uncle’s hermitage in the deserted wood provide the

anchors at the beginning and end of his travels. The difference

between the central episodes of the two series, however, is

enlightening: in the first series, which charts the superficial

refinement of our hero, the central episode occurs at Gornemant’s

castle, where Perceval demonstrates his combat skills, wins his spurs,

and is formally invested with “the highest order God ordained” (1615-

16). To all appearances and by every external standard, Perceval is

now a full-fledged knight, and the instruction Gornemant gives is

dictated by the dubbing ritual, to be ceremoniously imparted to the

newly-knighted. In the second series, that of “specular” encounters

meant to bring to light hitherto unexpected facts that will provoke a

“quantum change” in the course of the young man’s life, the central

episode reveals him to be a “wretch” (cheitis), not only guilty of

contributing to the devastation of the Rich Fisherman’s realm and the

suffering of many widows and orphans by his refusal to ask needful

questions, but also personally responsible for his own mother’s death.

Perceval readily accepts Gornemant’s pronouncement that he is now

truly a knight, and proceeds to act as one, yet he reacts not at all to

the weeping damsel’s accusation that he should call himself “Perceval

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the wretch”; nor is he moved by the news that the grieving maiden

cradling the body of her decapitated lover is his own first cousin,

raised with him in his mother’s house, or by her testimony that she

has seen his mother laid in the grave. Clearly, in putting on his public

persona of “accomplished knight,” Perceval has put aside his family

role and no longer responds to any appeal to him as son, or cousin.

Perceval’s meeting with his cousin is an important episode for

many reasons, some of which will be examined in later chapters, but one

of its most striking features is that he seems to be completely oblivious

of his relationship with the young woman, who clearly recognizes and

has intimate knowledge of him and his circumstances. The fact that she

announces herself to be his germainne cosine as soon as he “guesses”

his own name suggests that the significance of this episode bears as

much upon Perceval’s sense of his own identity, particularly in relation

to other members of his family, as it does on anything else. And while

one might explain his failure to recognize his cousin before she

identifies herself, his failure to acknowledge her after she has done so

seems inexplicable.

We can well imagine that Perceval, riding unexpectedly up on a

woman weeping over a headless corpse, would not immediately

recognize her, nor she him. We are told that, while tracking hoof

prints from the castle in hopes of meeting someone who can explain

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what he saw the night before, Perceval comes par aventure upon a

lamenting maiden seated beneath an oak with a decapitated knight in

her lap, weeping volubly and ruing the day she was born. As he rides

up, he greeted her “and she [greets] him, with her head lowered, nor

in doing so has she ceased her lament” (3425-26: “et ele lui, le chief

bessié, / Ne por ce n’a son duel lessié”). Seated upon his horse,

looking down at her lowered head, Perceval would have little

opportunity to see her face, which would, at any rate, be red and

swollen with tears. She, in turn, would be able to glimpse only the

legs of his horse and perhaps his foot in the stirrup; even if she looked

up (which our narrator pointedly denies), she would see only a mail-

clad figure with a helmet covering much of his face, certainly a far cry

from any memory she might have of her aunt’s youngest son.

The maiden, however, is not so overcome by grief that she loses

her powers of observation, for even without raising her gaze she

remarks on the well-kept condition of both horse and rider, and she

proceeds to lead the latter through a lengthy and detailed quiz on

where he spent the night and what he saw there. Perceval, for his

part, has remembered every detail of his evening with his crippled

host. Both the participants of this catechism seem well-rehearsed in

their recital, with Perceval’s answers coming as rapidly and

unhesitatingly as the maiden’s questions, so that when she asks,

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“Comant avez vos non, amis?” he answers without a moment’s pause,

“Percevax li Galois.”

“Perceval the Welshman”

The narrator assures us that Perceval “guesses” his name

(3540: “devine”), although “he didn’t know if he spoke the truth or

not. But he spoke the truth and didn’t know it” (3540-43). This

statement is so ludicrous as to defy credence, hardly more credible

than the narrator’s assertion that the youth’s mother, after carefully

clothing her son in unmistakable Welsh garb, then removed two

javelins to make him appear “less Welsh.” Here as in the earlier

assertion, we may accept the fact recounted without necessarily

giving credence to the cause ascribed. That is, we may assume (as

subsequent events will shortly confirm) that the narrator is right in

saying that Perceval states his true name, but doubt the explanation

that he arrives at his name by a blind guess. It is likelier that the

name the young knight blurts out was buried somewhere in his

memory and springs to the surface at the moment Perceval opens his

mouth to name himself. It is as if his name, stored in what Augustine

called “the stomach of the mind,” is recalled not in an act of

deliberate rumination, but rather returns in an inadvertent belch of

memory.103

103 Philippe Ménard, in “La Révélation du nom pour le héros du Conte du

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However inelegant this image, the point is that, in some sense,

Perceval must not guess but remember his name. A number of critics

who gloss over the narrator’s ludicrous explanation of this event

accept, nonetheless, the fact that he does arrive at his true name, and

they assume that this moment is a kind of personal epiphany in which

Perceval suddenly glimpses some truth about himself.104 It is worth

considering what the nature of that “truth” may be and whether the

revelation of our hero’s name might in fact be another instance of

Chrétien’s use of misdirection. As we noted earlier, by making the

young would-be knight anonymous, the narrator actually draws

attention to the missing name, making it conspicuous by its absence;

he further heightens anticipation of the name by revealing clues to the

boy’s identity in the mother’s account of the family history and her

Graal,” considers and rejects the suggestion that Perceval actually remembers his name; however, he does so only on etymological grounds (finding that there is no attested use of the term devine with the meaning “remember”). After systematically debunking all previous theories about why Chrétien uses this term, Ménard’s own explanation of the use of devine is equally unconvincing: i.e., that Chrétien, wishing to reveal gradually Perceval’s extensive family relations after he leaves Grail Castle, desired to do so without suggesting that Perceval himself either experiences a moment of self-recognition or takes much notice (at this point) of his family connections. In order to get himself out of this “simple problème technique,” Ménard suggests, “Chrétien prétend donc que son personnage ‘a l’intuition’ de son nom. Sur les conditions de cette découverte l’auteur glisse” (58). Despite the shortcomings of this explanation, Ménard’s article presents a useful survey of theories concerning this troublesome passage and offers some interesting insights into Chrétien’s use of family connections in the story of Perceval.

104 Fanni Bogdanow makes the important observation that “Chrétien, in stressing that Perceval did not know whether he was speaking the truth, implies that his hero, far from becoming aware either of himself or of his ‘faute,’ is in a state of complete self-ignorance” (251).

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axiomatic teaching that “by the name one knows the man”105; finally, in

asserting that the vaslet does not remember but rather “divines” his

true name, the narrator brings the reader’s anticipation to a climax and

focuses all attention upon the new revelation. This masterful sleight-of-

hand has consistently bamboozled critics into believing that the boy’s

pronouncing the name “Perceval” is a moment of stupendous

importance, and many critics have devoted considerable effort to the

attempt to explain the deep significance of this name, offering a

number of suggestive etymologies: Perceval = par + cheval, one who

goes “by horse,” therefore referring to the boy’s destiny to be a

chevalier; or Perceval = perce + val, i.e., the one who “pierces” the

“valley” where the mysteries of Grail Castle lie hidden; and others.

However, as Barbara Sargent-Baur notes, it is sufficient that the name

merely suggest a deeper meaning; no definitive etymology is called

for.106 The excursion into etymology, however, is undoubtedly part of

the effect Chrétien hoped to achieve, i.e., that of distraction from what

is truly revealed when the young knight exclaims, “Perceval the

Welshman.”

105 In the manuscript upon which William Roach based his edition, this line (562) reads “by the surname (sornon) the man is known,” rather than “name” (non), which appears in most manuscripts. Clearly, as demonstrated below, it is the surname (or cognomen) that is of significance, not the given name.

106 See Sargent-Baur’s “Le jeu des noms” for a thorough discussion of names, their concealment and revelation, in this romance.

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“Perceval” is generally taken as the important portion of his

self-identification: the name is new to us, whereas the course of the

narrative has presented at least ten instances of our young

protagonist being referred to as “galois.” In only one instance,

however, has the youth heard this epithet being applied to himself,

and that was during the episode which so deeply impressed him and

set him on his present course. As impressive as his first meeting with

knights was, he can hardly have forgotten that one of them said

scornfully:

“Sire, sachiez bien antresetQue Galois son tuit par naturePlus fol que bestes an pasture:Cist est ausi com une beste.Fos est qui delez lui s’areste,S’a la muse ne vialt muser Et le tans an folie user.” (242-248)

(“Lord, you can tell right away that the Welsh are all by nature stupider than beasts in the field: this one is just like an animal. Anyone’s a fool to tarry beside him, if he doesn’t want to while away his time on trivia and waste time on foolishness.”)

A galois, then, from the view of the courtly knight, is a stupid fool, a

waster of sensible people’s time. And just before Perceval heard the

knight call all Welshmen “as stupid as cattle” he also heard this

interchange:

“Sire, que vos dit cil Galois?— Ne set mie totes le lois,Fet li sires, se Dex m’amant,Qu’a rien nule que li demantNe respont il onques a droit,Einz demand de quan qu’il voit

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Comant a non et qu’an an fet.” (235-241)

(“My lord, what is this Welshman telling you?” “He doesn’t know all the rules,” said the lord, “so help me God, for he never answers a single thing that he’s asked straight out. Instead, he asks about everything he sees what it’s called and what you do with it.”)

As far as Perceval knows, then, sophisticated folk view Welshmen as

idiots who lack manners and ask lot of foolish questions. Furthermore,

the reader has had this impression reinforced by others, who have

referred to the vaslet as “Welsh,” with clear reference to his rude

behavior: the maiden he assaulted in the tent, when her paramour

accuses, “I see signs that a knight was here with you,” protests, “No,

my lord, I promise you, but there was a tiresome, base, stupid Welsh

boy …” (see 767-775). Later, after the boy has killed the red knight

and sent Yonet back to Arthur with the stolen goblet, Arthur is

confused when Yonet says, “Your knight has sent your cup back.”

Arthur asks, “What knight? You mean that Welsh boy who asked me

for armor?” (see 1191-1204). Clearly, the reader is meant to agree

with the implicit assessment that the Welsh are rude creatures never

to be mistaken for knights. Perceval in his transformation from

“Galois” into “chevaliers” has undoubtedly absorbed this attitude,

based on his own memory of having been scornfully referred to in this

way. Therefore, when the sorrowful damsel reacts in shock and

outrage to the news that he failed to ask about the lance and grail and

demands to know his name, there seem to be measures of both self-

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reproach and irony in his blurting out that he is “Percevax li galois.”

107 It seems that he is not simply identifying his country of origin, but

rather saying, “I’m Perceval the Idiot! Perceval the dolt who doesn’t

know the rules of polite behavior! Perceval who, because he doesn’t

really understand these things, kept his stupid mouth shut because he

thought it would be impolite to ask questions.”108 (This is ironic, for

when the knight in the woods called him a stupid Welshman, it was

because he asked a lot of questions, not because he failed to ask

them.) The maiden seems to understand the self-reproach in his

cognomen, for when she replies, “Tes nons est changiez, biax amis. /

… Percevax li cheitis! / Ha! Percevax maleureus!” (3547-49: “Your

name is changed, fair friend — Perceval the wretched! Ah! Perceval

the hapless!”), she suggests that he must accuse himself of something

much graver than a social faux pas — he is guilty of a serious fault

that cannot be excused by saying that, as an oafish Welshman, he

really didn’t know any better.

107 The irony is that, in refraining from asking what might be considered impertinent questions, he has nonetheless put himself in a bad light. Perceval apparently interprets his cousin’s rebuke as an accusation of a social, rather than a moral, fault.

108 Ironically, if he really had been acting like the naïve galois he once was, he would not have hesitated to ask about the bleeding lance and luminous grail.

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“Perceval the Wretch”

In the end, the young knight’s calling himself “Percevax li

Galois” is a moment of anticlimax, quickly overshadowed by the

maiden’s reaction to his name, which reveals more than the name

itself.109 First, in the name she recognizes the young cousin with

whom she was raised “for a very long time” (3565: “mout lonc

termine”), but Perceval fails to react to this news. One might even

think he had not heard it, but he casually addresses her as “cousin”

afterward, so we may be sure that he did hear and understand. Yet

when his cousin says, “I know you better than you know me, because

you do not know who I am” (3562-63), she might as well have said, “I

know you better than you know yourself, because you don’t know who

you are.” Truly, she seems not only to know but to understand the

implications of what he has done, in a way that completely escapes

him. Holding up a mirror to his actions and their consequences, she

makes plain her reason for calling him “Perceval the wretch, Perceval

the unlucky”:

“Com iés or mesavantureusQant tu tot ce n’as demandé,Que mout eüsses amandéLe boen roi qui est maheigniez,

109 As Ménard notes in “La Révélation du nom,” perhaps the most significant result of the revelation of the name “Perceval” is that it sparks recognition in his family members. Chrétien carefully conceals Perceval’s name even from the Welsh youth himself until after he leaves Grail castle, thus ensuring that his host does not recognize Perceval as his cousin.

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Qu toz eüst regaaigniezSes manbres et terre tenist,Et si granz biens en avenist!Mes or saches que grant ennuiEn avandra toi et autrui.Por le pechié, ce saches tu, De ta mere t’est avenue,Qu’ele est morte de duel de toi.” (3550-60)

(“How unlucky you are now that you didn’t ask about all that for you might have greatly helped the good king who is maimed, for he would have regained all [use of] his limbs and held his land, and such great good would have come of it! But now know that great trouble will come to you and to others because of it. Know this: this has happened to you because of the sin against your mother, for she has died of sorrow because of you.”)

Not only does she reveal the grave cost of his failure, to himself and

others, but in the same breath gives news of his mother’s death,

another evil attributable to him. And lest he doubt how grave those

evils are, she elaborates:

“Ne ne me poise mie mainsDe ce qu’ensi t’est mescheüQue tu n’as del graal seüQu’an an fet et ou l’an le porteQue de ta mere qui est morte,Ne qu’il fet de ce[st] chevalierQue j’amoie et tenoie chier …” (3568-74)

(“Nor is it a bit less painful to me what has misfallen you in this way because you did not find out about the grail — what is done with it and where it is carried — than about your mother who died or about this knight whom I loved and held dear …”)

In the speculum his cousin holds up to his actions, what might have

seemed excusable foibles look like dark deeds indeed. Yet Perceval

hardly glances into that dark glass, and so he does not see himself

there. Although he acknowledges his mother’s death (3586: “Felon

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conte m’avez conté!”), he appears not to have heard the accusation

that he himself is guilty of her death, anymore than he shows any

remorse for his failure to ask about the grail. Just as when his mother

told him the family history, hoping to turn him aside from his

disastrous path, so now news of family sorrows make little impression

upon him.

Although this episode seems to indicate that our protagonist

experiences a moment of self-recognition when he suddenly intuits his

own name, closer analysis shows that just the opposite is true. His

cousin recognizes him and the implications of his actions, and even

tries to impress them on him, but Perceval himself remains entirely

unmoved by her words and responds only to their practical, rather

than their moral, implications: far from experiencing a “quantum

change” in the motivation of his quest, Perceval finds his mother’s

demise little more than an inconvenience which causes him to revise

his travel plans. He also seems to assume that his cousin’s loss of her

lover similarly leaves her at loose ends:

“Et puis que ele est mise en terre,Que iroie ge avant querre,Que por rien nule n’aloieFors por li que veoir voloie?Autre voie m’estuet tenir,Et se vos voleiez venireAvoec moi, jel voldroie bien,Que cist ne vos valdra mes rienQui ci gist morz, jel vos plevis.Les morz as morz, les vis as vis.” (3587-96)

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(“And since she has been put in the ground, what should I go on seeking, since I didn’t have any other reason to go except that I wanted to see her? I must take another path and if you would like to come with me, I’d like it very much, for that fellow lying there dead is of no more use to you, I promise. The dead to the dead and the living to the living.”)

To this extent, at least, Perceval agrees with his cousin: that the

deaths of her lover and his mother, and the sorrows that will come to

the Fisher King and his realm because of Perceval’s failure are all of

equal weight. He differs from his cousin only in his assessment of that

weight — to the cousin, it is very great; to Perceval, hardly a trifle.

“The living to the living,” life goes on!

“Fortune is bald behind”

By the time Perceval rides away from his grieving cousin, he has

turned his back entirely on his family identity and committed himself to

an identity determined by his external actions rather than his inward

character. Chrétien underscores this fact in a later episode which is at

least superficially similar to his meeting with his cousin, in that a maiden

draws attention to his failure to ask the requisite questions the evening

of the grail procession. When he met his cousin, Perceval was still very

conscious of this omission and hoping to amend it by questioning the

castle servants. His sense of failure may even have lent a note of self-

reproach to his naming himself “Perceval the Welshman.” By the time he

arrives at the place where Arthur’s court is stationed, however,

whatever taint of self-reproach or social failure might have clung to that

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name has vanished for the time, and the cognomen “Welshman” serves

simply to confirm that this is indeed the man Arthur had hoped to find:

the Welsh boy who inadvertently saved Arthur’s kingdom by his

impulsive murder of the threatening Red Knight and who, as the new

Red Knight, sent so many hostages to Arthur’s court to vindicate the

laughing maiden’s predictions of his greatness. Perceval, dressed in

Gauvain’s clothes, is received at court as another Gauvain, the finest

knight of Arthur’s realm. He is, to all eyes, at the acme of chivalric

success, fêted at Arthur’s court throughout three days of festivities, and

“granz fu la joie que li rois / Fist de Perceval le Galois” (4569-70).

The moment, however, cannot last. His celebrity is about to be

marred by a moment of public shame, delivered by a messenger

whose spectacular hideousness promises that neither she nor her

message will be overlooked. Without even needing to ask his name,

the hideous damsel greets him as soon as she arrives, without

dismounting from her mule:

“Ha! Percevax, Fortune est chauveDerriers et devant chevelue.Maudahez ait qui te salueEt qui nul bien t’ore ne prie,Que tu ne la retenis mie, Fortune, quant tu l’encontrast.” (4612-17)

(“Ah, Perceval! Fortune is bald behind and hairy before. Cursed be he who greets you and he who now wishes you well, for you did not hold onto Fortune when you met her.”)110

110 The hideous damsel refers to the proverb that one must seize Fortune by

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The maiden goes on to describe in some detail the exact

consequences of Perceval’s failure to ask appropriate questions about

the bleeding lance and the grail’s recipient. What the cousin had left

unspecified, the Hideous Damsel makes explicit, as if she wants not

only Perceval but all the courtly celebrants to be fully aware that his

tardiness in asking has destroyed an entire realm — not only the king,

but his knights as well, leaving ladies widowed, maidens defenseless,

children orphaned.

This public aspect of the Hideous Damsel’s reprimand is a key

difference between these two analogous episodes: his cousin, an

intimate family member, accused the son of the widowed lady, while the

courtly messenger, a stranger, rebukes the triumphant Red Knight. This

rebuke, delivered in the midst of the court’s celebration of Perceval, is a

blow to his public persona that never touches his inner character. As

such, it is the sort of rebuke that can be countered by outward action

rather than inward reflection. After delivering her message to Perceval

and before she departs, the Hideous Damsel goes on to mention a

number of adventures that might interest the other knights of the court.

When Gauvain and others leap up to claim these quests, Perceval seizes

upon an idea of how to respond to his public shaming. When his cousin

had similarly accused him, he had no adequate response — if his mother

the forelock when she arrives, for it will be impossible to get a purchase on the back of her bald head when she has passed.

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was already dead, what could he do? No action on his part could bring

her back, and there seemed to him no point in grieving over distressing

faits accomplis. But after the other knights of the court rush to respond

to the Hideous Damsel’s invitations to adventure, Perceval appears to

believe that he can vindicate himself by acting in a similar way. Ignoring

the Hideous Damsel’s assertion that he has muffed his chance, once for

all time, Perceval chooses to act as if she has issued him a challenge

rather than a public condemnation. As William Ryding notes, Perceval

“behaves as though he had read Erec and Yvain. He follows the formula

but misses its meaning” (137). For Erec and Yvain, action turned out to

be a productive response to their public shame, but only because it

brought about an inward change: for them, facing public shame was

truly a “specular encounter” which moved them to change their ways.

The results of Perceval’s pledge to action will be different, chiefly

because he refuses to acknowledge that he needs to change. He knows

how to act and even react, but not reflect or repent; he can, as we have

seen, change his outward manner and appearance, but inwardly he

seems to be inert. Just as when, faced with his cousin’s inconsolable

grief, he suggested the practical response of avenging her lover’s

death,111 so by responding to the Hideous Damsel’s denunciation as if it

were a challenge to take up a new adventure, Perceval acts not as a

111 Another death for which Perceval is (indirectly) responsible.

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changed man but as one who is stuck in the chivalric rut of doing rather

than being.

Action is the constant watchword of the knight, after all. When

the other knights take up their challenges, they each pledge that they

will not rest until they have accomplished them. Then Perceval, we

are told, “in his turn said something completely different” (4693:

“redit tot el”), but that “tot el” turns out to be, in fact, pretty much the

same: that he will not rest or be deterred until his quest is

accomplished. Perceval’s pledge to search ceaselessly for lance and

grail is really just the standard knight’s response to a challenge. Yet

with that single phrase, “tot el,” the narrator deflects the reader’s

attention from the utter futility of Perceval’s vow to make good his

earlier failure. Most critics take at face value what the narrator says

and assume that Perceval’s quest is somehow significantly different

than the others, but there seems to be little reason to believe this,

other than the narrator’s word for it (and we have already seen that

his assessment is not always to be trusted). Even as perceptive a

reader as Leslie Topsfield takes the bait of the narrator’s assertion

that somehow Perceval’s quest is different, asserting:

This is a further step in Perceval’s development. He ignores the knightly tests for worldly fame and the chance that the opportunity to ask the fateful questions may not recur. … Perceval reflects and chooses. (271)

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But there is no evidence whatsoever that Perceval reflects or chooses

— he seems to be incapable of reflection, as attested by his consistent

failure to respond appropriately to specular encounters. Far from being

the product of thoughtful choice, Perceval’s quest differs from the

adventures claimed by Gauvain, Guiflet, or Kahedin only in that

Perceval has already been assured that his goal is impossible to

achieve. In fact, by juxtaposing the Hideous Damsel’s denunciation of

Perceval and her invitation to adventure for the other knights, Chrétien

emphasizes that Perceval’s reaction to the Hideous Damsel’s rebuke is

a stock chivalric response. If this does not make it clear enough, the

poet then adds further emphasis by making this moment coincide with

a similar public accusation of Gauvain, Perceval’s peer at court. Similar

as they may be in achievement of valor and courtesy, however, the

adequacy of their response to public accusation differs considerably:

whereas trial by combat, the redress proposed by Gauvain, may

produce a definitive outcome in his case one way or the other,112 no

number of valorous deeds can redeem Perceval’s fault, if the Hideous

Damsel is correct in her assertion that Perceval’s chance will not come

again.113

112 Chrétien certainly does not endorse trial by combat as a method of deciding guilt, as its use in Yvain makes clear. See Donald Maddox’s The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes: Once and Future Fictions for an excellent analysis of Chrétien’s critique of this and other courtly conventions.

113 The fact that, when we see him five years later, Perceval has tried unsuccessfully for five years to fulfill his quest seems to confirm the futility of it.

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This episode, which contains ample internal evidence that

Perceval has lost the chance to correct his omission at Grail Castle, is

constructed as if it were a specular encounter, i.e., as if the Hideous

Damsel is a messenger who reveals some significant fact about

Perceval’s situation which will then cause him to alter his course of

action. The narrator’s assertion that Perceval has pledged himself to a

quest that is “tot el” suggests that this is exactly what happens, and

Topsfield’s contention that Perceval “reflects and chooses” indicates

that Topsfield has read this episode as a “specular” one. Closer

attention, however, reveals that this is merely illusion, more of the

narrator’s smoke and mirrors rather than a truly specular encounter.

The astute reader will notice that nothing new is presented in this

episode, although there is much to remind Perceval and the reader

both of his earlier meeting with his bereaved cousin, whose

accusation truly was a specular encounter. His cousin’s revelation

held up a mirror to Perceval’s abusive neglect of his mother, a

revelation which called for an inward response, although Perceval did

not recognize it. Instead, he averted his attention from his inward

fault as a son and turned his energies toward the practical action of

the errant knight. He seemed instantaneously to have forgotten his

responsibility for both his mother’s death and the languishment of the

Fisher King and his realm. Why then, we might ask, does he respond

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to the Hideous Damsel’s public accusation that he is responsible for

the suffering of the Fisher King’s realm, when he completely ignored

his cousin telling him much the same thing?

Several factors may be important. First, the ugly maiden’s

denunciation, delivered amidst the court’s celebration of his arrival, is

an affront to Perceval’s identity as a knight. She chooses to deliver

her message in front of the whole court in order to shame him, i.e.,

punish him through public dishonor. The cousin, on the other hand,

wished not to shame him but to make him acknowledge his guilt, an

act not of public but of self-censure. But because he lacked the habit

of reflection that would yield self-knowledge, Perceval failed to feel

any guilt and was able to put his cousin’s accusation immediately out

of mind. The Hideous Damsel’s public denunciation, however, strikes

him as a call to chivalrous action, and he jumps at the chance to

redeem himself in the court’s eyes. Yet even though Perceval acts as if

the Damsel’s accusation is fresh news, the reader should recognize

that it is really only a reminder of information he first received from

his cousin, and note that the cause to which she attributed his failure

was a much more serious fault than procrastination.

Both maidens accuse Perceval of the same error in refraining to

ask about the grail and lance, but they differ in the cause they ascribe

to his failure. Consistent with the narrator’s insistence that Perceval

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intended to ask about the lance and grail at a later time, the Hideous

Damsel emphasizes that Perceval’s guilt lies in the deferment of his

questions:

“Mout est maleüreus qui voitSi bel tans que plus ne covaigne,S’atant ancor que plus viax vaigne.Ce est tu li maleüreusQui veïs qu’il fu tans et leusDe parler et si te taüs!Asez grant loisir en eüs!En mal eür tant te teüsses ...” (4628-35)

(“Wretched indeed is he who sees such a fine moment as there could ever be, and waits for an even better one to come along. You are that wretched man who saw that it was the time and place to speak and yet you kept quiet! You had plenty of opportunity. Evil the hour when you remained so silent …”)

In just a few lines, the Hideous Damsel emphasizes at least five times

that it was Perceval’s procrastination that caused the trouble,

underscoring her assertion that he’ll never get another chance. Yet

she does not ascribe any particular motivation to his deferral, aside

from suggesting that having seen “si bel tans,” he waited for a

moment “ancor plus biax.” The cousin, on the other hand, stated

plainly: “Por le pechié, ce saches tu, / De ta mere t’est avenue …”

(3559-60), but she never suggested that his sin was irredeemable.

Ironically, by responding to a public shaming, Perceval takes up an

impossible quest, whereas, had he taken to heart his cousin’s private

assurance that his failure was due to a “sin,” he might have taken the

remedial route of self-examination and repentance. The fruitless

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outcome of his quest is due, to an important degree, to Perceval’s

willingness to acknowledge his public character as knight while

denying — or at least ignoring — his private familial relationships.

“Call me Nephew”

“Quant ma mere fu vostre suer,Bien me devez neveu clamerEt je vos oncle, et mialz amer.” (6402-04)114

iven the importance of the conflict between his public persona

and his private character, it can be no coincidence that the

sense of crisis provoked by Perceval’s lengthy and useless quest for

the grail and lance is overcome only by his finally acknowledging the

family ties that he so long forgot. We have looked, so far, at two series

of “specular” encounters: those in which Perceval believes he sees his

destiny as knight, which reflect an illusory and superficial image of

him in the physical and social trappings of the knight, and others in

which people intimately connected to him reveal his true heritage and

character. Both series culminate in the final episode of the Perceval

fragment, the meeting with his hermit uncle at a chapel in a deserted

forest, which finally reconciles the two conflicting identities and

reopens the possibility of his ultimate success in restoring the Grail

G

114 “Since my mother was your sister, / You really ought to acknowledge me as nephew / And I acknowledge you as uncle, and love you the more.”

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kingdom. In a real sense, Perceval must reclaim what he was if he is

to become what he is destined to be.

“What he was,” both we and Perceval are reminded in this

episode, was “li filz a la veve dame de la Gaste Forest soutainne.” All

the elements of this identity are revisited in this final episode, and all

are finally acknowledged and embraced by Perceval. In this final

specular encounter, Perceval will at last look into the mirror held up

to his life and see himself as he is; only thus will he be able to

progress and become “celui qui de chevalerie / Avra tote la seignorie,”

(1041-42).115 Perceval has wandered long and far since Arthur’s fool

first spoke those words, and he has done so, as we have noted, in the

guise of the conventional errant knight, questing for adventure in the

heart of the forest.116 In that guise, he set out upon his quest, leaving

behind the “sodality” of courtly chivalry to pursue “the knight's

achievement of honour in isolation” (Saunders ix). However, Perceval

is destined not for conventional chivalry (the shortcomings of which

we shall discuss in the following chapter) but for something that

transcends the limitations of the kind of chivalry celebrated by

115 This is what Arthur’s fool often said of the maiden who was struck by Keu: “Cest pucele ne rira / Jus que tant que elle verra / Celui qui de chevaleie / Avra tote la seignorie.” (1039-42: “This maiden will not laugh until she sees the one who will have all the lordship of knighthood”).

116 See Corinne Saunders’ The Forest in Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden for a thorough analysis of the motif of the forest in twelfth and thirteenth century romance.

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Arthur’s court. Consequently, for Perceval much as it was for Yvain,

the isolation of the forest becomes not a testing ground for deeds of

valor but a place of oblivion, the loss — and the recovery — of memory

and identity. What must be tested is not his prowess (proved by five

years’ of monotonously successful adventures) but his true nature —

the inner not the outer man.

The inner man is someone to whom Perceval (and, perhaps, the

reader) has given little thought. We have seen how stubbornly he has

resisted opportunities to know himself, ignoring equally his mother’s

information about the family heritage and his cousin’s accusation of

his guilt both in the death of his mother and in the continued

desolation of the Grail Kingdom. Perceval’s chosen identity as knight

has been affirmed not by his own inward judgment of himself but by

the approval afforded him by others: Gornemant’s acknowledgement

of his mastery of arms, the grateful acclaim of Blancheflor and her

rescued city, the celebratory reception of Arthur’s court. Such

moments, however, have been few and fleeting, and most of his career

has been spent not in the banquet hall but in the isolation of the

forest, with no companion but himself.

At Home in the Forest

The forest in which he finds himself after his five years of

triumph bears many similarities to the Gaste Forest in which he was

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raised, although there are significant differences. Both are isolated,

but the function of their isolation differs. The gaste forest soutainne in

which Perceval was raised was a refuge, a place to hide in safety from

the dangers of society and the ravages of chivalry. The Old French

gaste, like its English cognate “waste,” implies both ruin and

isolation, the latter further emphasized by the added adjective

soutainne or solitary. The secluded location of the Rich Fisherman’s

castle might also be called a gaste forest, for Perceval was informed

by his cousin that the Fisher King, languishing with a wound similar

to that which took Perceval’s father into self-imposed exile, has built

his castle as a “hidden retreat,” where he must send out servants to

hunt the forest for him, much as Perceval hunted for his mother. We

might even imagine those two households lying at opposite extremes

of the same great, solitary forest where people seek refuge from the

ravages of chivalry’s violence.

The wood in which Perceval will meet his hermit uncle, while

apparently equally secluded, is described as desert. The denotation of

this term is almost identical to that of gaste, but the connotation is

markedly different. “Desert” refers to land that has been “left waste”

(rather than “laid waste”), an expanse untouched by human society or

industry; the term, also suggests the preferred abode of hermits, men

or women who seek out isolation in order to avoid the distraction of

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worldly cares as they devote their lives to spiritual pursuits, a practice

that was miniaturized and made accessible to ordinary laypeople

through the Church’s observation of Lent. Both these practices,

however, have their roots in the Gospel account of Christ’s triumph

over the devil’s temptation to claim worldly glory and power, when he

withdrew to pray in the wilderness before embarking on his public

ministry. Each of these nuances will contribute to the significance of

the passage in which Perceval meets penitents returning from a

Lenten pilgrimage to the chapel of a hermit, who will identify himself

as Perceval’s own uncle. Here Perceval will find, and be reconciled

with, much that he has avoided, ignored, and forgotten. Thus, the

resonances of that single word, desert, transform the forest from the

terminus of desperate flight into a place of spiritual encounter and

renewal; attention shifts from wounds inflicted to healing offered.

Memory and Reconciliation

This final episode, in which Perceval’s act of remembering will

effect his reconciliation and transformation, is designed to evoke a

number of analogous episodes that preceded it, so that it stirs

important memories for the reader as well as for Perceval. First, and

most obviously, the scene in which Perceval meets the penitents who

direct him to that holy hermit is modeled closely on the scene in

which he first met knights in the woods near his mother’s house. Yet

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the two episodes are not duplicates but rather inverse reflections:

here, Perceval plays the role of the armed knight who startles the

humbly-clad penitents, and they in turn marvel at his armor. The first

meeting sent Perceval off in quest of that shining armor, while the

latter moves him to divest himself of it. Thus, when Perceval meets his

uncle he is, for the moment, stripped of the identity that supplanted

that of “son of the Widow Lady.” His disarmament also figuratively

strips him of the vainglory which has been the real (but unsatisfying)

fruit of the quest that first led him from his mother’s house, and now,

as he approaches his uncle’s dwelling, he is clothed only in humility,

entering the chapel naked of arms, weeping, and on his knees.

Although Perceval still lacks explicit self-knowledge, his sense of

inadequacy as a knight is the first sign of that self-judgment which

marks the humility necessary for reconciliation with God and

neighbor. In the hermitage episode, Chrétien ties both these kinds of

reconciliation to Perceval’s identity as a son and as a knight. The first

intimations of this close connection are voiced when Perceval

encounters the party of three penitent knights accompanying ten

ladies:

Et li uns des trois chevaliersL’areste et dit: “Biax sire chers,Don ne creez vos Jhesu CristQui la novele loi escristEt la dona as crestïens?Certes il n’est reisons ne biens

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D’armes porter, einz est granz torz,Au jor que Jhesu Criz fu morz.” (6219-26)

(And one of the three knights stopped him and said, “Fair dear lord, do you not believe in Jesus Christ, who wrote the new law and gave it to Christians? Indeed, it is neither right nor good to bear arms — rather it is very wrong to do so — on the day that Jesus Christ was killed.”)

Here is the first hint that this latter meeting with knights in the woods

is the fulfillment of the promise of the first such meeting. We may

recall that Perceval’s first desire to claim the identity of knight was

born of a (fleeting) religious impulse, however quickly it might have

been deflected by cupidity and vanity; that impulse toward the divine,

however, was quickly converted into the ambition to be “plus biax que

Deus.” In that first encounter, Perceval was the innocent marveling at

a knight’s armor, but now the tables are turned. He himself is the

object of amazement, and out of a sense not of admiration but of

scandal. Here his attention is finally turned back to God as the

penitent knight reminds him that he should show respect for “Jesus

Christ, who wrote the New Law and gave it to Christians.” That New

Law is the twofold law of love of God and love of neighbor, both of

whom Perceval turned his back on when he went in pursuit of

knighthood.

Perceval is struck to the heart by the penitent knight’s words —

this is, perhaps, the first time anyone has failed to approve of his

appearance since he finally put off the rough garments his mother

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made him, in order to look fully a courtly knight. On that day,

Gornemant had insisted that Perceval don fine undergarments and

then rewarded him by fastening him on his spurs and declaring that

he had just been admitted into “the highest order God has created

and ordained, which is the order of knighthood” (1615-17: “la plus

haute ordre … / Que Dex a fete et comandee: / C’est l’ordre de

chevalerie”). Now, having been chastised for appearing as a knight,

Perceval asks the penitents why they are dressed in sackcloth and,

when told that they have been to visit a hermit, inquires, “Por Deu,

seignor, la que feïstes? / Que demandastes? que queïstes?” He quickly

makes their quest his own when told that, by confessing their sins to

the hermit, they had fulfilled “La plus grant besoigne … / Que nus

crestïens puisse feire / Qui ben voelle a Damedeu pleire” (6278-80:

“The greatest duty … that any Christian can do who truly wishes to

please God”).

From the time of Gornemant’s instruction, Perceval has

assumed that chivalry has to do primarily with activity rather than

character, and he has clung to that idea through five long, profitless

years of seeking out “estranges avantures, / Les felenesses et le

dures” (6193-94), believing that this is the way to exercise the

responsibilities of “the highest order God has instituted.” Similarly, he

accepted at face value the Hideous Damsel’s assertion that his failure

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at Grail Castle was essentially a failure to act, while he ignored his

cousin’s accusation that there was a deeper, underlying motive for his

lapse. Even now, feeling the emptiness of all his actions and disturbed

by the realization that he has neglected God, Perceval grasps at the

suggestion that he may find relief in action, and he goes off in pursuit,

not this time of “Arthur, the king who makes knights,” but of a hermit

who will hear his confession, “a man so very holy that he lives solely

by the glory of God” (6269-71: “un saint hermite / Qui … / … ne vit,

tant par est sainz hon, / Se de la gloire de Deu non”). This man will

help him to redefine himself by turning his attention from what he

does to who he is, as Saint Bernard would counsel him: to know “what

he is in nature, who he is in person, and what sort of man he is in

character.”

As Perceval enters the hermit’s chapel, seeking to carry out “the

greatest duty a Christian can do,” he finds the hermit with a priest

and a minor cleric beginning the Good Friday liturgy, “the highest

that can be done in Holy Church, and the sweetest” (6312-13: “le plus

grant qui an sainte Eglise / Puisse estre fez, et li plus dolz”). The

superlatives used to describe the Good Friday liturgy and the duty of

confession before Easter (which would be made canonically obligatory

a generation later at the Fourth Lateran Council) emphasize that the

religious dimension (particularly the observation of the New Law) is

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the important element missing from Perceval’s practice of chivalry. At

the hermit’s chapel, what has been lacking will be restored and what

has been forgotten will be brought to mind — this is the reconciliation

necessary for the Perceval’s perfection as a knight and as a man. In

this episode, then, he does not turn from away from knighthood

toward mysticism, as some critics have suggested; rather, he

completes the final stage of his initiation into knighthood, which he

only seemed to accomplish at Gornemant’s castle, and he does this by

being reconciled to God and to his family.

Recalling Chivalry

Perceval’s sojourn with Gornemant marked one of the three

“teaching” episodes that many critics have identified as being

structurally significant, the first being his mother’s advice before his

departure, and the last being the penance prescribed by the hermit.

As we have already seen, Perceval ignores most of his mother’s

teaching, and what he does retain he misinterprets. The same is true

of his reception of Gornemant’s instruction, as testified by his

disastrous silence before the Grail procession. Yet it is possible that,

once again, Chrétien, in emphasizing that Perceval misunderstood

Gornemant’s advice against garrulity, employed misdirection to

distract the reader from the rest of Gornemant’s instruction. After

giving Perceval his spurs and sword, Gornemant declared that he was

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now a member of the highest order ordained by God, “which should

be without base conduct” (1618: “qui doit estre sanz vilenie”).

Gornemant then went on to provide instruction in proper chivalrous

conduct (sparing conquered foes, succoring distressed maidens,

attending church regularly), instruction that he mixed with useful

social tips (avoiding idle chatter and refraining from quoting his

mother). The ethical portion of Gornemant’s advice echoes what

Perceval’s mother had told him, but again what Perceval does not

immediately forget he misconstrues, a fact which the reader readily

recognizes. However, what may (but should not) escape the reader’s

notice is the fact that Gornemant does not explain why or in what way

chivalry is “the highest order God has ordained,” and he only implies

that following his advice is the best way to assure that Perceval will

maintain his knighthood “sanz vilenie.” Both the term “vilenie” and

the fact that Gornemant mixes ethical instruction with advice on

manners give the impression that the way to be a good knight is to

avoid making embarrassing social gaffes.

Now, however, at the hermit’s chapel, Gornemant’s words are

recalled to mind by the superlatives used to describe the act of

confession (“the highest duty of a Christian who wishes to please

God”) and the celebration of the Good Friday liturgy (“the highest and

sweetest that can be carried out in Holy Church”), both of which

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evoke earlier superlatives describing the order of chivalry in general

(“the highest order God ordained”) and, in particular, Perceval’s

prophesied destiny to become “the one who shall have all the lordship

of chivalry.” In their original context, both the laughing maiden’s

prophecy of Perceval’s greatness and Gornemant’s claim about the

value of chivalry suggested that their use of superlatives referred to a

secular glory, but now, as they are evoked by reference to supreme

acts of humility, we may re-evaluate the true meaning of what it

means that Perceval will become the finest example of the “highest

order ordained by God.”

In the present context of the hermit’s chapel, we may also

recognize the echo of a passage from the Epistle of James: “Religion

pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to give aid to

orphans and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself

unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). If one were to substitute the

word “chivalry” for “religion,” and “vilenie” for “the world,” one

would have a paraphrase of Gornemant’s commendation of

knighthood. Earlier in the same passage, James advises:

Therefore, casting aside all uncleanness and abundance of malice, with meekness receive the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror: for he looks at himself and goes away, and presently he forgets what kind of man he is. But he who has looked carefully into the

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perfect law of liberty and has remained in it, not becoming a forgetful hearer but doer of the word, shall be blessed in his deed. (James 1:21-25)

There are a number of reasons to believe that Chretien might have

had this passage in mind, and might have expected an attentive

reader to be reminded of it. The first verse, 21, reminds us of the

prologue’s description of Alexander (whom we have identified as a

type of worldly chivalry motivated by vainglory), who “had amassed in

himself all the vices and wickedness of which the count [Philip] is

clean and free” (18-20: “Car il ot an lui amassez / Toz les vices et toz

les max / Don li cuens est mondes et sax”). Furthermore, the

“ingrafted word” echoes both the prologue’s “sown word” of romance

and the “sown word” of Christ’s teaching in the Gospel account to

which the prologue alludes, which asserts that those who provide

fertile ground for the word will bear much fruit in acts of Charity.

“Meekness” suggests the unwonted humility with which Perceval asks

the hermit’s consoil, and the next verse suggests that Perceval may

finally take to heart and act upon the hermit’s counsel, although he

has already heard (and ignored) the same advice from his mother and

from Gornemant. When the hermit assigns as penance the duties to

give aid to helpless women and orphans, and to be diligent in the

worship of God, Perceval’s willing acceptance of his penance suggests

that he will, finally, become a “doer of the word, and not a hearer

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only, deceiving himself” that he is fulfilling the promise of his

knighthood. He accepts this penance after acknowledging the true

nature of the sin that caused his failure at Grail castle and the

obligations of family ties. In this, his final “specular encounter,” he

finally sees his true identity and nature in the mirror of his actions. No

longer will he be “like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror

[who] looks at himself and goes away, and presently ... forgets what

kind of man he is.”

This episode, then, also reconciles three separate series of

analogous episodes, which represent the competing identities of

Perceval: the “instructive” episodes, in which Perceval is told time

and again the principles of chivalry; the false “specular” encounters in

which Perceval recognizes himself only in the superficial aspects of

knighthood, and the truly specular encounters in which he repeatedly

is warned of the consequences of his actions in pursuit of that

knighthood. All of these are reconciled by the same device by which

Perceval is brought to acknowledge his family ties, i.e. his encounter

with his hermit uncle. Perceval, of course, has no idea that there is

any connection between his insufficiency as a knight and his familial

relations — he has, after all, consistently ignored the latter and seems

to have only a rather amorphous sense of the former. As a

conventional, or vainglorious, knight — i.e., one who depends upon

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the opinion of others for his sense of self — the only explanation he

can imagine for his feeling of desolation is the accusation tendered by

the Hideous Damsel in her public denunciation, and this is the

accusation he weighs against himself in his confession to the hermit:

“Sire, fet il, bien a cinc anzQue je ne soi ou ge me fui,Ne Deu n’amai ne ne le crui,N’onques puis ne fis se mal non.— Ha! biax amis, fet il prodon,Di moi por coi tu as ce fait,Et prie Deu que merci aitDe l’ame de son pecheor.— Sire, chiés le Roi PescheorFui une foiz, et vi la lanceDon li fers sainne sanz dotance,Et de cele gote de sancQue a la pointe del fer blancVi pandre, rien n’an demandai:Onques puis certes n’amandai.Et del graal que ge i viNe soi pas cui l’an an servi ... ” (6330-46)

(“Sir,” he said, “It’s been a good five years since I’ve known where I was, nor have I loved God or believed in Him, and I’ve never been able to do anything except wrong.” “Ah, fair friend!” said the worthy man, “Tell me why you have acted thus, and pray God to have mercy on the soul of his sinner.” “Sir, I once visited the home of the Fisher King, and I saw the lance whose point bleeds without a doubt, and regarding the drop of blood that I saw hanging from the white tip, I never asked a thing; I’ve certainly never been able to make up for it. And regarding the grail that I saw there, I never learned who was served from it.”)

Note that, while Perceval seems to have accepted the Hideous

Damsel’s insinuation that his failure to ask about the grail and lance

marked his failure as a knight (i.e., that he failed a test), he assumes

that the cost of that gaffe has extended through all his subsequent

questing, by which he hoped to amend his fault. His five fruitless

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years of trying to find the grail and lance again seem to confirm the

Hideous Damsel’s assertion that he missed his chance once for ever.

And yet, Perceval also connects that failure to his neglect of

God, although without any clear understanding of how the two faults

are related:

“S’an ai puis eü si grant duel Que morz eüsse esté mon vuel, Et Damedeu an oblïai,Ne puis merci ne li crïaiNe ne fis rien que ge seüssePar coi merci avoir eüsse.” (6347-52)

(“And since then I’ve suffered such sorrow that I might have wished I were dead. And I’ve forgotten God because of it, nor have I called on him for mercy since then or done anything, as far as I know, for which I might have received mercy.”)

Although he clearly has been haunted by the memory of his reticence

to ask about the grail and lance, Perceval has not yet understood the

true cause of his sense of failure and desolation, yet it is vitally

important that he understand the proper relation of cause and effect

in the matter. In his confusion over the true cause of his pain,

Perceval asks the hermit for “counsel, for he has great need of it”

(6325: “consoil, que grant mestier en a”), and that is just what the

hermit gives him: he is able to help Perceval put his actions and their

consequences in the proper perspective, but doing so requires that

Perceval acknowledge the relationships he renounced when he took

up the pursuit of chivalry. The hermit asks him his name and, when

Perceval replies, he sighs in recognition and says:

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“Frere, mout t’a neüUns pechiez don tu ne sez mot,Ce fu li diax que ta mere ot De toi quant tu partis de li,Que pasmee a terre cheïAu chief del pont devant la porte,Et de ce[st] duel fu ele morte.Por le pechié que tu en asT’avint que tu ne demandas De la lance ne del graal,Si t’an sont avenu maint mal. ...” (6358-68)

(“Brother, you have been greatly harmed by a sin of which you know not a word. It is the sorrow that your mother experienced because of you when you left her, for she fell to the ground in a swoon at the head of the bridge before the gate, and she died of that sorrow. Because of the sin that you committed there, it befell that you did not ask about the lance or grail, and many evils have befallen you because of it.”)

Note how closely the hermit’s reaction to Perceval’s name resembles

that of the grieving damsel: both immediately recognize him and

attribute his failure to ask about the lance and grail to his sin against

his mother. However, while the cousin reacted angrily, renaming him

“Perceval the Wretch,” and blamed him for having failed to win great

relief for the Fisher King and his realm, the hermit sighs (in sympathy

or exasperation?) and informs him that his sin has caused much harm,

not to the Fisher King but to Perceval himself. He even goes on to add

that only his mother’s dying prayer has protected him from suffering

even greater harm, including imprisonment and death. What is more,

although the hermit clearly labels Perceval’s neglect of his mother

“sin,” he calls the failure to ask about the grail and whom it served

simply “folly” (6379-80: “Et quant del grail ne seüs, / Cui l’an an sert,

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fol san eüs.”) The cost of that folly was that Perceval did not learn that

his own uncle was served from the grail, the brother of both the

hermit and his own mother, and that his host was that man’s own son,

Perceval’s cousin.

In both instances, that of the sorrowful damsel and that of the

hermit, the revelation of his name and his failure to ask about the

procession brings to light new family relationships, but whereas

Perceval hardly reacted to the news that the grieving maiden was his

own cousin, he responds eagerly to the hermit’s revelation, saying,

“Since my mother was your sister, you really ought to acknowledge

me as nephew, and I should acknowledge you as uncle, and love you

the better” (6402-40: “Quant ma mere fu vostre suer, / Bien me devez

neveu clamer / Et je vos oncle, et mialz amer”).

This is an extraordinary statement to come from the young man

whose callous neglect brought about his own mother’s death; whose

impatience to find Arthur made him dismiss important revelations

about the fates of his own dead father and brothers; whose

insensitivity left his female cousin alone in the wild forest with no

other protection than the corpse of her decapitated lover; whose self-

consciousness prevented him from making simple inquiries that might

have brought about a reunion with a male cousin and an uncle that he

never knew he had. His eagerness to embrace his hermit uncle is a

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sign that he has truly repented of the heartlessness that caused him to

ignore and abuse his nearest and dearest. More than this, his ready

agreement to adopt his uncle’s humble and pious manner of life,

eating simple meatless meals as he anticipates Easter morning and

the Holy Communion that he will receive “mout dignemant,” shows

him in a light that makes it clear he now resembles his two uncles —

holy men who live by the grace of God — much more than he does his

earlier mentors who initiated him into the practices of chivalry. It is as

if, looking into his uncle’s face, he finally recognizes himself in that

family resemblance.

Perceval’s reconciliation with his family represents, in an

important way, the restoration of his proper sense of self, what Saint

Augustine would have called memoria sui. In his monograph, Saint

Augustine on Memory, John Mourant discusses the concept of

memoria sui (“memory of oneself”) as reflected in Augustine’s

Confessions: “[M]emory is the act of knowing myself and this is

possible only if I can remember myself, not simply the things and

events of which I am aware but to remember them as relating to

myself” (29). This becomes quite literally true in Perceval’s case, as

he “remembers” his past actions and associates, and recognizes the

way they are related to him and his present circumstances. In this

way, then, Perceval reclaims his identity as “son of the widow lady”

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when he acknowledges the disastrous effects of his neglect of his

mother and embraces his relationship with his maternal uncle and the

extended family he represents. By this act of memoria sui, he has also

transformed the gaste forest in which he lives and quests from a dark

wood of oblivion and desolation into a religious retreat where he

rediscovers both himself and God. We can be sure that the reform and

restoration of his personal character will also be reflected in the

public character of his knighthood, for from now on his daily service

toward God and toward helpless women and orphans will constitute

an on-going penance for his earlier abuses, perfecting his practice of

chivalry and fulfilling its promise.

Chapter 5 Remembering Charity: Signs Along the Path to God

“Si tenist cest santier tot droitEnsi con nos somes venu………………………… Tex antresaignes i feïmesPor ce que nus n’esgarast …” (6288-95)117

efore turning to the episodes which form the heart of the Conte

del Graal, we should pause to get our bearings and consider the

way along which we have come thus far. We have been tracking two

journeys: Perceval’s quest for perfection in knighthood, and the

reader’s journey into the meaning of the romance, which in many

ways parallels Perceval’s own progress toward chivalric perfection.

From the very first lines of the prologue, Chrétien has hinted that

both these journeys will require attention and reflection if one is not

to miss the point entirely. Our analysis thus far has concentrated on

Perceval’s journey, and has taken note of his forgetfulness both of

God and of himself in his pursuit of chivalry, distracted from his

proper duties by curiositas, a propensity for distraction and attention

to superficial matters of little consequence. This curiositas is not

merely idle curiosity but a dangerous vice that quickly leads him down

the left-hand path of self-serving vainglory. In a very real sense,

B

117 The penitents’ reply to Perceval when he asks them the way to the hermit’s chapel: “You should stay right on this path along the way that we have come … : such signs have we made that no one should get lost along the way… .”

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Perceval’s pursuit of chivalry has been deviant behavior — i.e., it has

caused him to deviate from (i.e., literally, to turn out of the way of)

Charity.

The reader, although warned of the dangers of careless and

superficial reading from the very first lines of the romance, has quite

likely followed Perceval along his deviant way. Despite the fact that

the young Welshman first seen frolicking in the springtime forest was

hardly a typical romance hero, as soon as he began to acquire the

features of the conventional courtly knight, the reader, like Arthur

and his court, will have expected him to behave like one, to fulfill the

prophecy of the maiden who predicted that he would become the

greatest knight ever known. The reader may also have been just as

willing as Perceval himself to ignore occasional reminders of

neglected familial obligations while turning attention to Perceval’s

quest for the grail and lance.

In this way, both the reader and the hero are brought up short

when Perceval encounters a band of barefoot, hooded penitents making

their way through a desert wood. The reader may be as baffled by

Perceval’s reaction to this encounter as Perceval himself is by the

censure with which the penitents greet him. First the narrator tells us

that Perceval is troubled in his heart (6229: “avoit an son cuer enui”),

then, when the penitents explain the significance of the day, we are

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told that “what he had heard made him weep” (6281-82: “Ce que

Percevaux oï ot / Le fist plorer”). The shock for the reader is not so

much the news imparted by the penitents as it is Perceval’s emotional

reaction to it: this young man, who had seemed virtually impassive

until this point, is suddenly overcome by grief at the news that this is

Good Friday. Perceval’s reaction seems not only excessive but out of

character. This is not the Perceval we thought we knew.

The Way to the Hermit’s Chapel

Ce que Percevax oï otLe fist plorer, et si li plotQue au saint home alast parler. (6281-83)118

hen last we saw him, Perceval was about to set off from

Arthur’s court on a quest that has now lasted, we are told,

five years. He has spent those five years defeating every opponent

that he has met, sending the each vanquished knight to Arthur’s court

– in other words, he has carried on much as he had before taking up

his quest. Perhaps this is why the narrator refrains from detailing the

dire and difficult exploits in which Perceval has been engaging

meanwhile: the reader has already seen him doing this sort of thing,

and to detail sixty separate triumphs would be needlessly repetitive.119

W

118 “What Perceval had heard made him weep, and he wished to go speak to the holy man.”

119 We have already seen that the narrator prefers to skip over “unnecessary” details, e.g. in the description of Perceval’s dinner with Gornemant, where he simply notes that they had “plenty to eat and drink” (1546-48).

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We know Perceval the successful knight. Even the additional

information that Perceval never thought of God during those five

years is hardly news, for he had never given much thought to God,

except in those brief spasms of religious impulse when a glimpse of

shining armor or a colorful pavilion reminded him of the glory of God

— and even then his attention quickly wandered back to more

mundane interests. The odd thing is not that Perceval has forgotten

God, but that the narrator finds this fact worthy of our attention (he

mentions it thrice within twenty lines) while passing over in silence

Perceval’s five years of exploits.

The scant information that the narrator does provide about the

five unchronicled years suggests that the Perceval who meets a band

strangely-clad knights and ladies in a deserted wood is much the same

as he was when last we saw him. However, it soon becomes evident

that both Perceval and the wood’s denizens are not as we are

accustomed to seeing them. The strangers, although identified as a

mixed party of knights and ladies, would not otherwise have been

recognizable as such, for they are afoot — in fact, barefoot — and

dressed in the hair shirts and hoods of penitents. Perceval, on the

other hand, is dressed in his usual armor, but “so troubled in his

heart” (6229: “Tant avoit an son cuer enui”) that he has lost track of

the passage of time, and he is confused when the penitents rebuke

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him for going about armed on this particular day, “the day when Jesus

Christ was killed” (6226: “[le] jor que Jhesu Criz fu morz”). When the

day’s significance and the custom of penitence are explained to him,

“what Perceval hears makes him weep” (6281). His tears, which seem

so easily provoked, signify an interior state that seems out of

character in a man who never wept even when he learned of his own

mother’s death and who has never shown any emotion other than

impulsive anger. Even the penitent knight’s reminder of the suffering

and death of Jesus Christ should not move him to tears, for Perceval

heard this once before from his own mother and he hardly took note

of it then. No, it seems that somehow Perceval has changed, and the

knight we thought we knew is not the one who bursts into tears.

The cause of this change is hidden from the reader; only

Perceval’s tears show that he is not the man he was. The narrator,

here as elsewhere, does not describe Perceval’s interior state, either

directly or indirectly. Although he says that Perceval was so

tormented in his heart that he didn’t know what day it was, the nature

or cause of that torment is not described. Here we find no allegorical

descriptions of the changes occurring within Perceval’s heart, such as

those in The Knight with the Lion that describe Yvain’s enamorment

with Laudine, nor is there even an exterior monologue such as the one

in which Enid reveals her concern over her husband Erec’s dereliction

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of duty. We have the outward and visible sign and must guess the

nature of the inward and invisible condition that it signifies.120 The

context in which the tears appear suggests what that interior state is,

for Perceval’s weeping begins after he is told that this is a day that

calls for penitence and that the strangely-clad party of nobles has just

returned from confessing their sins to a holy hermit. His tears

continue copiously until he throws himself at the feet of that hermit

and begs him to hear his confession. His former thoughtless

arrogance has disappeared, and he is the very image of abject

humility as he approaches the holy man:

Percevax se met a genoizTantost com antre an la chapele,Et li bons hom a lui l’apeleQue mout le vit sinple et plorant,Et jus ques au manton colantL’eve des ialz li degotoit.Et Percevax qui mout dotoitAvoir vers Damedeu mespris,Par le pié a l’ermite pris,Si li ancline et les mains joint, Et li prie que il li dointConsoil, que grant mestier en a. (6314-25)

(Perceval fell to his knees as soon as he entered the chapel, and the good man called him over, for he saw that he was humble and weeping, with water spilling from his eyes and running down to his chin. And Perceval, who very much feared that he had sinned against the Lord God, took the hermit by the foot, bowed toward him and pressed his hands together, and begged him to give him counsel, for he had great need of it.)

120 See Lionel Friedman’s “Occulta Cordis” for a discussion of the medieval understanding of the correspondence between outward behavior (homo exterior) and interior psychological states (homo interior).

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Perceval’s confession, and the hermit’s response, contain even

more puzzling surprises. Perceval seems as confused as the reader

regarding the cause of the enui that weighs on his heart. He confesses

that he has forgotten God and, in five years, has done “nothing but

evil,” ever since he failed to ask about the lance and grail. It would

seem that the Hideous Damsel’s public denunciation of him, which

instigated his long quest for the grail and lance, has continued to

weigh upon his conscience and, for all the things Perceval has

forgotten (even God), that signal failure has dwelt poignantly in his

memory, and becomes the singular fault of which he accuses himself.

Here, however, is another surprise, for the hermit quickly corrects

him: his silence before the grail procession was mere foolishness,

caused by an earlier sin of which Perceval remains unaware. That

earlier sin — the fatal sorrow Perceval caused his mother when he left

her — is the true cause of Perceval’s alienation, and the fault for

which the hermit imposes penance. Perceval accepts both the hermit’s

explanation and his penance quite readily, but the reader is left to

wonder what it all means.

The Reader Repents

For the reader, mystery is added to mystery. Although the

hermit reveals the answer to one of the questions Perceval failed to

ask — the identity of the person served by the shining grail — he

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leaves the question about the lance tantalizingly unanswered. In fact,

his explanation of Perceval’s sin stirs up new questions which beg to

be answered: how did Perceval’s sin against his mother cause his

reticence to ask questions of the Fisher King? What does that have to

do with his conviction that he failed grievously that evening? If

Perceval is wrong about the nature of his error, what is the true cause

of his contrition? The reader’s burning questions are intensified by

Perceval’s calm acceptance of the hermit’s explanation. This placid

and unquestioning attitude is one more indication that Perceval has

undergone some transformation that the reader cannot account for.

Where is the youth who incessantly asked questions about anything

that he didn’t understand? Even in the hall of the Fisher King,

Perceval wanted to ask about the grail and the lance, although he

repressed those questions. However, while the narrator at that time

deliberately drew attention to Perceval’s conscious decision to defer

his questions, now he rather pointedly ignores the questions that must

be arising in the reader’s mind, abruptly changing the subject and

turning away from Perceval, in order to return to Gauvain’s

adventures.

Knotted Signs

At this point, it becomes apparent that the narrator will provide

no direct help in answering the reader’s questions. Indeed, the

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narrative and its sequential jumps — from Gauvain, to Perceval, then

back to Gauvain — seem designed to disorient and confuse the reader.

Yet reason suggests that a poet as accomplished as Chrétien cannot

intend only confusion; if the reader is baffled, it must be because he

has overlooked some meaningful detail. If the reader wishes to

understand and accept the hermit’s counsel as calmly and implicitly

as Perceval seems to do, perhaps he would best be served by adopting

Perceval’s penitent attitude and, imitating his humility, acknowledge

that he has made a mistake, and seek guidance to help him

understand and amend his fault.121

Wishing to visit the hermit to seek spiritual guidance, Perceval

first had to ask the penitents to show him the way to the holy man’s

retreat. They tell him:

“Sire, qui aler i voldroit, Si tenist cest santier tot droitEnsi con nos somes venuPar cest bois espés et menu,Si se preïst garde des rainsQue nos noames a noz mainsQant nos par ilueques venismes;Tex antresaignes i feïsmesPor ce que nus n’i esgarastQui vers ce[st] saint hermite alast.” (6287-96)

121 John S. Maddux, in “La penitence de Perceval,” suggests that this is precisely Chrétien’s intention: “[N]ous avons dit que, en raison des problèmes posés par l’épisode relatant le repentir du héros, le lecteur se voit presque obligé a relire toute l’histoire. A ces deux lectures correspondent deux conceptions différentes du chevalier gallois. L’une d’elles ne serait pas plus fausse que l’autre, en ce sens que Chrétien aurait voulu que le lecteur passe par toutes les deux” (60).

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(“My lord, anyone who might wish to go there should stay right on this path, the same way we have come through this thick, dense wood, and he should pay careful attention to the branches that we have knotted together with our own hands when we came that way; we have made such signs so that no one should get lost who was going toward this holy hermit.”)

The reader himself perhaps would do well, also, to look for signs that

may have been left so to keep him from getting lost as he approaches

the hermit’s chapel. Are there, perhaps, “knots” in the narrative,

which the poet has made “with his own hands,” which will help us

reach a place at which we can accept the Hermit’s counsel? Perhaps

for us, as well as Perceval, there are knotty indicators close at hand.

By “knots” let us understand those points at which the narration

seem to present an obstacle to easy interpretation, which may even

seem to present direct contradictions to our first interpretation.

Perhaps the most striking is the fact that the hermit denies that

Perceval’s reticence to ask questions at the home of the Fisher King

was anything more than mere foolishness — certainly not itself a

grave sin. This is a very disconcerting evaluation, for Perceval’s five

year quest was predicated upon the assumption that his failure to ask

the appropriate questions was a serious omission, one which has

brought public shame upon him and untold suffering upon the Fisher

King and his realm. The hermit, however, quickly dismisses Perceval’s

omission as foolishness (6380: “Fol san eüs”) and explains that this

reticence was caused by an earlier sin:

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“Frere, mout t’a neüUns pechiez don tu ne sez mot,Ce fu li diax que ta mere otDe toi quant tu parties de li ……………………………Por le pechié que tu en asT’avint que tu ne demandasDe la lance ne del graal,Si t’an sont avenu maint mal ...”  (6358-61, 6365 -68)

(“Brother, a sin of which you know not a word has done you great harm, and that is the sorrow that your mother suffered on account of you when you left her.… Because of the sin that you committed in doing that, it happened that you did not ask about the lance or the grail, and many misfortunes have befallen you for that reason …”)

The hermit’s interpretation of Perceval’s actions is surprising, not

because he identifies Perceval’s real sin as his mistreatment of his

mother (something his cousin told him long ago) but because, unlike

either the cousin or the Hideous Damsel, the hermit fails to accuse

him of causing, by his silence, the ruin of the Fisher King and his

realm. Instead, the hermit emphasizes that Perceval has harmed

himself by his sin, and that only his mother’s prayer has protected him

from greater hardship than he has already endured:

“Et n’eusses pas tant duréS’ele ne t’eüst comandéA Damedeu, ce saches tu,Mes sa parole ot tel vertuQue Dex por li t’a regardéDe mort et de prison gardé. (6369-74)

(“And you wouldn’t have lasted this long if she hadn’t commended you to the Lord God, but her words had such power that, on account of them, God has watched over you and preserved you from death and imprisonment.”)

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The hermit’s words create a sharp contrast between the actions of

Perceval — who callously caused his mother such anguish that she

died of it, thereby bringing great affliction on himself — and those of

his mother, who preserved her son from death and imprisonment by

her fervent prayer for God’s protection; Perceval’s sin would have

been (literally) mortal, if not for his mother’s intercession.

The hermit’s words are troubling not only because they upset

our assumptions about the events at Grail Castle, but also because

they suggest that Perceval’s quest for knighthood has been tainted

from the beginning and, perhaps, that his unparalleled success is not

entirely due to his own excellence. The former suggestion is

supported by the fact that, although the hermit denies the importance

of Perceval’s silence before the grail procession, he does not

contradict Perceval’s assertion that in five years of successful

chivalrous exploits he has done “nothing but evil,” nothing that would

merit God’s mercy. The hermit allows these charges to stand,

although he does not comment on them directly. He seems to accept

implicitly what strikes the reader as paradoxical, i.e., the fact that all

Perceval’s years of successful combat and adventuring have brought

him nothing but a heart full of anguish.

Perceval’s third self-accusation, that he has never thought of

God in five years, is also allowed to pass without comment, except in

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the penance that the hermit imposes, exhorting him to “believe in

God, love God, worship God“ and to “improve his soul” by doing

penance without fail in church every day:

“Se de t’ame pitiez te prant,Si aies an toi repantanceEt va el non de penitenceAu mostier einz qu’an autre leuChascun jor, si i avras preu,Et si ne leisse por nul plait …” (6406-11)

(“If pity grips your soul, you should also have repentance within you and, in the name of penitence, go to the church each day before anyplace else. You will profit by it, so on no account fail to do so …”)

He makes this the foundation upon which the rest of Perceval’s

required penance is based, suggesting that his forgetfulness of God

somehow underlies his other sins of causing suffering and engaging in

worthless acts of chivalry. However, in the prescribed penance,

remembering and honoring God is not separated from the

requirements to behave properly toward other people:

“Deu croi, Deu aimme, Deu aore;Prodome et boene fame enore;Contre le provoire te lieve,C’est uns servises qui po grieve,Et Dex l’aimme por veritéPor ce qu’il vient d’umilté.Se pucele aide te quiert,Aiue li, que miex l’en iert,Ou veve dame ou orfenine;Icele almosne iert enterine.” (6425-34)

(“Believe in God, love God, worship God; honor worthy men and women; stand up in the presence of the priest — this is a service that costs little and, in truth, God loves it because it comes from humility. If a maiden requests your help, or a widow lady or orphaned girl, help her, for you’ll be better for it. This will be a perfect act of Charity.”)

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This penance seems to fall into two parts, one detailing the proper

attitude toward God and the second exhorting proper treatment of

other people. Numerous critics have pointed out that the hermit’s

penance is little more than a reiteration of the Gornemant’s

instruction when he dubbed Perceval and the veve dame’s advice

when Perceval was preparing to leave her. However, this is not a case

of simple repetition, for while Perceval’s mother and Gornemant both

sought to guide his actions, here the hermit emphasizes the inward

disposition that must give rise to these commendable actions.

Perceval is to do these things “in the name of penitence” only if he has

been “gripped by pity” and has an interior sense of repentance. As

pointed out in the prologue, when the theme of Charity was first

introduced, God, “who sees all secrets and knows all that is kept in

the heart and bowels” will judge a deed by what is in the heart of the

doer.122 A proper disposition is what makes the outward actions of

religious observance and kindly behavior truly pleasing to God and a

perfect charitable offering (“icele almosne iert enterine”).

This last phrase is worthy of some attention. Most modern

translations lose important aspects of its meaning, either because

they only roughly approximate the original (Kline’s “This service is

122 Chrétien says this in contrasting the charitable gifts of Philip with the largesse of Alexander, which looks the same on the surface but differs in motivation. 33-36: “Cil le saiche qui le reçoit, / Et Dex qui toz les segrez voit / Et set totes les repostailles /Qui sont es cuers et es antrailles.”

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commendable” and Kibler’s “This is the full penance”) or because, in

attempting to be more precise, they fall flat (Owen’s “Such good

deeds have integrity”). This last captures one of the important

nuances of almosne but its literal translation of enterine sounds

stilted, and the result is not very expressive. David Staines comes

much closer to the original in saying, “This is the highest act of

Charity,” for enterine (from the Latin integrum) refers both to

completeness or perfection and to sincerity, while almosne, like the

English cognate alms, is ultimately derived (via late Latin) from a

Greek ecclesiastical term for acts of mercy or compassion.123 The

modern English “alms,” like its synonym “Charity,” has, unfortunately

lost this original sense of compassion and now suggests only money

given to the poor, but the Old French “almosne” retains both the

sense of “charitable donation” and “compassionate act.” Both of these

nuances seem to be in play here. By fulfilling his penance of rendering

aid to helpless females with a heart gripped by pity, Perceval will be

amending his former callous disregard for such women, particularly

his own mother. What is more, the statement that this will be a

“perfect alms” evokes the image of the right hand of Charity alluded

to in the prologue, which gives generously not out of the fause

ypocrisie typified by Alexander but out of the sincere love embodied in

123 See Greimas’s Dictionnaire de l’ancien français for the etymology of almosne.

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Philip of Flanders. In other words, by fulfilling his penance, Perceval

will finally make his chivalry enterine or perfect, returning to the path

of Charity from which he erred when he impulsively abandoned his

mother in pursuit of shining armor.

In this way, Chrétien invests a single phrase with the power to

evoke the most important theme that has lain hidden beneath the

surface of romance, erupting into plain view only in this late episode.

By reminding the reader of the theme of Charity introduced in the

opening lines of the poem, Chrétien turns the reader back along the

path of knotted guideposts to begin reconsidering where his reading

went astray from the path of Charity. The penance imposed by the

hermit, which constitutes a “perfect act of Charity,” suggests that

Perceval’s sins (both those of which he accuses himself and those that

are imputed to him) are all grounded in a lack of Charity. Therefore, if

the reader would consider how his own reading has erred, it would be

wise to begin a consideration of those sins.

The sins are three: the worthless character of Perceval’s

chivalric pursuits, the callous neglect of his mother, and his forgetting

God. All of the most surprising or troublesome features of the Hermit

episode (the “knots”) can be related to one or more of these subjects,

suggesting that the reader’s reconsideration of the romance should be

guided by attention to the themes they indicate. In the following

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sections, we shall consider some key episodes, guided by the knots of

interpretation created by the articulation of these three sins. By

seeing these episodes as guideposts rather than obstacles, we shall

come to recognize that these themes have been hidden in plain view

all along.

Chivalry’s Defects

“Biax sire, or pran de moi justiseTel que ja mes nule pucele Qui de moi oie la noveleN’ost dire a nul chevalier honte.— Bele, fet il, a moi que monteQue ge de vos justise face?” (8912-17)124

he most proximate “knot” that we should address is the abrupt

jump from the Gauvain narrative back to Perceval’s story, and

then an equally abrupt return to the Gauvain narrative. If, as we have

maintained, the strange insertion of the account of Perceval’s

penitence into the sequence of Gauvain’s adventures is done

deliberately and purposefully, we must recognize that Chrétien has

chosen this device not only to force the reader to reconsider his

assessment of Perceval and his actions but also to redirect the

reader’s attention in his reading of Gauvain’s story, which has barely

begun to unfold. Therefore, it seems that the first knotty signpost

T

124 The Orguilleuse de Logres’ plea to Gauvain: “Fair sir, now do me such justice that no maiden who ever hears news of me will ever dare to speak shamefully to any knight.” “Fair one,” he said, “What would it profit me to do you justice?”

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that we must look for as we continue our reading adventure is the one

that points to the defects of chivalry, since chivalry is the common

theme that ties both narrative strands together.

The two narrative strands first cross on a meadow covered with

an unseasonably late snow. While Perceval muses on three fading

drops of blood that adorn the snow like the roses in his beloved’s fair

cheeks, Gauvain waits nearby for the unidentified stranger to

complete his reverie so that he may escort him to Arthur’s tent to

meet the king. By his sensitive appreciation of the other knight’s

meditation, Gauvain succeeds where Sagremor and Keu, using

rougher methods, failed. In the ensuing scene, the similarity between

the two excellent knights is emphasized, as they first exchange

compliments, then both remove their armor and don garments from

Gauvain’s wardrobe. At court, Perceval addresses Arthur and his

queen with fair speech that wins the approval of all, and all are even

more delighted to learn that Perceval is the Red Knight whom they

have been seeking. The court seems to have gained a new star that

shines as brightly as Gauvain himself. Very shortly thereafter,

however, both shining exemplars of courtly chivalry are publicly

denounced for serious failings, and each leaves the court to redress

the alleged wrong. Perceval’s subsequent adventures will be hidden

from view as the narrator chooses to follow Gauvain’s travels instead.

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As noted earlier, at the very position where one might expect to

find a description of Perceval’s continuing adventures (those Perceval

will later confess were evil and without merit before God), the

narrator instead treats us to nearly 1,500 lines devoted to Gauvain’

adventures. In those lines, we learn of Gauvain’s participation in the

tourney at Tintagel on his way to meet his accuser in Escavalon, and

then we see how he is received in Escavalon. These adventures are

recounted before we are forced into the brusque detour back onto

Perceval’s path, and thus — on first consideration, at least — they may

be enjoyed on their own merits, without the distraction of the

troubling issues raised in the Hermit episode. However, in the

remainder of Gauvain’s story (which follows the Hermit episode),

those issues cannot fail to intrude upon the reader’s enjoyment nor to

color his appreciation and assessment of Gauvain’s behavior. For this

reason, the attentive reader is likely have differing assessments of the

two portions of Gauvain’s story.125

Even without the Hermitage intervention, the reader would

notice a distinct change in tone between the two segments of the

125 The Gauvain narrative is worthy of a more thorough analysis than we can afford it here. Rupert Pickens’s The Welsh Knight: Paradoxicality in Chretien's Conte del Graal provides an excellent analysis of the way Gauvain’s adventures invert and illuminate the themes of the Perceval narrative. Antoinette Saly’s “La Récurrence des motifs en symétrie inverse et la structure du Perceval de Chrétien de Troyes” analyzes how this inversion is elaborated structurally through the use of parallel sequences of analogous episodes, “inverse symmetry,” and chiasmic structure to create an intricate network of correspondences and resonances between the two narratives.

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Gauvain narrative. In the first portion, Gauvain operates within the

familiar courtly environment and, at least on the surface, he gets to

shine, excelling in prowess and in courtly love-talk. Structurally, this

early portion of Gauvain’s story corresponds to the latter part of the

Perceval narrative, which so many critics have cited as evidence that

Perceval has grown to be a polished and sensitive knight, as he sets to

rights the woes of the Maiden of the Tent, muses dreamily on the

memory of his absent sweetheart, and addresses Arthur and his queen

in courteous and comely speech. However, just as we have seen that

Perceval’s actions lacked any truly charitable motive, similarly and

more overtly, in Gauvain’s first adventures we see the exemplary

knight’s customary polish and success undermined by the mockery

and manipulation of women and the vengeful rage of wronged

knights. Whereas Perceval’s path seemed to be one of ascendancy and

acceptance at court, Gauvain finds himself at the top of a slippery and

precipitous downward slope.126

In the second portion of his adventures, after the interruption of

the Hermit episode, Gauvain soon plunges down that slippery slope

into a wilderness world in which all the norms of polite society and

courtly convention seem to be turned on their heads, a world where

nothing is as it seems and everyone is pitted against Gauvain. This

126 See Antoinette Saly’s “La Récurrence des motifs” for a full discussion of the chiastic relationship between Gauvain’s adventures and those of Perceval.

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portion corresponds to the early part of Perceval’s journey through

the wilderness seeking the arms and skills that would win him

recognition as a knight. However, while we saw Perceval in his

ignorance struggling to become more than he was and making

mistakes in the process, here we see that Gauvain’s sufferings are the

inevitable outcome of past misdeeds whose injustice had previously

been masked by chivalry’s conventions. In the end, Gauvain will wind

up where Perceval began, in the home of his mother, but whereas

Perceval hastened to leave his own mother behind, Gauvain ironically

will never be able to leave, bound by his code of honor as a knight.

Vainglory

Although superficially Gauvain’s exploits have many

entertaining and even amusing aspects, the impression they give is

one of a rapid downward spiral into a chaos in which all the norms of

polite society and courtly convention are turned on their heads. The

effect of this topsy-turvydom is to expose the underlying faults of

courtly chivalry and the incoherence of its ethical system. The first

fault exposed is the chivalric system’s dependence upon the

motivation of personal reputation and material gain. Courtly chivalry’s

interest in ostentation and reputation will be exposed as vainglory.

For example, in the first leg of his journey, as Gauvain first heads out

from Arthur’s court to face his accuser in Escavalon, he travels with

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seven squires, seven warhorses, and two shields — far more

equipment than would be needed to answer the single charge of

felony against him. This excessive baggage echoes the ludicrous

extravagance with which Arthur and his retainers set off overland in

quest of Perceval, the Red Knight. Accompanied as it is by the

extravagant dismay with which the courtiers react to Gauvain’s

departure, this excess emphasizes the silliness of the worldly show

that seems to characterize the court of Arthur and his followers. This

foolishness is made more explicit when Gauvain, thwarted in his travel

by the barred gate of Tiebaut de Tintagel’s besieged city, far from

being recognized as a fine knight with a sizable retinue, instead is

mistaken for a money-changer or a merchant trying to avoid paying

mercantile taxes by disguising himself as a knight. However, as soon

as his ridiculous ostentation becomes properly situated in the context

of courtly chivalry, it ceases to be ridiculed — after Gauvain

participates in the local combat and wins still more horses in the

tournament by defeating their riders, the same excess that had

garnered ridicule is used to enhance Gauvain’s reputation by his

making the extra mounts gifts to ladies of the town whom he wishes to

impress.

In the second portion of the narrative of Gauvain’s adventures,

however, stripped of his many warhorses and shields, Gauvain will be

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humiliated by being forced to ride a sorry nag that he steals from an

insubordinate squire. In this latter part of Gauvain’s tale, his thirst for

glory and fear of being called a coward leads him to engage in many

rash and dangerous acts, such as attempting the adventure of the

Perilous Bed.127 As he approaches the keep in which the bed lies,

Gauvain sees the upstairs windows filled with beautiful young women,

and he hopes that they will notice his bravery in attempting this

dangerous feat. The narrator points out that the windows lining the

upper gallery would certainly allow anyone up there to see clearly

whoever might enter the door of the hall, and later the boatman who

guided Gauvain there assures him that the ladies and damsels can see

him clearly, whereupon Gauvain insists on sitting upon the bed, at

great peril to his life. Although he survives the five hundred arrows

and the wild lion that attack him when he sits on the bed, Gauvain

suffers many wounds and nearly loses his life, simply to win the

admiration of many women.

A second sign of Gauvain’s vanity is his false humility

concerning his identity. Although he is the most accomplished and

renowned knight of Arthur’s realm, he does not brag about who he is

but conceals his name until someone directly asks for it (5588-91).

127 As Jean Frappier notes in Chrétien de Troyes et le mythe du Graal, Gauvain lacks the practical virtue of prudence: whenever he is strongly warned of the danger and foolhardiness of something, he rushes ahead to do it (232).

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This may seem a sign of becoming modesty, but it actually provides

him two benefits. First, it allows him to avoid detection by those who

are seeking him for revenge — these turn out to be quite numerous.

Concealing his name, however, is not always enough to help him

escape recognition and retribution. In Escavalon, “everyone bore him

a mortal hatred but he was not recognized there, because he had

never been seen there before” (5716-18: “la … de mort le heent tuit /

Mes il n’i est pas coneüz, / Car onques mes n’i fu veüz”); then

Guiganbresil arrives, who does know him by sight, and the hatred of

the townspeople is turned against him. In a later episode, the

wounded knight that Gauvain carefully nurses past imminent danger

of death reacts vengefully once he regains his sight and recognizes his

“benefactor” to be the man who once tortured and humiliated him.

The second self-serving benefit of Gauvain’s false modesty is

that, in withholding his name until directly asked, Gauvain apparently

hopes that his courteous and adroit deeds will create mounting

anticipation and speculation, making people wonder, “Whoever can

this splendid knight be?”128 Here again, however, we see that

Gauvain’s tactic fails him. In Tintagel, the ostentatious trappings of

his chivalry, since they are not put to any use, give rise to the

speculation that he is a shady salesman. Later, at the Castle of the

128 In his deeds as Red Knight, Perceval created exactly this kind of anticipation, apparently inadvertently.

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Ladies, both the absurdity of his false humility and its potentially

disastrous consequences are definitively exposed when he engages in

the following game of verbal cat and mouse with a lady who is later

identified as his own grandmother:

“Mes estes vos de la mesnieLe roi Artu? — Dame, oïl voir.—Estes vos, gel voel savoir,De chevaliers de l’eschargaiteQui on mainte proësce faite?— Dame, nenil. — Bien vos an croi.Et estes vos, dites le moi,De ces de la Table ReondeQui sont les plus prisié del monde?— Dame, fet il, ge n’oseroieDire que des plus prisiez soie,Ne me faz mie des meillorsNe ne cuit estre des peiors.” (8076-88)

(“But are you of King Arthur’s household?” “My lady, indeed I am.” “I’d like to know, are you one of the knights of the watch, who have done many deeds of prowess?” “No, indeed, my lady.” “I believe you. And, tell me, are you one of the knights of the Round Table, who are the most worthy in the world?” “My lady,” he said, “I would not dare to say that I am among the most worthy; I count myself neither the best nor the worst.”)

Gauvain undoubtedly is hoping the lady will be so tantalized that she

will be forced to ask his name, but she foils him by changing the

subject. Gauvain then proceeds to make a complete fool of himself (in

the reader’s eyes, if not in the lady’s) by referring to himself in the

third person in order to avoid revealing his identity when the queen

asks him:

“Mes or me dites del roi Lot, De sa fame quanz filz il ot.— Dame, quatre. — Or les me nomez.

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— Dame, Gauvains est li ainz nezEt li seconz est Agravains,Li Orguilleus as dures mains;Gaerïez et GaerésOnt non lis altre dui après.”Et la reïne li redit:“Sire, se Damedex m’aït,Ensi ont il non, ce me sanble.Car pleüst Deu que tuit ansanble Fussent or ci avoeques nos!Or me dites, conuissiez vosLe roi Urïen?” … (8093-8109)

[“But now tell me about King Lot, and how many sons he had by his wife.” “Four, my lady.” “Now tell me their names.” “Lady, Gauvain is the first-born and the second is Agravain, the Haughty Knight of the Hard Hands; then, the other two are Gaheris and Gareth.” And the queen replied, “Sir, so help me God, I believe those are their names. Would to God they were all together now with us here! Now tell me, do you know King Urien?” …]

Once again, by obstinately sticking to his rule that he will reveal his

identity only if directly asked, Gauvain has missed his chance and

made himself look quite foolish, to the reader if not to the queen, who

seems quite content to remain ignorant of his name. Later, Gauvain

slyly reminds her that she still does not know his name when he

makes a point of insisting that she not ask it until after he returns

from confronting a knight that he sees riding toward the castle — no

doubt he expects to acquit himself so well that the queen will then be

moved to ask his name, at which time he can “modestly” admit his

identity. (In fact, however, it never occurs to her to ask.) Even after

Gauvain has learned from Guiromelant that the white-haired queen is

his grandmother, and the younger queen his own mother, Gauvain

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does not tell them who he is. Instead, he allows them to speculate on

whether he will make a good match for a dameisele who is actually his

own sister.

Gauvain’s stubborn adherence to his own rule of “modesty”

turns out to be as foolish as Perceval’s literal-minded obedience to

Gornemant’s dictum against talkativeness: the one by failing to give

straightforward answers and the other by failing to ask appropriate

questions, both miss opportunities to learn that their hosts are

actually close kin to them. What is more, in Gauvain’s case as in

Perceval’s, blame should be imputed to him for his silence. The

reason, although not directly indicated, should be evident to the

reader: in a catechism that resembles the one to which Perceval was

subjected by his cousin (when she asked him every detail of what he

saw at Grail Castle), Guiromelant asks Gauvain to describe everything

that he has experienced at the castle of the ladies, and, while Gauvain

is glad to have an opportunity to describe how he overcame the

dangers of the enchanted bed, he is forced to admit that he never

asked the name of his hostess. In his hypocritical pride, Gauvain was

so intent upon getting the ladies to beg him for his name that he

never even thought of asking for theirs. Gauvain’s culpable silence,

like Perceval’s, is caused by foolish pride: each is so concerned with

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the impression he makes on others that he never considers those

around him.

Gauvain’s self-centeredness leads him to assume that he is the

prophesied savior of the inmates of the Castle of the Ladies. The

boatman who introduced him to the castle told him that its residents

awaited the arrival of a knight free from all pride or covetousness, one

who would not lie or break an oath. Such a man was destined to

restore those ladies to their inheritances, to find husbands for the

maidens and to make knights of the squires, and this savior would

never leave the castle or the ladies, but would stay to protect them.

Gauvain assumes, after he springs the trap of the mysterious bed, that

he has shown himself to be the prophesied hero. However, although

he does eventually dub all the squires, in every other way Gauvain is

manifestly unqualified to claim the hero’s mantle. First, when told by

the boatman (who apparently also believes him to be the awaited

savior) that he must never leave the castle, Gauvain replies in a fit of

pique:

“Ostes, fet il, teisiez vos an!Ja me gitereiez del sanSe plus dire le vos ooie!Si m’aït Dex, ge ne porroieJus qu’a set jorz vivre ceanz,Ne plus que jus qu’a set vinz anz,Por ce que ge ne m’an ississeTotes les foiz que ge volsisse.”

Atant s’anest jus avalez,Si s’an rest el pales antrez

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Mout correciez et mout pansis … (7983-93)

(“Host,” he said, “Shut up about that! You’ll drive me out of my mind if I hear you say anything more about that! So help me God, I wouldn’t be able to stay here seven days, any more than I could for seven score years, if I couldn’t leave anytime I wished.” At that he left and went downstairs and re-entered the great hall very angry and moody … )

In fact, Gauvain leaves the very next day, although he does promise to

return at night (if he manages not to get himself killed in the

meantime). Although Gauvain basks in the admiration of the ladies of

the castle, he seems to have no more thought of his responsibility for

their protection than Perceval had for his own mother.

Abuse of the Weak

This brings us to the second defect of courtly chivalry that is

exposed in the account of Gauvain’s adventures, namely the extent to

which chivalry allows, even encourages, the proper sense of duty to

be perverted into an abuse of power. In the first portion of the

Gauvain narrative, this defect remains somewhat concealed, alluded

to only obliquely. We see, for instance, the way Tiebaut’s daughters

use their feminine prerogatives to manipulate and control Meliant and

Gauvain for their own purposes. The younger daughter’s use of

Gauvain to spite her older sister can be taken as amusing rather than

wicked. Gauvain allows himself to be manipulated, first because he is

bound by chivalry’s code to assist a damsel when she requests aid

and, also, because it suits his own desires: he was sorry to have to

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miss such a fine tourney, but he refrained from participation because

he did not wish to shame himself by arriving late for his murder trial

in Escavalon. When the young girl appeals to him to champion her

cause, however, he is able claim that the demand made by the Maid of

the Little Sleeves takes precedence over his more pressing obligation

to attend his arraignment; thus her claim proves convenient for him,

for it gives him an opportunity to defeat many knights in the tourney,

thus increasing his own reputation rather than damaging it. The elder

sister’s misuse of her champion, however, is rather more sinister: on

the pretext of having him prove his love for her, she requires her

suitor, Meliant de Liz, to attack her own father, Tiebaut de Tintagel,

who is also Meliant’s foster-father. In this way, she sets the members

of her own family against each other in deadly combat, all to suit her

own vanity.

The little maiden’s abuse of Gauvain in this episode is benign.

However, in the second portion of Gauvain’s story, not only does he

himself frequently bear the brunt of abuse by others, but he also is

revealed to be an abuser himself. The first episode after the hermitage

intervention shows Gauvain in his true colors, which have been

disguised by the practices of courtesy. Encountering a grieving

maiden clutching the bloody, lacerated body of an unconscious knight,

Gauvain is told that the knight has just fainted from the pain of his

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wounds and lies at the brink of death. Over the maiden’s protests,

Gauvain insists that she waken the wounded man so that he may ask

the knight for “news of the affairs of this land.” The damsel refuses to

do so, protesting that she will not cause further suffering to someone

she loves, so Gauvain himself prods the wounded man with the butt of

his lance to rouse him. Although the narrator assures the reader that

the knight thanks Gauvain for waking him so painlessly, it would be

difficult to condone this heartless act, or fail to make comparisons

between this scene and the one in which Perceval similarly met a

distressed maiden clutching at a lover who had fallen at the hands of

another knight. Perceval, too, greeted her inappropriately, ignoring

her grief and asking only who had killed the man. Perceval, however,

might have been at least partially excused for being an awkward

youth who couldn’t think of a more courteous greeting in the

circumstances. For Gauvain there can be no such excuse, and the

reader perhaps should not be blamed for feeling a brief moment of

secret glee when, a short time later, Gauvain pays the price of his own

practices. The wounded man eventually recognizes Gauvain as the

knight who once forced him to spend a month eating with dogs, while

his hands were tightly bound behind his back. In retaliation, this

knight, Greoreas, similarly humiliates Gauvain, stealing his charger

and forcing him to take as his mount a sorry nag that he steals from

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an insolent squire who happens along. Gauvain defends his former

action against the other knight as just punishment for Greoreas’ rape

of a maiden, a crime because “maidens are protected in King Arthur’s

land.” However, Gauvain himself will soon be tormented by a maiden

who has suffered a similar indignity and who forces Gauvain to suffer

as a surrogate for the general crimes of chivalry. This hateful and

haughty damsel, later identified as l’Orguilleuse de Logres, seems to

be the embodiment of all the women knights have misused, as she

seeks revenge for wrongs done to her under the sanction of chivalric

convention. Indeed, her appellation de Logres takes on a special

significance when she finally explains to Gauvain the cause of her

malevolence toward knights:

“Cil chevaliers cui Dex destruie,Qui de la d’outre a toi parla,S’amor an moi mal anplea,Qu’il m’ama et ge haï lui,Car il me fist si grant enuiQu’il ocist, nel celerai mie,Celui a cui g’estoie amie.Puis me cuida tant d’enor fereQu’a s’amor me cuida atraire,Mes onques rien ne li valut,Que au plus tost que il me lutDe sa conpeignie m’anblai …” (8884-95)

(“That knight — may God destroy him — who was talking to you on the other bank wasted his love on me, for while he loved me I hated him, because he caused me such great heartache by killing — I’ll never hide it — the knight whose sweetheart I was. Then he thought to show me so much honor that he would win me over to his love, but it never did him any good because, as soon as I was able, I escaped from his company …”)

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What the Orguilleuse understands to be a brutal crime against her

was actually a protected custom in the world of Arthurian chivalry,

which Donald Maddox in Once and Future Fictions identifies as the

“custom of Logres.” According to this custom, if one knight defeated

another in battle, he thereby became the new guardian of any lady

formerly under the protection of the defeated opponent. This custom

was no doubt meant to assure that solitary women did not go without

protectors (toward whom they might then naturally feel grateful and

affectionate, rewarding them with their druerie), but, as Maddox

points out, the effect of the custom was that women were treated as

chattels, as easily won and lost in combat as armor and warhorses.

Although Guiromelant regarded his action in killing the damsel’s

paramour to be a legitimate maneuver to win her love, the Orguilleuse

understands it as a barbarous abuse of the claims of love. In the

Perceval narrative we saw other abuses and distortions of this

custom, such as Clamadeu’s siege against Blancheflor in order to have

her for his lover and to claim her lands as his own. Blancheflor

declared her readiness to end her own life before he could succeed, so

that he would never possess more than her lifeless body (2009-11);

similarly, the Orguilleuse is not so much bent on revenge as

desperately seeking escape from the never-ending cycle of conquest

and abuse:

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“Mes de mon premerain ami,Quant morz de lui me departi,Ai si longuemant esté foleEt de si estoute paroleEt si vilainne et si musardeC’onques ne me prenoie gardeCui j’alasse contralïant,Einz le feisoie a escïant,Por ce que trouver an volsisseUn si ireus que gel feïsseA moi irier et correcierPor moi trestote depecier,Que piece a volsisse estre ocise.” (8899-8911)

(“But since death parted me from my first sweetheart, I’ve been crazy for so long and so audacious of speech, so rude and reckless that I never paid any attention to whom I might be offending. Quite the opposite, I acted that way deliberately, because I wanted to find someone so hot-headed that I could make him become irate with me and punish me by slashing me to pieces, because for some time I’ve wished to be killed.”)

A victim of the custom of Logres, which perpetuates the abuse of

helpless women by codifying it, the Haughty Maiden of Logres echoes

the pain and despair of all the women who have been victimized by

conventional chivalry, and in her words we hear the voices of

Blancheflor, of Perceval’s germainne cosine, of the abused Maiden of

the Tent, and of untold others. Gauvain, however, is as deaf to her

anguish as Perceval was to those other women, and he uses courtesy

as an excuse to ignore her anguished plea:

“Bele, fet il, a moi que monteQue ge de vos justise face?Ja le Fil Damedeu ne placeQue vos por moi enui aiez.Mes or montez, ne delaiez, S’irons jus qu’a ce[l] chastel fort …” (8916-21)

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[“Fair one,” he said, “What would it profit me to do you justice? It would never please the Son of the Lord God for me to cause you pain. Now mount up and don’t delay, we’ll go as far as that castle ...”]

There is a double entendre in Gauvain’s reply. The maiden asked him

to “take justice against her”129 (i.e., to punish her for her behavior),

and he demurs. His pious protest that this would displease God,

however, masks his hypocrisy, for we may also understand justise in

its more literal sense, indicating that Gauvain does not see that it will

bring him any profit to see that she receives justice. On the contrary,

the following scene shows him perpetuating precisely the kind of

injustice that the Orguilleuse has suffered at the hands of

Guiromelant: after he returns to the castle with the Orguilleuse,

Gauvain takes aside his own sister and urges her to accept the

attentions of the very knight who drove the Orguilleuse mad with his

twisted sense of love.130 The grotesquerie of this action is underscored

by the speculation of the two queens (Gauvain’s grandmother and

mother) that his whispering with the damsel might mean that he

himself hopes to woo her (which the reader is aware would be an

incestuous match). Although Gauvain acts entirely according to the

norms of courtly conduct, as he claimed he had done when he

129 8912-15: “Biax sire, or pran de moi justice / Tel qu ja mes nule pucele /Qui de moi oie la novele / n’ost dire a nul chevalier honte.”

130 By this point, Gauvain has learned that the dameisele is his sister.

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humiliated Greoreas, his actions, in this instance as in the earlier one,

can only serve to perpetuate a cycle of abuse and retribution.

It becomes clear that the courtly code of chivalry, far from being

able effectively to restrain and channel the aggressive impulses of

self-serving knights, provides protected venues within which such

knights can abuse those within their power, resulting in such

resentment on the part of their victims and vengefulness in their

rivals that there seems little hope of breaking the cycle of suffering.

The Gauvain narrative thus serves to strip away the attractive veneer

of courtly chivalry by exposing the vices of its most polished

practitioner.

The numerous parallels and similarities between Gauvain’s

experiences and those of Perceval draw attention to Perceval’s own

deficiencies, which might otherwise have gone unrecognized. These

may largely be identified with the general problems of a chivalry

founded on the self-serving concerns of vainglory. As Gauvain’s

adventures show, the motivation of self-will and self-aggrandizement

leads the knight to abuse those over whom he has power, including

not only underlings such as the hideous squire, whose horse Gauvain

steals, and defeated opponents such as Greoreas, whom he once

subjected to physical abuse and humiliation, but also, too frequently,

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the very women that the courtly knight is supposed to defend and

cherish.

Suffering Along the Way

Qant Percevax vit defoleeLa noif sor coi la gente jutEt le sanc qui ancor parut,Si s’apoia desor sa lancePor esgarder cele sanblance,Que li sans et la nois ansanbleLa fresche color li resanbleQui ert an la face s’amie,Si panse tant que il s’oblie … (4160-68)

y reading the Gauvain narrative in light of the sins Perceval

acknowledges to the Hermit, we find that, contrary to what

some critics have opined, this is not a separate romance somewhat

inexpertly joined to the story of Perceval; rather, it serves to

illuminate and magnify themes present in the Perceval story that had

remained hidden until Perceval met his hermit uncle. In unraveling

this “knot” in the fabric of the romance, we find that it indeed has

helped us to understand better Perceval’s confession of having been a

worthless knight. Our reading of Gauvain’s antics has exposed two

vices that are protected and even encouraged by courtly chivalry: the

overweening pride of the knight and the callous abuse of those under

his power. Similar faults were exposed in Perceval’s confession to his

hermit uncle, although there the vices of pride and neglect were less

pronounced, softened by Perceval’s ignorance and naïveté. While still

B

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laboring under the expectations of the courtly code, Perceval believed

that his deep sense of failure and lack of self-worth could be traced to

his social faux pas at Grail Castle. The hermit, however, pronounced

this gaffe mere foolishness rather than a serious transgression, and

identified Perceval’s true sin as the suffering he caused his mother.

This assessment, however, presents another interpretive “knot” which

has caused considerable critical controversy. As Amelia Rutledge

notes in “Perceval's Sin: Critical Perspectives,”

The critical history of this problem reflects a perplexity similar to Perceval's own. The line of causality, a failure occasioned by a prior sin of which the agent is somehow unaware, is indubitably Chrétien’s, but this apparent non sequitur has considerably exercised critics for twenty-five years.131 (53)

A number of critics resolutely resist the hermit’s suggestion that

Perceval’s entire career as a knight has been damaged by his neglect

of his mother. Madeleine Cosman shifts the blame for Perceval’s

inadequacy as a knight to his teachers, including his mother, who she

says makes her son incapable of judging rightly because she has

instructed him only superficially and has isolated him from normal life

(The Education of the Hero in Arthurian Romance 56). Peter Haidu

does not directly blame the mother, but implicates her in Perceval’s

131 It is now another twenty-five years since Rutledge wrote those words, but the problem has not yet been resolved.

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shortcomings even as he excuses Perceval’s rude and callous

treatment of her:

It is perfectly correct to note that there is not the least feeling of pity or Charity in his heart, but this absence of humane feelings is part of his innocence and ignorance, themselves the result of the mother's withdrawal to the Gaste Forest. (Aesthetic Distance 128)

Denying that the Hermit’s explanation reflects the “profound

meaning” of the narrative, Haidu goes so far as to suggest that the

hermit’s assessment of Perceval’s failure should not be taken too

seriously: “To equate the hermit's interpretation with a total analysis

of the romance is a reduction most readers will find unacceptable”

(228). Most critics, however, do not dispute the hermit’s assertion

that Perceval has been hampered by a sin that he has not noticed; on

the contrary, there have been many lengthy discussions of the nature

and degree of gravity of that sin. Although somewhat outdated now,

Rutledge’s 1981 article provides a good overview of the major critical

stances on this question, which divide generally between those who,

like Haidu, acknowledge the fact of the sin but excuse it on

psychological grounds, and others, such as Sr. M. Amelia Klenke and

Myrrha Lot-Borodine, who take some pains to explain that the

hermit’s interpretation is consistent with contemporary Church

doctrine on the character of mortal sin.132 Whatever the merits or

132 Both of these general views, the psychological and the legalistic, seem to me to be more indicative of twentieth century preoccupations than of twelfth

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interests of these arguments individually, collectively they raise at

least one question that is relevant to our own investigation: if we

accept the hermit’s diagnosis of the true nature of Perceval’s sin,

must we not still ask in what way his abuse of his mother “cut off his

tongue” at Grail Castle? Assuming that this knotty question, which

critics have so often tried to unravel, is not an insoluble enigma but a

guidepost pointing out the path of interpretation, we must look for

evidence that this sin is, in fact, a pervasive presence throughout the

course of the narrative. When we do so, we will find that there are

constant references and reminders of the sorrow Perceval caused his

mother.

Woman of Sorrows

Even before Perceval inflicted a fatal anguish upon her by

abandoning her, the veve had already been for some time a woman of

sorrows. The reader learned the number and depth of her sorrows

when she enumerated them for her son in her account of the family

history, hoping to dissuade him from what she was sure would prove

to be a disastrous course for them both. She feared his pursuit of

chivalry for both their sakes: for herself, because she had already lost

a husband and two sons to the ravages of chivalry’s destructive

century ones. Although I hope to show that the depiction of Perceval and his problems is perfectly consistent with the spiritual theology of Chrétien’s day, it seems clear that the romancier had other purposes than to provide an exposition of church doctrine, much less an apology for youthful callousness.

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violence — the sons died as a direct result of their chivalrous pursuits,

and their father died not of his wounds but of the grief caused by his

sons’ deaths133; the widow feared also for her youngest son, that he

too would succumb either to injury or to grief. Her account of the

family’s sad history foreshadowed her own demise, struck down by

the grief and fear she felt when she saw her son ride away to become

a knight. The veve dame is a model not only of the suffering inflicted

by chivalry but also of selfless Charity, for even as he prepared to

desert her she did her best to protect her obstinate son by

“disguising” him as a harmless Welsh bumpkin and taking away as

many of his javelins as he would allow. Even more importantly,

though, she protected him by the fervency of her dying prayer that

God would guard him from harm.

The widow’s concern for her son and his future hardships are

mirrored in another woman of sorrows, Perceval’s bereaved

germainne cosine. There is no more graphic depiction of anguish and

grief in the entire romance than the scene in which Perceval rides up

on the pucele collapsed beneath an oak tree clasping the headless

body of a knight as she loudly weeps and laments “like a sorrowful

wretched woman” (3399: “come chestive dolereuse”), cursing the day

she was born and begging death to take her as it has taken her

133 She also hinted that her own family has suffered similarly (see 405-413).

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beloved knight. Not only does she seem an embodiment of the kind of

grief and loss that cost the life of Perceval’s mother, but she explicitly

equates the two. After learning Perceval’s identity and his failure to

ask about the grail and lance, she identifies herself as his cousin who

grew up with him in his mother’s house. and she explains that his

silence regarding the grail would bring great sorrow not only to

others but to himself as well, because he sinned against his mother.

After she reveals that she has seen his mother, her aunt, dead and

buried, the maiden says:

“Ne ne me poise mie mainsDe ce qu’ensi t’est mescheüQue tu n’as del graal seüQu’an an fet et ou l’an le porteQue de ta mere qui est morte,Ne qu’il fet de ce[st] chevalierQue j’amoie et tenoie chierMout por ce que il me clamoitSa chiere amie et si m’amoit Come frans chevaliers leax.” (3568-77)

(“I am not a whit less disturbed by the evil that has befallen you because you did not find out what is done with the grail and where it is carried, than I am about your mother who died or about what has happened to this knight, whom I loved and held very dear because he claimed me for his dear friend and loved me as a true and loyal knight.”)

As grievous as she found the death of her lover, Perceval’s cousin was

equally grieved by the loss of her aunt. What is more, equal to both

those personal losses was the misfortune that would plague her

cousin Perceval as a result of his taciturnity before the grail

procession. We should note that, although she warned that others

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would also suffer because he failed to ask about the grail and lance

(3557-58: “Mes or saches que grant enui / En avandra toi et autrui.”),

most grievous to her was not the continued languishment of the

Fisher King and his subjects but the suffering that would result for

her cousin.

Each of these three misfortunes caused the dolorous damsel

personal sorrow and, although neither she nor the reader knew it at

the time, each sorrow was Perceval’s fault. The next episode shows

this to be true, when Perceval, in pursuit of the knight who has killed

his cousin’s lover, meets a bedraggled damsel riding a pitiful palfrey,

who turns out to be the maiden he accosted in the tent and who is

now suffering the punishment her jealous paramour meted out as a

result of Perceval’s earlier misuse of her. Only in retrospect, after the

murderous knight, li Orguilleus de la Lande, explains the reason for

his abuse of her and his beheading of every knight who approaches

her, does it become clear that Perceval’s earlier indiscretions have

been the cause both of the death of his cousin’s beloved knight (slain

by the murderous Orguilleus), and the brutal treatment endured by

this second sorrowing damsel, the Maiden of the Tent. Perceval gives

no sign of recognizing this fact, but the attentive reader should notice

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and recall that Perceval’s earlier rash and thoughtless behavior has

brought tragedy upon at least two defenseless maidens.134

As Peter Haidu notes (Aesthetic Distance 183-4), there are a

number of signs that Chrétien is teasing the reader’s memory in this

episode, prodding him to take note of small details that suggest the

identity of the pitiful pucele before Perceval himself acknowledges it.

There are also details that serve to underline the parallels between

this distressed maiden and the one Perceval has just left. As he left his

cousin with the corpse of her lover, Perceval followed the hoofprints

that she said would lead to the knight who slew him. In this way,

Perceval overtakes a thin and wretched palfrey that looks over-

worked and under-nourished; even its harness is in a sad condition.

The extended description of the horse and its sorry state serves two

purposes: first, it provides a striking contrast to the state of Perceval’s

horse which his cousin noted in the previous scene, when she

remarked that it appeared that the horse (and its rider) had been well

cared for the previous night. In the present scene, the state of the

horse also reflects on the state of the rider, who is in a similarly

neglected condition. The narrator describes the horse before he even

134 It is likely that the cousin’s beloved knight was not the first to die under the sword of the Orguilleus, who has now been roaming the countryside for weeks in search of the man who wronged his amie. There may well be other bereft women bemoaning the deaths of other knights at the murderous hands of the Orguilleus de la Lande.

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mentions its rider, suggesting that the scene is being described from

Perceval’s point of view: we can imagine Perceval riding along with

his gaze directed downward, watching for the hoofprints that will lead

him to the errant knight; as he rides along, the stumbling steps of the

pitiful palfrey come into view and capture his attention; then he raises

his gaze and becomes aware of the state of the saddle and harness,

and finally recognizes that the nag is mounted by a similarly

bedraggled maiden. As Perceval continues to raise his gaze, he sees

the state of her gown, then her hair flowing down unbound, and finally

her filthy, tear-streaked face. We have seen and remarked on a similar

narrative technique before, in Perceval’s approach to Gornemant’s

castle (when the towers of the fortress seemed to “be born” out of the

rock as Perceval rode up the hill) and again when he sought the

fisherman’s home (when that castle seemed to “appear” as he lowered

his gaze from the horizon before him to the valley below, where the

castle lay nestled). We should also remember that, in the previous

uses of this technique, the narrator caused the reader to see from

Perceval’s perspective only to undercut the reliability of that point of

view almost immediately.

This is true in this instance as well, for the dialogue that follows

between the bedraggled damsel and Perceval is filled with double-

entendres for the reader, which, as the attentive reader will notice,

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emphasize the disparity between the apparent and the real

significance of what is being said. Like the last sorrowful damsel

Perceval met, this one is volubly lamenting her fate as he approaches

and greets her:

Lor dist il, “Bele, Dex vos saut!”Percevax qui l’atainte l’ot.Et quant la damesele l’ot,Si s’anbruche et respond an bas:”Sire qui saluëe m’as,Tes cuers ait ce que il voldroit, Et si n’i ai ge mie droit.”Et Percevax respondu aQui de honte color mua:“Por Deu, bele amie, por coi?Certes ge ne pans ne ne croiQue ge onques mes vos veïsseNe rien nule vos mes feïsse.— “Si as, fete le, que ge suiTant cheitive et tant ai d’ennuiQue nus ne me doit saluër:D’angoisse me covient suërQant nus m’areste ne esgarde.— Voir, ge ne me preneoie garde,Fete Percevax, de ce[st] mesfet.Por vos fere honte ne letCertes ne ving ge mie ca … “ (3744-59)

(Then said Perceval who had caught up to her: “God save you, fair one!” And when the maiden heard this she hunched over and answered in a low voice, “My lord who has greeted me, may your heart have what it desires, even though I have no right to [your greeting].” And Perceval, who had changed color out of shame, replied, “By God, dear friend, why? Indeed I do not think or believe that I’ve ever seen you before, nor ever done you any wrong.” “Yes you have, “ she said “for I am so wretched and troubled that no one should greet me. I sweat with anguish whenever anyone stops me or looks at me.” “Truly,” said Perceval, “I was not aware of this misdeed. I certainly didn’t come here to do you dishonor or injury …”)

On the surface, there is nothing to suggest that there is any

connection between these two apparent strangers. Perceval interprets

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the damsel’s response to his greeting as a rebuke for having taken

notice of her condition when he politely should have ignored her, and

he blushes in shame and excuses himself. Yet the attentive reader will

remember the scene that transpired immediately before this (between

Perceval and his cousin) and will have guessed from the maiden’s

lament (in which she complains aloud about the circumstances of her

suffering) that she is the same maiden that Perceval assaulted in the

tent on his way to find Arthur. In light of this understanding, the

words of both the maiden and Perceval take on a double meaning,

reminding us of a more serious gaffe than that of discourteously

noticing her embarrassing condition. Thus, the reader becomes aware

of something that is still unguessed by either the maiden or the

knight, namely, that Perceval caused her cruel neglect when he

ignored her warnings that her lover would react badly to the news of

the young Welshman’s mistreatment of her — but Perceval remains

unaware that he has indeed seen her and wronged her in the past,

and his protest that “he certainly didn’t come to do her any dishonor

or injury” rings with a hollow irony.

The next part of their conversation continues to build upon this

irony as it evokes previous scenes. When Perceval insists that he will

not be satisfied until she explains how she came to be in such a

terrible state, once again, just as she did in their first meeting, she

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urges him to leave her before her knight returns and seeks vengeance

for his trespass:

— “Ha! Sire, fet ele, merci!Teisiez vos et fuiez de ci,Si me lessiez an pes ester.Pechiez vos fet ci arrester,Mes fuiez, si feroiz savoir.”(3773-77)

(“Ah, sir,” she said, “Have pity! Say no more and flee from here, and let me be in peace. It was wrong of you to stop here, but flee and you’ll act wisely.”)

Again, the apparent meaning of these words refers only to the

imminent return of the Proud Knight of the Wilderness, who (she goes

on to explain) is the one who has brought her to this state and has

been going about killing any knight who speaks to her, including one

he killed just a short time ago (the beloved knight of Perceval’s

cousin). However, one word should leap out at the attentive reader:

pechiez. Used here colloquially to indicate not a moral failing but an

unfortunate mistake, the word means, literally, “sin.” This is the

fourth use of this word in the romance, but the first since Perceval’s

cousin explained that his reticence to ask about the lance and grail,

apparently an innocent faux pas committed in ignorance, has actually

caused much suffering for others and for himself “because [he] sinned

against [his] mother” (3557-61).135

135 The second use of this term was Gornemant’s aphoristic instruction against the social gaffe of being too talkative (1634: “Qui trop parole pechié fet”), a “sin” against the courtly code of polite behavior. The first use of the term came from the lips of Perceval himself, when he accused himself of sinning against God by mistaking the approaching band of knights for devils:

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In the current scene, both these levels of meaning are in play:

“pechiez” as a social misstep is operative on the superficial level of

the maiden’s intended meaning, but underlying this is the sense of

“sin,” a culpable moral fault, such as the one against his mother which

his cousin pointed out in the previous episode. Therefore, the

distressed damsel speaks more truly than she knows when she says

that “sin has made you stop here,” for it was his earlier sin against

her (still unacknowledged) that has brought all this about. Coming so

closely upon the heels of his cousin’s denunciation of Perceval’s sin in

causing his mother deadly sorrow, the use of pechiez in this context

should attract the reader’s notice.

In a scene which creates such strong resonance with so many

earlier episodes, the use of this term pechiez suggests connections to

a number of things that are not otherwise explicitly linked. We have

already noted that the present episode strongly evokes and (as we

shall see in a moment) closely parallels the earlier episode in which

Perceval first met this maiden. In Chapter Three, we also remarked

on the similarities between Perceval’s behavior with the maiden of the

tent and his mistreatment of his own mother. Additionally, there are a

“Ce sont ange que je voi ci.Hé! Voir, or ai ge mout mal pechié,Or ai ge mout esploitiéQui dis que c’estoient deable.” (138-41)

(“These are angels that I see here. Ah! In truth, I sinned grievously just now and behaved very badly when I said that these were devils.”)

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number similarities between this episode with the distressed Maiden

of the Tent and the episode immediately prior in which Perceval met

his grieving cousin. The effect of all this is to create the impression

that Perceval brings suffering upon every woman he meets. Yet while

this impression may be felt by the attentive reader, it apparently does

not strike Perceval, who seems to remain oblivious to the

consequences of his actions. This attitude is manifested in the fact

that, when he meets women whom he has harmed, he acts as if he had

never met them. One might protest that the distressed maiden has

been rendered unrecognizable since Perceval first met her, but it is

not so easy to explain away the fact that he did not recognize his own

cousin, who grew up in his own home and who “knew him better than

he knew himself” (see 3562-65). Even that, however, is hardly more

incredible than the fact that Perceval was able to ignore his mother’s

anguished swoons and impassioned entreaties as if they never

happened. No, there can be no excusing Perceval’s customary callous

treatment of women and his habit of ignoring the suffering that he

causes them.

But does he not begin to amend his trespasses in the very

episode under our scrutiny? Instead of taking the distressed maiden’s

advice to flee before her lover returns, Perceval stays to meet him,

and when the arrogant knight explains that he is on a campaign of

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revenge against a young Welshman who disgraced his amie by forcing

kisses from her, stealing her ring, and even eating the knight’s three

meat pies, Perceval admits that he himself is the man the Orguilleus

de la Lande seeks. What is more, after Perceval defeats the Arrogant

Knight in pitched combat, he requires him to restore his pucele to her

former beauty before handing himself over to Arthur as a prisoner.

Some would argue that in this episode Perceval clearly has begun to

act charitably toward others and to amend his misdeeds. But, while he

certainly does put an end to the damsel’s mistreatment at the hands

of her lover and admits that he kissed the maiden, took her ring, and

even ate the meat pies, Perceval never acknowledges his own guilt in

the matter. Rather the opposite, for he corrects the Knight for

overestimating the extent of his trespass and even says that in kissing

the maiden, stealing from her, and eating the food he did nothing

wrong:

“Amis, or saches sanz dotance Qu’ele a fete sa penitence,Que ge sui cil qui la beisaMau gré suen, et mout l’an pesa.Et son anel an son doi pris,Ne plus n’i ot ne plus n’i fis;Et si mangié, ce vos afi,Des trois pastez un et demiEt del vin bui tant con ge vos,De ce ne fis ge pas que fos.” (3867-76)

(“Friend, now you should know without a doubt that she has done her penance, and I am the one who kissed her against her will, and it upset her greatly. And I took her ring from her finger, but I did nothing further. And, also, I swear to you, I ate one and a half of the

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three pasties and drank as much of the wine as I wanted. I did nothing foolish in this.”)

We should note several things about this “confession”: first, although

he admits his actions, Perceval minimizes them, correcting the

Orguilleus’ jealous fantasies with a factual account that emphasizes

the restraint with which Perceval acted; second, he does not

contradict the Orguilleus’ assertion that the maiden herself was to

blame (“She has done her penance”); and, third, not only does

Perceval not apologize for his actions, he even asserts that he

behaved sensibly (a claim that foreshadows Gauvain’s later claim that

he was justified in abusing Greoreas). If we acknowledge these

pertinent features of Perceval’s admission, we can see that he has

made no real progress toward overcoming his habit of thoughtlessly

causing suffering to helpless women but, to the contrary, remains

under the cloud of this, his besetting sin.

Blinded by Beauty

Perceval’s next adventure makes this even clearer, but only to

the astute reader who keeps his attention focused on the theme of

feminine suffering and its causes. Since this is our present

undertaking, we shall resolutely follow Perceval’s path and not be led

astray by the Orguilleus’ trip to Arthur’s court. Perceval, having

refused the formerly arrogant knight’s offer of hospitality, spends the

night in the wilderness and rises the next morning to continue his

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wandering, ambling through a meadowland blanketed by an

unseasonable snow that fell during the night. No explanation is given

for this freakish weather event,136 but it would seem that the narrator

has confected this late-spring snow for the sole purpose of providing a

bright field upon which to sprinkle three drops of red blood.137

Perceval’s attention is drawn to these spots of red against the

whiteness of the snow after he sees a falcon attack a goose in mid-air:

Voloit une rote de gentesQue la nois avoit esbloïes:Veües les a et oïes,Qu’eles s’an aloient bruiantPor un faucon qui vint volantAprés eles de grant randon,Tant qu’il trova a bandon Une fors de rote sevree,Si l’a si ferue et hurtee Que contre terre l’abati ... (4139-47)

(He saw a flock of geese that had been dazzled by the snow: he saw and heard them, for they were honking as they went, because of a falcon that came flying after them at great speed, until he found one on her own, separated from the flock, and struck and wounded her so that she fell to the ground …)

136 By the reckoning of Martín de Riquér in “Perceval y Gauvain en Li Contes del Graal,” the snow falls two days after Pentecost.

137 Grace Armstrong, in “The Scene of the Blood Drops on the Snow: A Crucial Narrative Moment in the Conte du graal,” makes a similar observation when she notes:

Critics who worry about meteorological absurdities have pounced upon this apparent faux pas … But within the context of the narrative at hand — certainly a valid perspective — no one has suggested that the romancer may have used the element of the snow to strike his audience with the importance of the forthcoming scene…. (130)

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When Perceval rides to see where the goose has fallen, the bird,

abandoned by her attacker, has already made her getaway, leaving

behind only three bright drops of blood upon the snow.

In this scene, as in so many others, there are two possible

interpretations. The first — the easiest, the most common, and the

least penetrating — is to accept what the narrator tells us and to take

Perceval’s reaction to the sight of those blood-drops as a sign of his

increasingly refined sensibility and his growth as a courtly knight, for

he sees in them the emblem of his beloved Blancheflor’s maidenly

complexion. Chrétien encourages us to fall into this superficial

“courtly” reading of the scene by sandwiching it in between two

interludes at Arthur’s court. In the first interlude, Arthur declares that

he will not rest until he has met this mysterious but highly-

accomplished knight who has sent so many defeated foes into the

king’s custody. We are even treated to the ludicrous scene (examined

in Chapter 4) of the entire court packing up and heading into the

wilderness to quest for the Red Knight, who is Perceval. Then, once

Perceval falls into his contemplative trance over the blood drops, the

narrator returns his (and the reader’s) attention to the court (now

camped in a nearby meadow) and the parade of knights sent out to

fetch the mysterious knight who has been spotted nearby in a deep

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reverie. Only the refined and sensitive Gauvain will be able to break

that reverie and coax Perceval to approach Arthur’s encampment.

Because this scene of the blood on the snow is framed in the

courtly view, one might easily be as blinded as the poor goose was by

the picturesque snow and, therefore, inclined to agree with Gauvain’s

sensitive appraisal of the scene. But we must recall that, for Perceval,

the only thing that intervenes between his dismissal of the now-

penitent Arrogant Knight and the falcon’s attack upon the helpless

goose is a night’s sleep. The day before he woke in the snow-covered

countryside, Perceval had met and dealt with two different maidens,

each of whose lives had been deeply scarred by the predations of an

arrogant and thoughtless knight; he learned that his own mother died

because of his obsessive haste to become a knight; only one day

before that, Perceval left the citadel of Blancheflor, who had suffered

for weeks or possibly months under the siege set by Anguingueron,

who thought nothing of killing or imprisoning dozens of knights and

starving an entire city just so that he could possess one helpless

female and her lands. If Perceval remained at all mindful of these

things, he might have seen in the falcon’s attack on the goose a sad

analogue to all the women injured by the self-serving violence of

armed men; if he had taken note of one strange fact that the narrator

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includes, he might have been reminded of something even closer to

home:

… il an trova a bandon Une fors de rote sevree,Si l’a si ferue et hurteeQue contre terre l’abati;Mes trop fu main, si s’an parti,Qu’il ne s’i voit lïer ne joindre. (4144-49)

( … he [the falcon] found one [goose] on her own, separated from the flock, and he wounded and struck her so that she hit the ground; but it was too early in the morning, and he left her, for he did not wish to join with her there.)

Who has ever heard of a predatory bird that brings down its prey,

then fails to consume it because “it’s too early in the day”? Such a

thing is as unheard of as “someone who kisses a woman and does no

more, when the two are all alone together” (3826-27: “qui beise fame

et plus n’i fet, / Des qu’il sont seul a seul andui”), as the Arrogant

Knight of the Wilderness said. Li Orguilleus found such a thing

preposterous because he assumed that a woman’s purpose was to

serve the lusts of men and that a man who had a woman all alone

would naturally take full sexual advantage of the situation, just as a

falcon, in his nature as a predator, would take advantage of fallen

prey to satisfy its hunger.138 The statement that the falcon did not do

138 In her 1971 study of this episode, Grace Armstrong notes that this is not a realistic portrayal of a falcon — “The falcon has in fact lost much of its identity as a real animal” — but she fails to grasp the significance of its unnatural behavior: “… it has become instead a narrative element designed to effect the essential color contrast, then summarily dismissed once vermilion has been introduced into the scene” (132). She goes on to suggest that the blood itself is “intrinsically insignificant.” I do not believe the falcon or the blood can be dismissed so readily as mere narrative devices; rather they are meant to be an image of knights’ careless

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so because “il ne s’i volt lïer ne joindre” carries sexual overtones that

seem out of place in the situation of the falcon and the goose, but

which stir up memories of the Haughty Knight’s remarks about the

man who kissed the Maiden of the Tent by force but went no further.

That man, of course, was Perceval, who did not wish to “se lïer ne

joindre” with the Maiden of the Tent, not only because he was

distracted by more pressing desires but because “he knew nothing at

all about such things and never thought about it one way or the other”

(1921-22: “il n’an savoit nule rien, / N’il n’i pansoit ne po ne bien”).139

This strange detail of the falcon who, against his nature, fails to

consume his prey once he has her in his grasp, moves the analogy of

this scene out of the general into the personal realm: it recalls not

simply the ravages of chivalry upon the helpless women knights

should be protecting, but also the personal responsibility of Perceval

— still unacknowledged by him — for the suffering visited upon the

distressed Maiden of the Tent. The fact that Perceval takes the blood

drops as an emblem for his beloved Blancheflor (the one woman he

has not damaged by his contact with her) just adds to the irony of the

scene, for he remembers only Blancheflor’s beauty and not her

abuse of their female victims.

139 As we discussed in Chapter 4, there is everything in Perceval’s character and demeanor to suggest that he would have raped the pucele if he had not been so ignorant of sexual matters.

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suffering.140 The scene is truly emblematic, but not for the reasons

that Perceval (and many critics) assume. While critics frequently

expound upon Perceval’s sensitivity in meditating upon the drops of

blood, they give little attention to the events by which the blood came

to be there. Even as astute an interpreter as Norris Lacy minimizes

the importance of those details:

… the episode which presents Perceval's reverie over the three drops of blood on the snow may even contain an incidental parallel to his causing his mother's death and then leaving, for the blood was that of a bird struck to earth by a falcon which then departed without pausing. The origin of the blood is hardly an important element of the episode …” (The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes, 109 emphasis added)

The parallels with the death of Perceval’s mother (or his abandonment

of the Tent Maiden) hardly seem as insignificant as Lacy suggests.

Each of the odd features of this episode, including the unnatural

behavior of the falcon, is a little knot in the fabric of the narrative,

designed to keep our attention focused on the themes evoked by this

scene.

We have shown the correspondences between the falcon’s

attack on the goose and Perceval’s treatment of the Maiden of the

Tent; we also noted earlier the strong analogy between his treatment

of the Tent Maiden and that of his mother, as well as the way his

140 We may recall that Perceval never would have taken any notice of Blancheflor’s suffering if she had not shrewdly visited his bed scantily clad and tempted him with personal gain.

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meeting with the distressed Maiden brings to mind his germainne

cosine, both of whose grief was unwittingly caused by Perceval. There

is one more detail in the episode of the goose that we should notice:

although Perceval rides forward hoping to see what has happened to

the fallen goose, she is gone by the time he arrives, and he quickly

becomes absorbed in other thoughts. This is one more detail that

reminds the reader of Perceval’s treatment of women and how easily

he forgets their troubles once they are out of his sight: after leaving

his bereaved cousin, he never mentions her again; he abandoned the

recently-rescued Blancheflor and her dependents, leaving them to

deal with the aftermath of their long and debilitating besiegement

alone, and he apparently gave her no further thought until he spied

the blood on the snow. His thoughtlessness can hardly be excused by

saying that he left Blancheflor only because he was eager to see what

had become of his mother. Although the image of her falling to the

ground remained sharp in his memory (much as the sight of the goose

falling spurred him to look for its body), when he learned that his

mother was already dead (like the goose, gone before he got there) he

gave her no further thought and took no notice of his cousin’s

accusation that he was responsible for her death. By evoking both his

treatment of his mother — the archetype of all the depictions of

helpless, abandoned women in this romance — and his dealings with

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the Maiden of the Tent, the episode of the blood drops and how they

came to be on the snow becomes a powerful emblem of the pervasive

theme of Perceval’s responsibility for, and obliviscence of, the

suffering of women throughout his adventures.141

Returning to Charity, Returning to God

Et cele nuit a mangier otIce qu’au saint ermite plot,Mais il n’i ot se herbes non … …………………………A la Pasque comenïezFu Percevax mout dignemant. (6469-73)142

ur examination of two of Perceval’s sins — his defective

chivalry, which he himself acknowledges, and the suffering

caused to his mother, which must be pointed out to him by others—

reveals that these problems pervade the romance and are closely

related. Both the general fault of courtly chivalry and Perceval’s

personal disregard for women close to him indicate a self-serving

impulse that taints all good intentions and innocent motives. As Saint

Bernard warns, pride makes the sinner incapable of doing good

because it keeps him from being able to see beyond his own needs to

O

141 In “The Poetics of Sacrifice: Allegory and Myth in the Grail Quest,” Peggy McCracken also sees parallels between the blood-on-snow episode and Perceval’s first encounter with the maiden of the tent, both representing the habitual violence of Perceval, particularly, and knights, generally, against women. She goes so far as to suggest that violence against women and their subsequent rescue constitutes a ritual of chivalric initiation into Arthur’s court (158).

142 “And that night what he had to eat was what pleased the hermit, but there was nothing but herbs. … On Easter Perceval received Communion most worthily.”

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the needs of others. Both of these sins are sins against one’s neighbor,

and in combination they have proved particularly damaging for

Perceval, the conventions of chivalry confirming and institutionalizing

his own native self-centeredness.

In examining the pervasive presence of these faults throughout

the romance, we have seen that the revelations of the Hermit episode

throw needed light on the romance as a whole, illuminating the

depths of many episodes hitherto unexamined in our study. Following

the knotted signposts of the Hermit episode seems to be a useful way

of finding the right interpretive path. There remains, however, one sin

to examine, if we are to judge this method to be successful.

Humility and Penitence

The sin that remains is Perceval’s having forgotten God. Is it

possible that, once again, considering the sin and its implications in

Perceval’s story will help to unravel the remaining knots? In order to

answer this question, let us return to the hermit episode. As we noted

earlier, one of the first things to surprise us is the enui that troubles

Perceval, which seems so unprecedented and uncharacteristic. Like

Gauvain, Perceval has never been self-critical, and his readiness to

burst into tears and confess to serious failings seems out of line with

what we thought we knew of his character. As Stephen Maddux notes

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in “La Pénitence de Perceval,” it is precisely this incongruity that

caused us to reconsider the adequacy of our own reading:

Mais ce portrait si surprenant, si peu en accord avec le récit précédent, ainsi que le ton nettement religieux qui distingue la scène entière, suggèrent au lecteur que quelque chose d’essentiel du roman lui a échappé, qu’il a mal lu, ou lu superficiellement, l’histoire précédente. (61)

Now, however, having reconsidered the romance in the light of the

other sins imputed to him and having recognized that those seem,

after all, justified, we may feel less shocked at his deep humility and

penitence. Although the process which brought Perceval to this

moment of humility remains hidden, known only to God “who sees all

secrets and knows all the hidden things of the heart and bowels” (34-

36: “qui toz les segrez voit / Et set totes les repostailles / Qui sont es

cuers et es antrailles”), that humility, however attained, leads

Perceval to reconciliation with God and with his ignored bonds of

kinship. As we observed in Chapter 3, his humility not only makes

possible deeper self-knowledge but actually depends upon self-

knowledge, for “[h]umility is a virtue by which a man has a low

opinion of himself because he knows himself well” (St. Bernard, The

Steps of Humility and Pride 30, I.2). For Perceval, the first step to

remembering God was remembering himself, i.e., recognizing his own

insufficiency as a knight and as a man. What prevented such humility

earlier was precisely the voluntas propria or pride that is

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characteristic of courtly chivalry and which also governed all of

Perceval’s actions since he first learned of chivalry. Although we have

seen, in the cases of both Gauvain and Perceval, instances when this

self-serving impulse hypocritically masqueraded as mercy,143 in fact

this kind of pride makes true Charity impossible, as St. Bernard

explains in a later passage of The Steps of Humility and Pride:

The heavy, thick beam in the eye is pride of heart. … While it is there you cannot see yourself as you really are, or even the ideal of what you could be, but what you would like to be, this you think you are or hope to be. For what else is pride but, as a saint has defined it, the love of one's own excellence. We may define humility as the opposite: contempt of one's own excellence. (42, IV.14)

The difference between Perceval and Gauvain is this: Perceval, who

has been pursuing an ideal that he first perceived the moment he

glimpsed the splendor of knights and asked, “Are you God?”, has

spent five years remembering that he has fallen short of that ideal —

he has known that his own excellence was illusory. Gauvain, on the

other hand, although frequently humiliated is never humbled; he

never doubts his own excellence, no matter how many maidens abuse

him or how many opponents shriek that they would like to tear out his

heart with their bare hands; he never fails to excuse himself on the

grounds that he has behaved according to the tenets of “courtesy.”

143 We saw, for instance, that Perceval pledges to help Blancheflor only after she promises him that he can thereby win glory as a knight; similarly, Gauvain refrains from punishing the Orguilleuse for her hateful behavior because it would not redound to his honor.

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Because Perceval attains humility (which St. Bernard calls “the

first degree of Truth”), he is able to move on to embrace Charity

which is, as we have already said, the penance that he accepts from

the hermit which will be the “perfect alms.” Humility makes Charity

possible because, as St. Bernard goes on to say,

They [who, in the light of Truth, understand their own inadequacy] look beyond their own needs to the needs of their neighbors, and from the things they themselves have suffered they learn compassion: they have come to the second degree of truth. (46, V.18)

This suggests an explanation for the fact that Perceval’s humility first

manifests itself (as penitential tears) in response to the penitent

knight’s explanation of the meaning of Good Friday:

Cil qui de toz pechiez fu mondesVit les pechiez don toz li mondesErt anlïez et antechiez,Si devint hom por noz pechiez.Voirs est que Dex et hom fu il … (6237-41)

[“He who was clean of all sin saw the sins with which all the world was ensnared and marked, and he became man for our sins. Truly he was God and man …”]

Christ’s taking humanity upon himself is itself the supreme example of

humility, as St. Paul explains in his exhortation to the Philippians:

Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who though he was by nature God, did not consider being equal to God a thing to be clung to, but emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave and being made like unto men. And appearing in the form of man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even to death on a cross. (2.5-8)

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In a similar way, St. Bernard links the humility of Christ to the mercy

of God, who:

… came down in mercy to where [his errant creatures] lay in misery. He would experience for himself what they rightly suffered for their disobedience. He was not led by curiosity as they were, but by a wondrous Charity. (The Steps of Humility and Pride 40, III.12)

Perceval, who was first moved to take up chivalry by an obscure

impulse to become “more beautiful than God,” is humbled by his own

insufficiency as a knight and accuses himself of having done nothing

as a knight that would merit God’s approval. This, again, is in accord

with what St. Bernard teaches about humility:

When in the light of Truth men know themselves and so think less of themselves, it will certainly follow that what they loved before will now become bitter to them. They are brought face to face with themselves and blush at what they see. Their present state is no pleasure to them. They aspire to something better and at the same time realize how little they can rely on themselves to achieve it. (45, V.18)

It is precisely this realization that moves Perceval to embrace Charity,

which will perfect his knighthood, making it an almosne enterine.

In the Hermit episode, we readers have also been humbled,

forced to admit the inadequacy of our casual enjoyment of Perceval’s

story as simply a conventional courtly entertainment. By admitting the

possibility that we were at fault as readers, by reviewing our reading

in the light of the revelations of the hermit episode, we have been able

to recognize our error. In this way, the reader undergoes a penitential

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process analogous to Perceval’s own, which gradually reveals the

deeper meaning of the story. As Maddux points out, it seems that

Chrétien a préféré qu’elles [les implications théologiques] se dégagent progressivement, à mesure que le lecteur arrive à pénétrer le sens du récit, un peu de la façon dont nous ne saisissons la signification religieuse de nos expériences quotidiennes qu’à force de les méditer. Il semble même que l’auteur ait voulu que le lecteur partage, en quelque sorte, l’expérience d’illumination connue par Perceval. (“La Pénitence de Perceval” 60)

In this way, the exercise of the reader’s own memory, in reflecting

upon and reconsidering what he has read, serves as an analogue to

the hidden process that has brought Perceval to his moment of

humility. From the first lines of the prologue, Chrétien has implied

that similar pitfalls may befall both reader and protagonist, obliquely

warning against reading with an eye to vainglory rather than Charity.

The remedy for both reader and protagonist, when they have gone

astray is the same: as curiositas (the distraction of worldly concerns

and enticements) led both away from Charity, so by returning the

attention to God both are led back to the considerations of Charity.

The penance that the hermit prescribes for Perceval, which consists

first and foremost in “believing in God, loving God, worshiping God,”

is precisely the remedy that St. Bernard prescribes for the sin of

curiositas. 144

144 Jean Leclercq notes, in “Curiositas and the Return to God in St. Bernard of Clairvaux,” that for Bernard “The specific remedy [for curiosity] which comes from God is, in this case, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: piety” (97).

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Stumbling over Charity

One important narrative knot remains for us to consider, which

is the mysterious episode of Grail Castle. In what way can the

revelations of the hermit episode illuminate the obscure heart of

Perceval’s adventures? How can recognizing the tension between

Perceval’s pursuit of chivalry and his neglect of Charity help us to

untie this remaining knotty enigma? As we have already noted, this

most interesting problem has exercised critics for a century or more

without producing any entirely satisfactory solution. Indeed, as

Philippe Ménard points out in “Problèmes et Mystères du Conte du

Graal: Un essai d'interprétation,” “la multiplicité des suppositions

suggère leur fragilité” (61). To arrive at an adequate understanding of

the Grail episode, Ménard suggests a better means of approach:

Sans imposer au texte des significations ésotériques ou des symboles cachés, dont il n’a cure, sans dissimuler les énigmes et les obscurités impossibles à démêler, tout en restant au ras du texte et en s'efforçant de rendre compte des pierres d'attente habilement disposées tout au long de l'oeuvre par un habile architecte, il est possible de percevoir le mouvement profond qui anime le récit et l'oriente vers un dénouement attendu. (61)

Ménard’s method suggests that one must already have some grasp of

the meaning of the romance in order to arrive at an adequate

understanding of this mysterious, central episode; this view

corresponds to our own discovery that a recognition of the pervasive

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themes embedded in the fabric of the romance is invaluable in

uncovering the poem’s true meaning. As we have seen, if any single

episode can be said to provide the “hermeneutic key” to unlocking the

meaning of the romance, it is the hermit episode, not the Grail

episode. We have also seen that this desired understanding can be

reached only retrospectively, by reconsidering the romance in the

light of what the hermit episode reveals. This is, perhaps, where some

interpreters stumble over the “pierres d'attente” — wishing to read

the romance sequentially, such readers expect earlier events to

prepare for later ones, the grail episode to illuminate the Hermit

episode and the rest of the romance, rather than the other way

around. Such readers, unwilling to wait for the necessary moment of

retrospection, succumb to what Charles Méla calls “the destructive

panic within the text” (“Perceval” 255). In the following chapter, we

will return to Grail Castle to discover, in calm retrospection, what may

be learned there in light of the themes uncovered by our study of

Perceval’s encounter with his hermit uncle.

Chapter 6 Return to Grail Castle: A Reconsideration

“Que sui ge venuz querre?La musardie et la bricoigne!Dex li doint hui male vergoigneCelui qui ça m’a anvoié …”………………………Li vaslez cele part avaleEt dit que bien avoié l’aCil qui l’avoit anvoié la. (3006-3010, 3024-3026)145

t last we return to the castle of the Fisher King and the events

that Perceval experienced there. Until this moment, we have

been ill-equipped to decode the mysterious happenings in the great

hall of the Rich Fisherman. Generations of critics have been stymied

by this episode, which Chrétien seems deliberately to have made

mysterious, and for this reason alone it would be foolish to rush into

an analysis. Moreover, our examination of the importance of memory

in the Conte del Graal has taught us that the grail episode cannot be

taken at face value or properly interpreted without reflection, guided

by an understanding of what transpires between Perceval and his

hermit uncle at the end of his adventures. Thus, we have reserved our

consideration of the visit itself until the moment when the context of

this adventure can be properly appreciated. Perhaps in doing so we

A

145 Perceval’s change in attitude as he follows the Fisherman’s directions to his home: “’What did I come here to find? Trickery and fraud! May God bring terrible shame today upon him who sent me this way …’ [He looks down into the valley and notices the castle there] … The young man headed down that way and said that the man who had sent him there had guided him well.”

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may find, as Perceval found when he was looking for the fisherman’s

home, that when we reorient our focus, our frustration is transformed

into appreciation.

Blinded by the Light: The Meaning of the Grail

Episode

Quant ele fu leanz antreeA tot le graal qu’ele tint,Une si granz clartez i vintQu’ausi perdirent les chandoilesLor clarté come les estoilesQuant li solauz lieve ou la lune. (3190-95)146

uch reorientation seems to have been intended by Chrétien.

Except for those few critics who would deny that the hermit

episode forms an integral part of Chrétien’s plan for the romance,

interpreters generally have agreed that the hermit’s revelations about

the nature of Perceval’s fault (a “sin”) and the purpose of the grail (to

convey spiritual food to the reclusive father of the Fisher King)

provide an unexpected but necessary key to unlocking the enigma of

the strange procession that Perceval witnessed but failed to ask

about.147 Historically, however, agreement on the hermeneutical

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146 “When she entered with the dish (grail) that she was holding, there came such a great radiance that the candles lost their brightness, as the stars do when the sun rises, or the moon.”

147 One prominent critic who rejects the authenticity of the hermitage episode, D. D. R. Owen, in “From Grail to Holy Grail,” argues that if the hermit episode was not the work of Chrétien, we must assume that Chrétien’s treatment of the mysterious procession was “profane” rather than religious, spiritualized only by

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importance of the hermit’s revelations has not guaranteed critical

consensus on how or to what extent those revelations illuminate the

mysterious occurrences at the Fisher King’s home. In particular, the

religious nature of his remarks have caused considerable controversy.

Shining a religious light upon the mysterious mealtime procession

does not guarantee that spectators will understand what they see, any

more than the light accompanying the passing of the grail ensured

that Perceval would understand what he was seeing. In fact, for some

interpreters, especially those who have cited the hermit’s revelations

as justification for reading the grail procession as a Christian allegory,

that religious light may be so bright as to blind them to the true

significance of the grail episode. Even these religious allegories vary

widely in their interpretation: Leonardo Olschki, for example, reads

the grail episode as an allegorical presentation of heretical Cathar

beliefs while Sister Amelia Klenke, in Chrétien, Troyes, and the Grail,

reads it as an entirely orthodox allegory of Catholic doctrine. To arrive

at such detailed allegorical exegeses, however, requires considerable

interpretive contortion, about which Jean Frappier justifiably

complained when he asserted that Sister Amelia “est conduite a

déformer, a distordre incroyablement le texte du Conte pour le faire

coïncider avec sa conception d’une légende arthurienne entièrement

later Continuators and adaptors of the legend of the grail.

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christianisé” ( “Le Conte du Graal est-il une allégorie judéo-

chrétienne?” 212). Because the use of detailed religious allegory

seems so greatly at odds with Chrétien’s usual methods and with this

poem as a whole, some critics have taken pains to distance

themselves from all religious readings of the grail episode, even when

they acknowledge the authenticity of the hermit episode as part of the

romance that Chrétien wrote.148 For instance, in her provocative

study, The Unholy Grail: A Social Reading of Chrétien de Troyes'

Conte du Graal, Brigitte Cazelles bases her reading of the romance on

the assumption that the hermit is an untrustworthy (even lying)

interpreter of the grail event; by rejecting the hermit’s assertions she

justifies her denial of any spiritual or moral meaning in the romance.

In Aesthetic Distance in Chrétien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in

Cliges and Perceval, Peter Haidu, while stopping short of calling the

hermit a liar, nonetheless wishes to minimize the significance of the

hermit’s religious remarks, saying that the hermit episode "merely"

reminds the reader of the life of Charity introduced in the prologue,

but does not indicate the "profound meaning" of the tale (228). This

statement is paradoxical since, as we have seen, the “profound

148 One allegorical interpretation that seems most interesting with respect to our own reading is Léopold Grill’s “Chateau du Graal: Clairvaux,” in which he finds striking resemblances between Chrétien’s depiction of Grail Castle and St. Bernard’s characterization of the monastery of Clairvaux as a spiritual fortress. He suggests, but does not insist, that the grail episode contains “[des] analogies … entre la mystique du Graal et celle de St. Bernard où l’âme est considérée comme l‘habitation de Verbe-Epoux et, de ce fait, le lieu où surabonde la grâce” (126).

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meaning” of the romance is, in fact, intimately connected to the theme

of Charity, which Chrétien not only went to some pains to introduce in

the prologue but then proceeded to “hide in plain view” throughout

the rest of the romance. Therefore, it would seem that the

implications of the hermit’s remarks must be carefully considered.

In doing so, it is possible to avoid the extremes, on the one

hand, of falling into a strictly allegorical reading or, on the other, of

discounting the hermit’s testimony and denying all religious relevance

to the events at Grail Castle. We should proceed — like Maurice

Delbouille (“Réalité du château du Roi-Pêcheur”), who resists the

temptation to find “secret symbolism” there, and Philippe Ménard

(“Problèmes et Mystères du Conte du Graal”), who wishes to dispel

the idea that the lance and grail are mystical religious objects —

according to the assumption that whatever meaning Chrétien

intended his reader to discern in the mysterious objects and events at

the Fisher King’s home can be gleaned from the text, without

recourse to external allegory or symbolism, but aided by the

necessary light shed by the hermit’s revelations.

We may agree with Haidu when he says, “To equate the hermit's

interpretation with a total analysis of the romance is a reduction most

readers will find unacceptable” (228), but only if we also recognize

that “most readers” are rocky ground in which the “bone semance” of

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Chrétien’s romance “seche et faut,” leading to the kind of superficial

reading that Chrétien subtly warns against in the prologue. Such

readers have been tempted into a “courtly” reading of the romance,

influenced both by a narrator who tends to highlight the courtly point

of view and by Perceval’s own willingness to judge his actions only

according to the code of courtly chivalry. However, we have seen that

Perceval, after five long years of mechanically going through the

motions of conventional chivalry, denounces it as empty and

meaningless, and he willingly accepts the holy hermit’s correction and

reinterpretation of his frustrating experience in the hall of the Fisher

King. We have already seen that the hermit’s words have implications

not only for Perceval’s exercise of chivalry but also for the reader’s

act of interpretation. Let us, then, be among that minority of readers

who allow the hermit’s words to take root in their minds and,

returning to the home of the Fisher King, let us revisit the scene in

our memory and reconsider how those words can reveal meaning

otherwise hidden in the mysterious events that occurred there. If we

do so carefully enough, with attention to those themes and motifs

repeated but concealed throughout the narrative and brought to light

only in the Hermit episode, we may discover those “significances

which Chrétien’s fragment barely hints at” (Pickens 1985, 280).

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It is possible — even likely — that Chrétien deliberately crafted

the romance, and particularly the Grail episode, in such a way that

only a retrospective interpretation, in light of the hermit’s revelations,

can reveal the full meaning. Peter Haidu says, "The specifically

religious aspect of the [hermit] episode, however, does not function

sequentially but reflectively: it is not so much part of the narrative as

a manner of looking at the entire sequence of events which includes it

as a (minor) part" (Aesthetic Distance 227). This “reflective function”

is particularly necessary to understanding the events at Grail

Castle.149

In addition to the new light unexpectedly thrown upon the

events at Grail Castle by the hermit’s revelations, various other

factors suggest that this episode is not meant to be judged or

understood on its own, as a discrete unit of the narrative. The air of

mystery deliberately cultivated in the poet’s depiction of the

“mervoilles” of the bleeding lance and luminous grail is heightened by

the narrator’s repeated comments on Perceval’s ill-judged reticence to

ask about the spectacle before him and his intention to ask the

servants about it later. Although the narrator’s remarks function, on

one level, to draw attention to Perceval’s foolish misinterpretation of

149It is ironic, then, that Haidu, perceptive enough to acknowledge the reflective function of the hermit episode, nonetheless insists that this “religious aspect” is extraneous to the deepest meaning of the romance.

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the rules of polite behavior, they also suggest that the objects that

pass by so ostentatiously during the meal demand explanation and

cannot be taken at face value. The strange emptiness of the castle the

following morning heightens the sense of mystery. This air of mystery

is by no means alleviated by the grieving maiden’s interpretation of

those events, offered when Perceval meets her in the woods outside

the castle; instead, her account only raises further questions in the

reader’s mind (if not in Perceval’s). The repeated and somewhat

contradictory interpretations offered later by the Hideous Damsel

and, finally, by the Hermit only deepen the reader’s perplexity over

what Perceval experienced in the home of the Fisher King. Each of

these interpretations simultaneously explicates and deepens the

mystery of that experience; thus, both the events themselves and the

interpretations offered by internal commentators seem designed to

raise new questions in the reader’s mind and send him searching for

clues to the meaning of this baffling episode.

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Grail Castle: A Hall of Mirrors?

Atant se partirent li moinneEt les nonains et tuit li autre,Et cil s’an vet, lance sor fautre,Toz armez si com il le vint.Et tote jor sa voie tintQu’il n’ancontra rien terïenne,Ne crestïen ne crestïenneQui li seüst voie anseignier … (2938-45)150

Au chief de[s] cinc anz li avintQue il par un desert alointCheminant, si com il soloit,De totes ses armes armez,S’a trois chevaliers ancontrez,Et avoiec dames jus qu’a dis,Lor chiés an lor chaperons mis,Et s’aloient trestuit a piéEt an langues et deschaucié. (6204-6215)151

efore returning to the castle of the Fisher King to revisit

Perceval’s experience there, we should first marshal the clues

already provided by our analysis of the romance up to this point. Aside

from the hermit’s revelations, which, in the new information they

provide, perhaps raise as many questions as they answer, we should

also consider the ways in which Chrétien creates and reveals meaning

in the romance. We have seen that the poet uses analogous episodes

B

150 Perceval’s departure from Biaurepere: “And then the monks and the nuns and all the others left him, and he went his way, his lance in its rest, fully armed as he had arrived. And he continued on his way all day, for he met no earthly being, not a Christian man or woman who could show him the way …”

151 Perceval’s approach to the hermit’s chapel: “At the end of five years it happened that he was riding through a wilderness, wearing all his armor as usual, and he came upon three knights, and as many as ten ladies with them, hoods covering their heads, all of them walking barefoot and in hair shirts.”

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to test the reader’s memory, as if daring us to recognize recurrent

similarities and the subtly nuanced differences that make each

episode distinctive and bring to light themes that are not more overtly

emphasized. For instance, in the previous chapter, we saw that the

(mis)treatment of women by knights is given both prominence and

complexity through the repetition of episodes that are structurally

similar. We have also noted that the transformation of Perceval’s

chivalry is indicated by the parallels between the opening episode, in

which Perceval first sees and is inspired by knights he met in the

waste forest, and the last episode, in which he is surprised once again

by the strange appearance of knights in a deserted woodland. Perhaps

to understand the Grail Castle episode, then, we should explore the

ways in which what Jean Gouttebroze calls the “esthétique de

l’analogie” functions in this key episode (“La laide demoiselle” 177).

By considering the events at Grail Castle as a possible analogue to

other important episodes, we may avoid the trap of assigning

disproportionate, and perhaps even inappropriate, significance to the

marvels experienced there. In his 1985 essay, Rupert Pickens noted

that

[t]he obvious attraction of the multiple mystery has caused some scholars to focus with such intensity on the Grail procession and the Grail Castle that the larger context of the fragment itself, in which the event is never reenacted, although occasionally referred to, is frequently distorted out of all proportion. … (280)

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Pickens carefully considers this episode within the larger context of

the themes introduced in the prologue and re-emphasized in the

hermit episode, paying particular attention to the ways in which the

narrator distracts the reader’s attention from these themes by

remarking only on those details of events that would interest a courtly

audience. In a similar way, we shall use our study of analogies to

investigate the ways the Fisher King episode may reflect major

themes hidden in the narrative, to construct a thematic context for

viewing the marvels recounted in this episode in their proper

proportion.

At first, it may seem counter-intuitive to look for episodes

analogous to this mysterious sequence of events, which seems to

stand out by its very oddity. But, quite apart from the marvels that

occur in the Fisher King’s home, apart even from the light thrown on

those events by the hermit’s explanations, the important position that

this episode occupies in the overall architecture of the poem suggests

that the grail episode is of considerable structural as well as a

thematic importance. In The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes: An Essay on

Narrative Art, Norris Lacy notes that the Grail episode lies not only at

the thematic but also at the structural center of the Perceval

narrative. In Lacy’s analysis, the two termini of that narrative, the

episodes that occur in the gaste forest of his mother’s house and the

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deserted woodland of the hermit’s chapel, form the frame within

which Chrétien depicts Perceval’s personal maturation. Within this

outer frame, Lacy identifies a secondary frame created by Perceval’s

two visits to Arthur’s court, within which the poet depicts the young

Welshman’s perfection as a courtly knight: in the first he arrives as an

ignorant and anonymous aspirant to knighthood and later he returns

as the celebrated and sought-after Red Knight. Within both these

frames, Lacy locates the Grail Castle episode at the structural center

(103).

Lacy’s scheme limits itself to the Perceval narrative, leaving

unexplored the relationship Chrétien conceived between the Gauvain

narrative and the rest of the poem. Antoinette Saly, however, in a

study to which we have already referred, makes a detailed

examination of the series of episodes in the Gauvain narrative and the

way they structurally parallel and thematically invert analogous

episodes in the main Perceval narrative. Her analysis reveals that,

when the two narrative strands are considered as parallel sequences

of analogous episodes, the hermit episode, which interrupts the

account of Gauvain’s adventures, occupies the same position within

the Gauvain narrative that the Grail Castle episode occupies in

Perceval’s story:

Force nous est de constater que l’ermitage se trouve serti dans le même contexte thématique que l’épisode du

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château du Graal, occupant ainsi dans la partie Gauvain une place privilégiée: celle-là même qu’occupait l’épisode central du Graal dans la partie Perceval … . (Saly 25)

We can glean two important points from Saly’s findings, with respect

to our consideration of the Grail episode. The first, mentioned in an

earlier chapter, is that the hermit episode serves as the structural

center of the romance as a whole, a hinge which joins the two hero-

narratives like two leaves of a diptych; in much the same way, the

Grail episode serves as the structural center of the Perceval narrative.

This parallel function is provocatively suggestive: is it possible that

the two episodes are not only structurally but thematically similar?

For the moment, let it suffice to note that within the greater scheme

of the romance, the Grail Castle and hermit episodes are related, not

only in that the latter contains an explication of the former but also in

their structural (and, perhaps, thematic) connections.

Wealthy Hosts: Gornemant — Fisher King

It might be easier to recognize how these two key episodes are

related if we first examine how the Grail Castle episode is related to

other episodes in the Perceval narrative. In Chapter 2, we looked at

similarities in the way the narrator relates Perceval’s approach to

Gornemant’s castle and his subsequent approach to the Fisherman’s

castle, which revealed that the reader’s sympathy was subtly

manipulated in such a way that, on the earlier approach, the reader

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would experience some “aesthetic distance” from the uncouth young

Welshman and, on the latter, would find his own point of view

coinciding with that of Perceval, who appears by this point to have

proven himself the consummate courtly knight.152 This impression of

polish and accomplishment is part of what makes Perceval’s failure at

Grail Castle so shocking, to himself and to the reader.

Further examination reveals that these episodes share

similarities not only in the fine details of narration but also in the

grosser details of plot: in each, Perceval is riding along beside a river

when he meets a man who invites him to accept his hospitality;

Perceval then stays at the man’s home to share a meal and spend the

night. In both cases, during the course of the visit, his host confers on

him some token of knighthood.153 There are also significant

differences, of course: after the meal at Gornemant’s (which the

narrator pointedly refuses to describe)154, Perceval is urged to stay on

152 A. D. Crow suggests that Chrétien deliberately describes the approach to Grail Castle in a way that is reminiscent of Perceval’s approach to Gornemant’s home because he wishes to evoke the earlier episode in the reader’s mind (“Some Observations on the Style of the Grail Castle Episode in Chrétien’s Perceval” 67-68) — certainly, Gornemant’s advice is very much on Perceval’s mind as he greets the rich fisherman in his luxurious hall.

153 In the earlier episode, Gornemant gives him the elegant undergarments of a courtly gentleman and also formally fastens upon him the spurs of a knight, while the Fisherman gives Perceval a splendid sword.

154At Gornemant’s, the narrator says, “I’ll give no further news about the meal, how large and how many the courses, but they had sufficient to eat and drink. I’ll give no further account of the food.” (1546-49: “Des mes ne faz autre novele, / Quanz en i ot et quel i furent, / Mes asez mangierent et burent. / Del mangier ne faz autre fable”) Notice that the narrator emphasizes the meal simply by refusing —

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and the following morning he is ritually vested by his host in the

trappings of chivalry, yet after Perceval’s meal with the Rich

Fisherman (recounted in exquisite detail with much commentary by

the narrator)155 Perceval is abandoned by his host and awakens the

next morning without so much as a single servant to greet or dress

him. In the earlier episode, it was clear that Perceval had amply

pleased his host and proved himself worthy of knighthood; at Grail

Castle it is equally clear that Perceval, endeavoring to use the

manners Gornemant taught him, fails some test he is not even aware

of taking, and he is, consequently, given “the bum’s rush.”

Distressed Hosts: Blancheflor — Fisher King

Recognizing the similarities and antitheses between these two

episodes, we should also consider the episode that intervenes

between them and is juxtaposed with each — Perceval’s visit to

Blancheflor’s home at Biaurepere. We have already seen how the

Blancheflor episode’s position immediately after Perceval’s sojourn

with Gornemant modified our view of both episodes by contrasting

Gornemant’s advice — to help women in distress — with his own

actual behavior — leaving his own niece to starve while he himself

enjoys “sufficient to eat and drink” less than a day’s ride away. This

twice — to talk about it.

155 Nearly forty lines are devoted to the meticulous description of the dinner table and its settings, as well as all the courses of food and drink served on it.

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contrast is underlined by both the similarities and differences

between these two analogous episodes. Again, the Gornemant and

Blancheflor episodes resemble each other in their gross structure:

while riding home to find his mother, Perceval arrives at a strange

castle, asks and is granted lodging, shares a meal and spends the

night; before he leaves, he pleases his host(ess) by some singular

exercise of chivalric skill and is appropriately rewarded; finally, he

continues on his way, once more animated by a desire to see his

mother. The significance of each episode, however, is illuminated in

the ways in which the two differ. In contrast to his visit to

Gornemant’s castle, where he arrived full of chatty conversation, still

quoting and following his mother’s advice, and where he was met by

the elegantly dressed lord of the manor, who strolled out to greet him,

when Perceval arrives at Blancheflor’s impoverished castle he must

hammer long and loud before anyone appears to admit him; when he

is admitted, he finds the place sadly impoverished after many months

of siege and warfare; conducted into the luminous presence of the

manor’s mistress, mindful of Gornemant’s parting advice against

excessive chattiness, he is so mute that the inhabitants wonder if

there is something wrong with him. Although Perceval is warmly

received, his beautiful hostess can offer him only a few scraps to eat,

in stark contrast to his previous evening’s meal with Gornemant, who

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provided “sufficient to eat and drink” — what little she does have is

provided not by her wealthy uncle, the knight Gornemant, but by

another uncle, a prior who lives under a religious vow of poverty. And

while Perceval refused Gornemant’s invitation to stay on for as long as

a month to perfect his skills as a knight (something Perceval didn’t

realize he needed), he gladly remains at Blancheflor’s for weeks, once

he accepts the temptation of her druerie. Only after enjoying her

company and the admiring praise of the townsfolk does Perceval feel

once again the prick of conscience — if that is indeed what causes him

once more to think of his abandoned mother.

Viewing the Blancheflor episode in light of Perceval’s earlier

visit with Gornemant, then, modifies the reader’s impression of his

later sojourn with the rich Fisherman by subtly emphasizing both the

defects of self-serving knighthood, which assists helpless women only

when it proves convenient or profitable, and the deleterious effect of

Gornemant’s instruction on Perceval, who is so literal-minded that he

takes the injunction against foolish gab to mean that he must not

speak at all. Several aspects of Perceval’s experience with Blancheflor

are echoed in his behavior at the Fisher King’s home, where again he

is greeted by a host suffering from troubles that are not only plainly

visible but explicitly pointed out; in both cases, Perceval takes no

notice and shows no concern. Although Perceval will be accused more

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than once of failing to restore the welfare of the Fisher King and his

realm, the Biaurepere adventure demonstrates that Perceval is more

than capable of rescuing a languishing realm, even against great

odds, but he must be prodded to do so, enticed with the prospect of

personal benefit. Blancheflor was desperate enough to press her case

after Perceval failed to notice her wretchedness or volunteer aid, but

when the young knight fails to express any interest in what he sees at

dinner with the Fisher King, his host abandons him without drawing

further attention to his need.

Damsels in Distress: Blancheflor — Germainne Cosine

Much as the Gornemant and Fisher King episodes frame the

Blancheflor passage and mirror each other, so the Blancheflor episode

is mirrored (i.e., both reflected and inverted) in Perceval’s meeting his

germainne cosine, the two episodes thus providing the immediate

frame for Perceval’s adventure at the manor of the Fisher King.

Viewing the two episodes in this way, it is not difficult to discern the

structural similarities: in both, Perceval, well-fed from the previous

night’s entertainment, meets a lovely young woman suffering terrible

grief and loss caused by chivalry’s unrestrained violence; Perceval,

however, greets each damsel without commenting on her suffering,

although he is willing to avenge her through action. Yet whereas he

was able to assist Blancheflor through his excellent exercise of

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knighthood and emerged victoriously from that situation, praised as a

savior, when Perceval meets his grieving cousin as he leaves Grail

Castle she denounces him for failure and accuses him not only of

failing to end, but even of prolonging, the suffering of untold women

and orphans; nor is Perceval able to alleviate his cousin’s suffering

through his activity as a knight. Thus when we regard these two

episodes as the immediate frame in which the Grail encounter is set,

we see success preceding and failure following his evening in the rich

fisherman’s home. Viewed as a mirrored pair, these episodes not only

depict a precipitous reversal of Perceval’s fortune that seems to occur

during the intervening episode with the Fisher King, but they also

frame that visit with two portrayals of the sad effects of chivalry’s

destructive power — the immediate context within which the Grail

episode must be read.

Royal Receptions: Arthur — Fisher King

The cousin’s identification of Perceval’s host as the Fisher King

suggests similarity to another episode in which Perceval visited the

castle of a troubled king whom he did not recognize as such, that is,

Arthur, “the king who makes knights.” In the dining hall of Carduel,

filled with wounded knights, Perceval neither recognized Arthur as a

king (until he was identified by Yonet) nor took note of his troubles,

although he was informed of them both by the charcoal burner who

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told Perceval why Arthur was “both happy and sad” and by Arthur

himself, who explained that his moody distraction at Perceval’s

greeting was caused by the Red Knight’s insult to his wife.

(Additionally, Perceval’s conversation with the Red Knight revealed

that Arthur’s kingdom was under immediate threat.) As he would later

do at Biaurepere, Perceval saved Arthur’s realm (inadvertently) in the

pursuit of his own self-interest, not out of concern for his host’s real

troubles. This similarity suggests that Perceval might, also

inadvertently, have rescued the Fisher King’s realm by indulging his

natural curiosity and asking about the lance and grail. A number of

key elements, however, show a thematic inversion between the two

royal visits. By the time Perceval is received in the Fisher King’s hall,

the awkward thoughtlessness with which Perceval entered King

Arthur’s castle has been replaced with a self-conscious courtesy.

Nonetheless, we might remember that, in Arthur’s hall, the rude

Welsh bumpkin showed some mark of promise that moved his host to

invite him to stay, an invitation refused so that Perceval might rush

away to claim the Red Knight’s armor; in the later episode, after a

gracious reception, Perceval finds himself abandoned by the Fisher

King, just when he thought himself a great social success, the very

embodiment of courtly manners.

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In this, the Fisher King episode resembles Perceval’s second

reception by King Arthur: there, too, he acquits himself courteously

and is warmly received, recognized as a great knight, and treated to

fine hospitality at Carlion. His host there, however, has nothing for

which to reproach him and even extends the revelry three days, until

the Hideous Damsel arrives to repeat his cousin’s accusation that

Perceval has prolonged the suffering of the Fisher King and his realm

by failing to ask about the lance and grail. This public accusation and

his subsequent vow not to spend two nights under the same roof until

he amends his fault cause a kind of self-exile from Arthur’s court.

Thus, Perceval’s second visit to Arthur’s court mirrors (i.e., repeats

and reverses) the first: at Carduel he was coarse, rude, and

anonymous but nonetheless welcome, while later at Carlion he is

courteous and at first enjoys a hero’s reception, but then is publicly

shamed into leaving the court. Like the Blancheflor/germainne cosine

pair, these two Arthurian episodes, as Norris Lacy suggests, frame the

visit to Grail Castle and show a marked contrast in the “before” and

“after” views of Perceval’s chivalry; thus, while the contrast between

the two accounts of damsels in distress highlights his apparent

gallantry but actual callousness toward suffering women, the

differences between the two Arthurian receptions suggest that the

polish of courtliness masks a defective knighthood.

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Journey’s End: Hermit — Fisher King

We begin to get a picture of the Grail Castle episode set in the

center of several sets of concentric frames of paired episodes, each

pair highlighting a different theme and creating a different context

within which the grail episode must be considered. The immediate

context is formed by the episodes most closely juxtaposed to the

events at Grail Castle, those of Blancheflor and the grieving cousin.

Outside of this lies the frame of courtly chivalry, formed by the to

visits to Arthur. We have demonstrated that, in each case, the two

framing episodes resemble not only each other, but also the grail

episode which lies midway between them; what is more, in each

framing pair the central figure is also an analogue of the Fisher King:

Blancheflor resembles him in her role as suffering host while

Perceval’s cousin, like the Fisher King, is a close relation on his

mother’s side whose suffering he ignores. This schema suggests that

we should now consider how the Grail Castle events may be

analogous to the two episodes that constitute the outer frame of the

Perceval narrative, namely, Perceval’s departure from his mother’s

manor in the gaste forest and his reception at his uncle’s hermitage in

a deserted woodland.

Let us begin by examining the structural similarities between

the Grail Castle and Hermitage episodes, which are generally parallel

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in structure but differ in important details. In each case, the episode

begins with Perceval traveling in search of a goal that he does not

know how to find, but, just when he is at a point of despair, he meets

someone who redirects his steps toward a more proximate goal, a

place where he can seek refreshment and lodging. Each lodging, as it

turns out, is the home of a close kinsman of Perceval, who provides

hospitality appropriate to his station in life — lavish fare from the rich

fisherman, simple food from the hermit.

As we saw in examining the other episodes, these structural

correspondences are masked by the many differences in detail and

context, rendering the similarities barely discernible in a cursory

reading. However, once we recognize the structural similarity, those

very differences are the key to elucidating the fullest meaning of each

episode. In this case, the comparison is particularly interesting,

because the content of the Hermit episode not only parallels but also

explicitly comments upon and explicates the Fisher King episode. The

hermit’s comments reveal facts that could not otherwise be deduced

no matter how careful our first reading of the grail episode might

have been. For instance, as we reflect on Perceval riding away from

Biaurepere, lauded by the townsfolk and religious who celebrated his

feat of salvation “as if it were Ascension Day or a Sunday” (2906-7),

we may recall that the hermit pointed out that, unbeknownst to

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Perceval, by the time he arrived at Grail Castle and failed to ask about

lance and grail (which Perceval believed to be his signal failure, but

the hermit dismissed as mere foolishness), he was already laboring

under the burden of the sin against his mother (his true grave fault).

Remembering this may cause us to recall with particular poignancy

that as Perceval rode along, intending to go home to his mother but

unwittingly headed toward an encounter with a fisherman, he was

burdened by anxiety that his mother might already be dead. He feared

this because he held in memory the image of her, collapsed at the foot

of the bridge as he turned to ride away. Perceval’s anxiety, upon our

first reading, was quickly overshadowed by the strangeness of

meeting the two men in the boat and the wonders Perceval

subsequently experienced after entering the fisherman’s castle; upon

reconsideration, however, we should pay attention to that anxiety and

recall that, although Perceval triumphed at Biaurepere, he left there

not light-hearted with triumph but oppressed by worry.

Atant se partirent li moinneEt les nonains et tuit li autre,Et cil s’an vet, lance sor fautre,Toz armez si com il le vint.Et tote jor sa voie tintQu’il n’ancontra rien terrïenne,Ne crestïen ne crestïenneQui li seüst voie anseignier,Et il ne fine de prïerDamedeu le soverain PereQue il li doint trover sa merePlainne de vie et de santé

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Se il li vient a volenté.Et tant dura ceste proiereQue li vint sor une riviereEn l’avalee d’une angarde.L’eve roide et parfonde esgarde,Si ne s’ose metre dedanz … (2942-50)

(And then the monks and the nuns and all the others left him, and he went off, his lance in its rest, fully armed as he had arrived. And he continued on his way all day, for he met no earthly being, not a Christian man or woman who could show him the way, and he never ceased praying to the Lord God, the Father supreme, that He would grant him to find his mother full of life and health, if it were His will. And this prayer lasted until he came upon a river at the bottom of an incline. He looks at the deep, rushing water and dares not enter it … )

Both the anxiety and the prayerful attitude are uncharacteristic of the

young Welshman, and remind us of the later scene in which we find

Perceval once again troubled at heart and desirous of spiritual aid.

Leaving behind the monks and nuns who lamented his departure from

Biaurepere, however, he finds “neither Christian man nor woman”

who can show him the way; but at the very moment that he reaches

an apparent impasse, he meets a man fishing on the river, who

assures him that his goal is unreachable the way he is going and

redirects him to his own home. Five years later, after long hopeless

years of wandering in search of the castle of the grail, he meets an

entire band of Christian men and women, whose plain garb and

religious purpose link them to the only other group of religious figures

in the poem, the monks and nuns who formed the celebratory

procession that accompanied Perceval’s departure from Biaurepere:

Au chief de[s] cinq anz li avint

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Qu il par un desert aloitCheminant, si com il soloit,De totes ses armes armez,S’a trois chevaliers ancontrez,Et avoec dames jus qu’a dis,Lor chiés an lor chaperons mis,Et s’aloient trestuit a piéEt an langues et deschaucié.De celui qui armez estoitEt la lance et l’escu tenoitSe merveillerent mout les dames … (6206-6215)

(At the end of five years it happened that he was riding through a wilderness, wearing all his armor as usual, and he came upon three knights, and as many as ten ladies with them, hoods covering their heads, all of them walking along barefoot and in hair shirts. The ladies were much astonished by this armed figure holding a lance and shield …)

These penitents, though, instead of celebrating as if it were a

feastday, instead reprove him for bearing arms and explain that it is

Good Friday, the day that Jesus Christ was killed; whereupon Perceval

removes the costume of the victorious knight so that he may humbly

approach the hermit and confess himself to be a failure. This band of

“crestïens et crestïennes” is able to show him the way, which they

have carefully marked with knotted branches, leading to the chapel of

a holy hermit (in fact, his mother’s brother, perhaps his closest living

relative). These details suggests that the journey Perceval began as he

left Biaurepere is completed only when he arrives at the hermit’s

chapel, where his burden of guilt and anxiety will finally be relieved.

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Suffering Kinfolk: Mother — Fisher King

If, however, the end of his journey is the hermit’s chapel where,

as we have seen, he will be reconciled to his family and to God, and

where his chivalry will be transformed into an almosne enterine

through the penance of Charity, we should recognize that his journey

began not when he left Blancheflor’s castle but when he left his own

home and his mother in pursuit of knighthood. In Chapter 3, we

noticed some of the ways in which the opening and closing episodes

act as inverse reflections of each other, specifically, in the way that

Perceval’s encounter with the penitents, which introduces the

hermitage episode, repeats and inverts his chance meeting with

knights near his mother’s manor, each unexpected encounter radically

reorienting Perceval’s personal trajectory. Now we should examine

the central events of each episode — i.e., Perceval’s exchanges with

his mother and hermit uncle — in search of further parallels. In each,

as Perceval comes away from the company he met in the woods, he

enters the dwelling of a close relative, with whom he exchanges a

tearful greeting; in the earlier scene, the tears are his mother’s

(ignored by Perceval), who wept for her son’s welfare; in the later

episode, the tears are Perceval’s own, a sign of his contrition for his

sins. In each, Perceval eats a meal and remains more three days: at

his mother’s home, he interrupts her account of his family history, his

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father’s and brothers’ deaths, to demand rudely that he be fed, and

only with ill grace and great impatience does he delay his departure

by three days, so that his mother can dress him in humble, rustic garb

to protect him from the dangerous attention of wandering knights. In

the later episode, on the other hand, Perceval listens gladly to his

uncle’s explanation of their ties of kinship and, divested of his gaudy

knight’s armor, he meekly and willingly stays with his uncle, sharing

abstemious meals in preparation for Easter Day. Our final glimpse of

Perceval in this episode, as he worthily makes his Easter Communion,

is a fitting counterpart to his final backward glance at his mother’s

unconscious form, for the one betokens his penitence for the other

and indicates that the rift created by his lack of Charity in abandoning

his mother has been healed through his reconciliation to God.

Clearly, then, we have cause to view the first and final episodes

of the Perceval narrative as an analogous pair which, as Norris Lacy

asserts, forms a frame for the story of Perceval’s personal growth. It

remains only to be seen whether Perceval’s experiences in the gaste

forest are also analogous to those of the central Grail Castle episode

thus framed. To do this we must identify key points of parallelism

between Perceval’s abandonment of his mother’s home and his visit to

the home of the Fisher King, in order to demonstrate their analogous

relationship.

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Once again, our analysis is assisted by the hermit’s revelation

that the key figure in the grail episode is a close kinsman to Perceval

and his mother. This allows us to identify the following common

sequence of events: while riding through the forest on a mission

concerning his mother, Perceval is distracted by an unexpected

encounter which diverts him from his original goal. After this meeting,

he arrives at a secluded manor and is greeted by a relative who is

clearly suffering. Perceval, however, ignores both the visible signs and

the explicit references to that suffering, and instead deflects the

conversation to his own interests. In both cases, Perceval’s

thoughtless behavior is caused by his obsession with the outward

marks of knighthood. Each host refers to Perceval’s destiny as a

knight and provides him with a meal. In each case, the stay in the

household ends in deliberate abandonment. Perceval leaves each

home without ever adverting to his host’s suffering, intent only upon

his own interests, but after his departure he is haunted by the image

of something he saw there that will remind him of that

unacknowledged suffering. This mental image and the failure that it

represents will be for him a cause of reproach and will motivate his

later adventures.

Having identified these similarities between the two episodes,

we should note that the identification of the Fisher King as an

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analogue of the veve dame draws attention to his suffering in a way

that the narrator did not: during the grail castle episode, the rich

fisherman briefly refers to his crippled condition when he greets

Perceval, but Perceval awkwardly brushes the reference aside and the

narrator draws no further attention to the debility. In the scene with

Perceval’s mother, however, her suffering is amply illustrated several

times by more than one dead faint, and she herself explains the

reasons for her distress; not only is her anguish underlined by her

repeated swoons and her disquisition on the terrible way chivalry has

damaged their family, but the sight of her final, fatal swoon as he

abandons his mother remains stamped in Perceval’s (and the reader’s)

memory, an image that will motivate Perceval’s movements from the

time he leaves Gornemant until his cousin tells him that his mother is

dead and buried and blames him for her death, just as she accuses

him of prolonging the Fisher King’s suffering. A few days later, when

the Hideous Damsel (an analogue of the germainne cosine) repeats

the latter accusation, both his earlier intention to return to his mother

and the mental image of her unconscious body will be replaced by the

image of the bleeding lance and shining grail, and his quest to find

them once more.156 During the five years of his wandering, Perceval

156 Thus, curiously, because they replace the mother as the object of Perceval’s quest, the lance and grail seem, in some way, to correspond to the lost mother.

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will be animated by the memory not only of the lance and grail but

also of the reproach he has endured for failing to alleviate the

suffering of the Fisher King’s realm when he refused to inquire about

them. In this way, we see that first Perceval’s quest for knighthood

and later his chivalrous exploits in quest of the lance and grail are

haunted by mental images associated with suffering for which he is

responsible.

In fact, one of the chief discoveries of our search for analogues

to the grail episode is the predominance of the suffering figure and

Perceval’s consistently callous attitude. On the one hand, this

discovery should not surprise us, for we saw in Chapter 5 that

Perceval’s careless attitude toward the suffering of others is one of his

besetting faults, and the suffering caused by his pursuit of chivalry is

a predominant theme throughout the romance. On the other hand, our

study of analogies has revealed that these themes are also reflected,

to a surprising degree, in the events that transpire at the castle of the

Fisher King.

If we now turn to consider the specific points at which the veve

dame and Fisher King episodes differ, we will see that here, too, the

secondary theme of chivalry emerges: whereas the mother exerted all

her efforts to dissuade Perceval from the pursuit of knighthood and

stripped him of as many javelins as he would relinquish, the Fisher

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King seems to encourage his career in chivalry by giving him a

magnificent sword that he says is “destined” for Perceval. And,

although Perceval ignores the suffering of both the Fisherman and his

mother, he treats his poor mother very rudely but converses with his

wealthy host as courteously as he can. He ignores or only half-hears

his mother’s words — the family history, her advice about manners,

her catechism on the nature of the Mass — but he is fascinated by the

sights encountered in the hall of the Fisher King. The meal his mother

gave him (presumably simple fare) is not described at all, but the

lavish repast provided by the wealthy Fisherman is described and

praised in every detail. At his mother’s house, Perceval grudgingly

tarried three days so that she could prepare him a new suit of clothes

before he thoughtlessly abandoned her; at the home of the Fisherman,

Perceval might gladly have lingered, but himself was abruptly

abandoned by his host and all the household staff, leaving him to

dress himself.

Thus, the Fisher King seems to be identified not only with

suffering but also with the source of that suffering, chivalry; the

nature of his wound, which is almost identical to that suffered by

Perceval’s father, emphasizes this dual identification, as does his

name, le roi pescheor, which suggests not only “fisher” (pescheor) —

he is reduced to the pastime of fishing because of the wound he has

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suffered — but also “sinner” (pecheor) —as king and knight, he

himself has been a perpetrator of violence. We begin to see, then, how

richly the Fisher King episode reflects the contexts created by the

concentric frames within which Chrétien has located it: the immediate

frame, formed by the episodes of Blancheflor and the grieving cousin,

is that of innocent women harmed by knights who take them by force

and deprive them of defenders, a theme reflected also in the harm

that has been done to the rois pescheor and his realm. In a similar

way, the Fisher King’s crippling wound and Perceval’s negligent

attitude toward it both echo Perceval’s attitude toward his own family,

ignoring both the account of his father’s wound and the suffering

endured by his mother, who was so often hurt by chivalry’s

destructive power and finally dealt a fatal blow when it lured her last

remaining son away from her.

Finding the Center

As a result of this study of analogous episodes, we find that we

must radically reorient our view of Grail Castle and the events that

transpired there. While at first glance the episode seems strange and

unique, unparalleled in the rest of the romance, upon reconsideration

we realize that it stirs echoes of many other episodes and reflects

prominent themes in such a way that the Grail episode becomes richly

evocative rather than mysterious.

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If we consider one more surprising result of our study of

analogies, we may get an inkling of what that “single event” is: in

none of the analogous episodes that we have examined does anything

appear that corresponds to the grail or the mysterious procession, yet

virtually all of them contain important analogues to the Fisher King.

Thus our study of analogies brings to light the central importance of

this figure. This is the opposite effect of that produced by the direct

narration of the events, where the Fisher King is only sketchily

described but the shining grail is minutely detailed and repeatedly

referred to. Indeed, our study of the Grail Castle episode has

frequently brought to light significant details that the narrator had

glossed over, suggesting — not for the first time — that the narrator’s

account is somehow misleading. On the other hand, if our study thus

far suggests an emphasis on the Fisher King and little or no emphasis

on the luminous grail, this only echoes the attitude of Perceval’s

hermit uncle, who indicated that the grail itself was important not of

itself, but only because of its contents (a holy thing) and recipient (a

holy man and kinsman). Perhaps, then, we should refer not to “Grail

Castle,” but to “the home of the Fisher King,” and regard the grail

itself, and all its jewel-encrusted ornamentation, as a distraction that

distracts Perceval’s attention and our own.

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At this point, it might be helpful to schematize the findings of

our study of the Grail Castle episode and its analogues.

FF: Fam ily Fram e (M other/Herm it)

W F: W om en Fram e (B lancheflor/Cousin)

AF: A rthur Fram e (Carduel/Carlion)

FK: F isher K ing (G rail episode)

FF

W F

FK

AF

In this diagram, the sequence of events is indicated by the arrow, with

Perceval’s meetings with his mother, Arthur, etc. indicated as points

along the timeline, his encounter with the Fisher King lying in the

center of the line. The analogous pairs of episodes that frame this

central event are also depicted as points on a horizon of thematic

context (indicated by the concentric circles). The inner and outer

horizons thus created are both signified with round dots, since both

the outer frame of family identity and the inner frame of damsels in

distress point to the suffering caused by chivalry; meanwhile the

Arthurian horizon, nested between the other two, is indicated by

square dot, to distinguish the context of courtly chivalry from that of

the suffering it causes. Within these concentric thematic horizons lies

the Grail Castle episode — or the “Fisher King” episode, which seems

a more appropriate designation — indicated by a large circular dot set

within a shaded square box, to signify that both themes are reflected

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in this episode, and that within what Perceval (and the Hideous

Damsel) erroneously understood to be a (failed) test of chivalry lies a

different kind of test, which he also failed.

This diagram suggests two things, both of which seem to be

confirmed by our analysis thus far: first, that although a superficial,

linear reading of the romance (and the Grail Castle events) suggests

that that the poem is “about” courtly chivalry, in fact chivalry cannot

properly be regarded except within the context of the harm it does to

its innocent victims. In a similar way, as we have seen and as the

diagram suggests, the grail episode does not exist, and cannot be

interpreted, except within these thematic contexts.

Grail Castle Reconsidered

Pechiez la lengue e tranchaQant le fer qui ainz n’estanchaDe sainnier devant toi veïs,Ne la reison n’an anueïs,Et quant del graal ne seüs,Cui l’an an sert, fol san eüs. (6375-80)157

ntil now, we have been circling around the castle of the grail,

as it were, getting the lay of the land before entering there

once more. Having taken the precaution of carefully considering the

thematic horizons within which the events at the Fisher King’s home

U

157 The hermit’s revelation about the nature of Perceval’s failure: “Sin cut off your tongue when you saw before you the lancetip that never ceases to bleed and did not ask the cause of it, and when you did not find out about who is served from the grail, you were foolish.”

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occur, we should be able to avoid the temptation to assign

disproportionate importance to the grail procession or “to say much

more about the mystery than can be justified by Chrétien’s words”

(Pickens 1985, 280). Our diagram suggests what causes this

temptation, for in it the Fisher King episode resembles a gem stone

nested within a reflective, faceted setting designed to make the gem

itself look larger and more interesting than it is; only the facets of the

gem, reflecting and refracting its setting, give the stone its brilliance,

and apparent depth and magnitude.

Bearing this in mind, we should now revisit the Fisher King’s

castle, allowing our attention to be guided by the recurrent motifs

that we have discovered to be reflected there. This time when we

observe Perceval we shall know him as he did not know himself, and

ask questions he himself did not know to ask — not the “unasked

questions” for which the Hideous Damsel accused him, as if such

questions would magically have dispelled the curse upon the

Fisherman’s Kingdom, but more profound and piercing questions that

seek to discern how, as his hermit uncle explained, Perceval’s sin

against his mother silenced him. Looked at from this new perspective,

the events at the Fisher King’s castle may reveal a very different view

of the nature of Perceval’s failure there.

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Unasked Questions

As he first enters the great hall of the Fisherman’s castle,

Perceval is greeted by his host, simply yet richly garbed, propped up

on one elbow upon a bed set before the blazing fire of an enormous

hearth. The gentleman apologizes for appearing discourteous in not

rising to greet him:

Qant li sires le vit venant,Si le salua maintenantEt dist: “Amis, ne vos soit griefSe ancontre vos ne me lief,Que je n’an sui pas aesiez.” (3071-75)

(When the lord saw him coming, he greeted him at once and said, “Friend, don’t be troubled if I do not rise before you, for I cannot do so easily.”)

To this Perceval replies: “Por Deu, sire, or vos an teisiez, (…) qu’il ne

me grieve point/ Se Dex joie et santé me doint” (3076-78). On first

consideration, this reply might have seemed simply a polite way of

deflecting further attention from his host’s embarrassing infirmity —

“Good Lord, sir, say no more about it, I’m not at all offended …” —

were it not for that last phrase: “so long as God gives me happiness

and health.” Perceval seems to be completely unaware of how rude

and callous this remark is, saying in effect, “I’m not at all bothered by

your debility, because I myself am blessed with good health and a

happy life.”158 Literal-minded as he is, Perceval does not realize that

158 We should, perhaps, recall what the Hermit told Perceval — that he was saved from imprisonment and death only by virtue of his mother’s intercessory prayer.

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his host’s remarks are meant not so much as an apology as a discreet

explanation, one which might even invite a polite inquiry into the

prodom’s well-being. Instead, Perceval assumes that his own

convenience is the focus of the remark, and he assures the host that

his debility in no way discomfits his guest.

Lest we seem to be reading too much into a brief remark, we

should note another detail that seems to point to Perceval’s self-

centered boorishness, the word teisiez: “ … or vos an teisiez, fet il.”

Given the circumstances in which he says this, it may seem

appropriate to interpret this as a polite deflection — “say no more

about it” — but in other circumstances Perceval has used similar

words as a brusque command. We have heard Perceval use this term

twice before: once, as a gallant (even vainglorious) dismissal of fears

about his own safety, when the people of Biaurepere pleaded with him

not to fight Clamadeu in single combat. At that time, Perceval, who

had just defeated Anguingueron and enjoyed the congratulatory

embraces of Blancheflor, was full of himself and ready to amaze them

all once more with another stunning victory:

“Seignor, car vos an teisiez ore, Fet li vaslez, si ferez bien,Que je n’en lesseroie rien Por nul home de tot le mont.”Ensi la parole lor ront,Que plus aparler ne l’an osent … (2580-85)

315

(“My lords, say no more about it and you’ll do well,” said the youth. “For I will not give this up for any man in all the world.” Thus he cuts off their speech, for they dare say nothing more to him about it.)

Here, this phrase, so like the one he addresses to the rich Fisherman,

might be interpreted as a polite deflection of concern about his own

convenience, were it not for the use of the conjunction car. Greimas

lists three possible uses of car, only one of which can explain its

function here: car may be used as either a coordinating or a

subordinating conjunction (neither of which would serve the present

case), or it may be used to reinforce the use of the imperative (as we

find here).159 Therefore, “tesiez” becomes a forceful command.

Additionally, the cowed reaction of those to whom Perceval barks the

order “teisiez!” suggests that he is using the kind of forceful language

that characterizes the knight bent on doing his own will in spite of

others.

The other occasion on which Perceval issued the command

teisiez was when he addressed it to his mother, another instance

when Perceval broke off a greeting intended to deflect attention from

another’s distress, to redirect it toward his own interests. This

occurred when he returned to the family manor, obsessed with the

knights he just met in the forest. His mother greeted him joyfully,

faint with relief that he had returned safely, when he cut her off:

159 Car is used similarly when Perceval demands that the Red Knight take off his armor (1077) and after the drawbridge snaps shut behind him when he is leaving Grail Castle, Perceval shouts, “Whoever just raised the bridge, speak to me!” (3381).

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“Teisiez, mere! Ne vi ge ore / Les plus beles choses qui sont / Qui par

la gaste forest vont?” (372-74: “Be quiet, mother! Haven’t I just seen

the most beautiful creatures there are, traveling through the waste

forest?”). As soon as he identified these creatures as “knights,” his

mother fainted dead away.

Thus although Perceval’s saying “teisiez” to the rich Fisherman

might be taken for a polite dismissal (perhaps he even intended it as

such), the term is strongly associated with the voluntas propria of

knighthood, the obsession that blinds him to the suffering of those

around him. Nor should we forget a similar scene, when Perceval was

greeted by King Arthur. Shortly before arriving at Carduel, when a

charcoal burner he met along the way told him that he would find

Arthur “both happy and sad,” Perceval was interested enough to ask

what he meant by this. But once he saw the Red Knight and began to

covet his beautiful armor, Perceval was no longer interested in

whether Arthur was happy or sad, much less what made him that way.

When Arthur apologized for being distracted and not greeting him

properly, going on to explain the events that caused his anger and

dismay, we were told:

Li vaslez ne prise une civeQuan que li rois le dit et conte,Ne de son duel ne de la honteLa reïne ne li chaut il.“Feites moi chevalier, fet il,Sire rois, car aler m’an voel.” (948-53)

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(The youth does not care a chive for anything the king is saying and relating to him, nor is he concerned about his sorrow or the queen’s shame. “Make me a knight, my lord king,” he says, “For I wish to be away.”)

If this were an isolated incident, we might excuse the vaslet as a

rough rube fresh from the wilds of Wales, but in later episodes the

gloss of courtesy does not completely hide his essential

thoughtlessness, as we saw at Biaurepere, where Blancheflor also

apologized for the manner of her greeting:

[Ele] dist: “Biau[s] sire, vostre ostexCertes n’ert pas anquenuit texCom a prodome covandroit.Se je vos disoie orandroitTot nostre covine et nostre estre,Vos cuidereiez, puet cel estre,Que de malvestié le deïssePor ce qu’aler vos an feïsse.” (1815-22)

(She said, “Fair sir, your lodging tonight certainly will not be fitting for a gentleman. If I should tell you right now all our situation and circumstances, you might perhaps think that I said it out of ill will, in order to make you leave.”)

For anyone else, this would have been a clear invitation to inquire

about her “situation and circumstances,” for Perceval had just passed

through the town, whose buildings and people were all visibly

suffering from trouble and neglect. Perceval, however, remained mute

before her, a foolish and prolonged silence which, the narrator

explains, he maintained because “he remembered the reprimand the

gentleman had given him” (1838-39: “Por ce de parler se tenoit / Que

del chasti li sovenoit / Que li prodom li avoit fet”). In her 1999 study of

the romance, Emmanuèle Baumgartner accepts this explanation as

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sufficient, and points out that in the end Perceval is “not indifferent”

and eventually does act to alleviate Blancheflor’s suffering (78);

however, our earlier scrutiny of Perceval’s motives in this episode (in

Chapter 3) showed that Perceval should not be regarded as blameless

in his indifference, drifting off into carefree slumber while his hostess

paced restlessly in her own chamber, tormented by the thought that

he might leave without rendering her any aid. The same is true in the

home of the Fisher King, who, although he refrains from begging for

help, is no less in need of someone to rescue his realm from

devastation.

We should notice, then, that in virtually all of the contextual

frames, an analogous episode shows Perceval ignoring or deflecting

attention from his host’s troubles. His habit of hushing another’s tale

of sorrow is accompanied by a parallel habit of maintaining silence

himself, a habit influenced by his devotion to chivalry. In his

enthusiasm at meeting knights for the first time, Perceval hardly

noticed his mother’s distress before he cut off her anxious greeting;

similarly, once he entered on his quest to become a knight, his

preoccupation with following the courtly code led him into behavior

that might appear polite, but actually masks an indifference to his

host’s wellbeing. For instance, after failing to follow up on

Blancheflor’s remarks by asking the reason for the city’s devastation,

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Perceval “restrained himself from speaking because he remembered

the gentleman’s reprimand,” a foolish behavior that the narrator

allows to pass without censure, in much the same way that he fails to

remark on Perceval’s inept response to the rich Fisherman. Compare

this to his silence in the face of the marvelous lance and grail, which

draws the narrator’s repeated censure, “par ce que j’ai oï retraire /

Qu’ausi bien se puet an trop taire / Con trop parler, a la foiee” (3216-

18: “because I’ve heard it said that on occasion being too silent is as

bad as saying too much”). In this, the narrator proves a misleading

guide, for he overlooks selfish or uncharitable silence but blames

Perceval for a silence that the hermit uncle later dismisses as mere

foolishness.

A final detail of Perceval’s reply to his crippled host deserves

attention. We hear Perceval glibly invoking the name of God, although

he gives no actual thought to God. “By God,” he says, “It doesn’t

bother me at all, as God gives me happiness and health.” Twice he

invokes God’s name, but it seems to be an empty gesture, a

conventional phrase tossed in without thought. As the hermit later

reveals, God granted Perceval health and happiness only because of

his mother’s prayer for him, which has protected him from ending up

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crippled like his host, or worse. Her Charity has counteracted his own

unCharity.160

One might protest that, in finding so much in a very brief verbal

exchange, we are making a meal of a mouthful. One might even object

that the nature and severity of the Fisherman’s injury is not evident —

Perceval has only seen his host seated (first in the boat, now in the

hall) and the prodom says simply that he can not “easily” rise; only

later, when his servants carry him off to bed, does it become fully

apparent that he is physically incapable of standing or walking. And,

as Emmanuèle Baumgartner suggests, considering the grandeur of

the vast hall and Perceval’s desire to please his host by behaving well,

should he not be excused for failing to inquire after his host’s health?

Mais à quel moment, au cours d'un repas trop fastueux, dans l'éblouissante apparition du graal et de sa radieuse porteuse, dans la conversation mondaine du Roi Pêcheur, dans l'indifférence de l'assistance à la merveille de la lance qui saigne, au déroulement du cortège, à l'infirmité du roi, Perceval a-t-il pu vraiment déceler les traces d’une souffrance? Par quoi aurait-il pu se sentir appelé, être ému de compassion, tenu d'interroger des signes aussi discrets? (80)

Perceval, after all, admits to his cousin the next day that he was in

awe of his host from the first moment (see 3500 ff.). Nonetheless, our

analysis of his response to the Fisherman’s greeting suggests that in

160 Perceval’s mother is one of the few characters to invoke God’s name in a pious manner. On the other hand, God’s name is often sprinkled into the conversation of courtly characters as thoughtlessly as Perceval does here.

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this, as in other instances, selfish preoccupation silences Perceval

when he ought to make charitable inquiries, and a similar self-

consciousness keeps him from asking about the marvelous objects he

sees passing by at dinner with the Fisher King.

Perhaps we begin to have a clearer notion of what Perceval’s

hermit-uncle meant when he said that “sin cut off [Perceval’s]

tongue.” As Fanni Bogdanow notes, Bernardian spiritual theology

regarded ill-judged silence as much a sin as malicious speech:

II y a en effet un temps de parler et un temps de se taire. Celui qui retient la parole dans le temps opportun n’est pas moins coupable que celui qui scandalise les autre par des paroles mauvaises. Qui néglige d’administrer à son prochain les paroles qui lui ont été confiées pour le bien des âmes parait trop avare et trop jaloux … Que le Seigneur place donc une garde à notre bouche afin que nous sachions quand et comment nous devons parler … et pour que nous ne péchions ni en parlant ni en gardant silence. (Vitis mystica, quoted in Bodganow 264)

We may, then, reasonably regard Perceval’s failure to express interest

in his host’s well-being as a sin of omission, prompted by the fause

ypocrisie of chivalry, i.e., an anxiety to be well thought of by others.

Perceval’s natural loquacity has been cut off by his desire to appear a

polite and accomplished courtly knight; in a similar way and for a

similar motive, he later suppresses his natural curiosity about the

bleeding lance and luminous grail. Both when he meets his crippled

host and when he sees the luminous grail, his self-preoccupation

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restrains him from asking natural questions. Sin has cut off his

tongue.

“Why does the lance bleed?”: Chivalry’s Dangerous Glamor

A charitable inquiry into his host’s condition would have

revealed the disastrous effects of that practice of chivalry he finds so

attractive — for both its practitioners and its victims. The Rich

Fisherman embodies both, as we know from the information provided

by Perceval’s germainne cosine the next day: he is a knight who has

suffered a wound that proves disastrous not only for himself but for all

his realm. The ambiguity of his appellation, roi pescheor, suggests

that he cannot be regarded simply as a blameless victim: pescheor

(fisher) is a homophone of pecheor (sinner). We learn from the

germainne cosine that Perceval’s wealthy host, after suffering his

grievous wound, withdrew from the troubles of the world to his

secluded castle so that he might enjoy those few pleasures remaining

to him, fishing and dining well; in so doing, however, he apparently

has left his subjects without a protector, much as a fallen knight

leaves his widow and orphans to fend for themselves. Indeed, the

magnitude of the Fisher King’s great hearth, so impressive to

Perceval, should alert the reader to the utter solitude of the

householder: “Four hundred men could easily sit around the fire, and

each one have a comfortable spot” (3062-64: “Bien poïst an quatre

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cenz homes / Asseoir anviron le feu, / S’aüst chascuns aeisié leu”). He

is a king bereft of knights to serve him, reminiscent of Arthur fretting

over his absent barons while a challenger stood unopposed at the

gate. Paradoxically, the Fisher King’s pursuit of the martial aspects of

chivalry has resulted in his being incapable of upholding the ethical

responsibility of the knight, to defend widows and orphans. Thus, in

this woodland retreat the king has made himself both pescheor — idle

and useless — and pecheor — deserting his role as protector of his

realm. What is more, the details of his wound also seem to implicate

Perceval in his guilt, for although the nature of the wound is similar to

that suffered by Perceval’s father — being wounded “right through

both thighs” (3479: “par mi les hanches ambedos”), the weapon used

was not a lance, as might be expected and as was the case with

Perceval’s father, but un javelot, the weapon of a hunter, such as

Perceval used to kill the Red Knight. Thus, as Claude Luttrell notes in

his study of the relationship between the prologue and the rest of the

romance, “The effect of destructive chivalry is […] evident with the

figure of the Fisher King, who should have been a visible reminder of

it for Perceval” (23). And yet the Fisherman is as much a sinner as

sinned against, as Fanni Bogdanow asserts: “Although Chrétien

himself does not say so in so many words, he clearly hints that the

Maimed King's infirmity is much more than just physical; his wound is

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as much that of sinful self-ignorance as is Perceval's” (261), for he

seems to have forgotten his role as leader and protector of his people.

Perceval, however, by failing to ask after his host’s health,

remains not only ignorant of the cause, nature, and extent of his

host’s infirmity, but oblivious to the possibility that he himself, in

pursuing chivalry, might similarly be guilty or in peril. (He learns only

much later, in the Hermit’s chapel, that he has been protected from

danger by his mother’s dying prayer.) Yet, if Perceval is to remain

ignorant of the significance of all that he encounters during his

sojourn with the Fisher King, it would seem that Chrétien does not

wish the attentive reader to miss the point. There are repeated

reminders of the dangers of chivalry throughout the rest of the

evening.

Perhaps we have sufficiently de-familiarized (and re-

contextualized) the events at the Fisher King’s castle that we now can

see something many critics overlook. Almost all critical examinations of

this episode refer to “the Grail procession,” an event consisting of two

marvels: first, the bleeding lance carried by a squire, then a party of

several retainers: two youths holding candelabras, a beautiful maiden

carrying a magnificent grail, and another maiden with a silver platter,

who pass through the great hall and into a distant chamber. The lance

and grail are almost always treated as if they are both elements of the

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same event — “the procession” — and this assumption has given rise to

the many different interpretations of the way these two objects, and the

manner of their passing, resemble or correspond to elements of a

religious procession. The apparent ritual of their passing, as much as the

Hermit’s later revelation that the grail contains a host, is what gives rise

to this tendency to look for religious symbolism in these objects.

Additionally, the narrator’s remarks, by repeatedly drawing attention to

Perceval’s reticence to ask about the mysterious objects that pass by

without explanation, connect their separate passings into a single event.

It may be a mistake, however, to regard all of these objects as being part

of a single, formal procession.

The bleeding lance appears first and its passing is completely

described (and Perceval’s awkward silence is commented upon)

before the two attendants enter bearing candelabra, followed by a

beautiful damsel carrying the golden grail and a second damsel with

the silver platter. Close attention reveals that the latter grouping

comprises a second, parallel event:

Atant dui autre vaslet vindrentQui chandeliers an lor mains tindrent……………….Un graal entre ses deux mainsUne dameisele tenoitQui avoec les vaslez venoit ………………….Apres celi an revint uneQui tint un tailleor d’argent.……………….

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Tot ausi passa con la lance:Par devant le lit passerentEt d’une chanbre an autre entrerent. (3179-80, 3186-88, 3196-97, 3206-08)

(Then two other youths came in who held candelabra in their hands … A damsel who came with the two youths held a grail between her two hands … After her was another [damsel] who held a silver platter ... Just as the lance had passed, they passed before the bed and from the one chamber entered another.)

Moreover, when Perceval’s cousin asks about these events the next

day, she treats them as two separate phenomena, asking first if

Perceval had seen the lance with the bleeding tip and, a moment

later, whether he had seen the grail and, if so, what had preceded it

and followed it. Therefore, it seems that the cousin regards the

appearance of the bleeding lance and that of the grail “procession”

(candelabra, grail, platter) as two separate, but equally remarkable,

phenomena.

Looked at in this way, the passing of the lance is clearly a

discrete event, closely followed by a second, separate event — the

passing of the candelabra, grail, and carving platter. The lance passes

once and is seen no more, and wherever the two youths were taking

the candelabra, they apparently leave them there; however, both the

grail and the platter reappear, the carving platter now carrying the

haunch of venison that is served to Perceval and his host161, and the

161 The use of a definite, rather than indefinite, article indicating “the silver platter” rather than “a silver platter” suggests that it is the same silver talleoir we have already seen (3253).

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grail making a return pass while the venison is being served. It seems,

then, that there is no necessary connection between the bleeding

lance and the other objects. The lance is connected to the grail only in

its having passed through the hall while Perceval and the Fisher King

are preparing to dine and in the fact that it seems, like the grail, to

have some mysterious property — the lance drips blood from its tip

from no apparent source, much as the golden grail effuses brilliant

light from no apparent source.

The “grail procession,” then, is actually two separate events that

occur one immediately after the other. If the lance is not associated

with the grail, then what are we to make of it? I would suggest that, in

fact, it has much more to do with another outstanding object that

appears on the scene immediately before the lance — that is, the

magnificent sword that a squire carries into the hall, hanging by

straps from his neck. The host inspects this sword and, when he

espies the engraving along its blade, recognizes its provenance and

knows that it will break only in “a singular peril that no one knew

about except the man who had forged and tempered it” (3106: “Que ja

ne porroit depecier / Fors que par un tot seul peril / Que nus ne savoit

fors que cil / Qui l’avoit forgiee et tempree.”). The sword is a gift from

the host’s niece, sent along with the request that he give it to

someone who will use it well, since it is such a rare object and its

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maker will not live to produce another like it. The host seems to feel

that this sword and his young guest were made for each other, for he

quickly bestows it on Perceval, saying, “Biaus frere, ceste espee / Vos

fu jugiee et destinee” (3133-34: “Fair brother, this sword was

ordained and destined for you”).162 Perceval is understandably pleased

by this magnificent gift, and brandishes the sword admiringly before

sending it off to be placed with the rest of his armor; he has no reason

to feel any foreboding, for while he has been told that it is “destined”

for him, he has not been told (as the narrator imparts to the reader)

that it is also destined to be broken “in a singular peril.” Beautiful and

finely wrought as it is, the sword will fail him in a moment of need,

but Perceval remains happily ignorant of this, at least until the next

day when his bereaved cousin, upon spying the sword hanging at his

side, warns, “Watch out, never trust it, for it will surely betray you

when you go to battle, because it will fly to pieces” (3626-29: “Gardez,

ne vos i fïez ja, / Qu’ele vos traïra sanz faille / Qant vos vanroiz a la

bataille, / Car ele volera an pieces”).

We may contrast this sword — so beautifully and finely wrought,

yet so treacherous in the moment of greatest need — with an

analogous gift later bestowed upon Perceval by his hermit uncle. After

162 In any event, since the host’s hall is empty of knights (although there is an abundance of squires — vaslets — to server him), Perceval is the only available recipient.

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Perceval has confessed his neglect of God and his foolish behavior at

the home of the Fisher King, and the hermit has instructed him to do

penance each day in church, the hermit invites him to stay with him

for two days:

— Or te pri que deus jorz antiersAvoeques moi ceanz remaignesEt qu’an penitence praignesTel vïande come la moie.”Et Percevax le li otroie,Et li hermites li consoilleUne orison dedanz l’oroille,Si li ferma tant qu’il la sot,Et an cele orison si otAsez des nons Nostre Seignor,Car il i furent li greignorQue nomer ne doit boche d’omeSe por peor de mort nes nome.Qant l’orison li ot aprise,Desfandi li qu’an nule guiseNe la deïst sanz grant peril.“Non ferai ge, sire,” fet il. (6441-56)

(“Now I pray that you stay here with me for two full days and that, in penitance, you take such nourishment as I do.” And Perceval agreed to this. Then the hermit whispered a prayer to him in his ear, and he taught it to him until he knew it. And in this prayer were many names of Our Lord, for they were among the greatest there are, which the mouth of man should not name except in fear of death. When he had taught him the prayer, he forbade him utter it in any situation except great peril. “I will not, sir,” he said.)

What the hermit gives him is a powerful defensive weapon, so

powerful that it should be wielded only when peril is very great – that

is, the very moment when the weapon given him by the Rich

Fisherman is destined to fail him. The Hermit has already indicated

the protective power that prayer can have, for he disclosed that

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Perceval, although hampered by his sin, has been protected by his

mother’s prayer, by virtue of which God has preserved him from death

and imprisonment (6369-74). The prayer that the Hermit teaches him

is a secret weapon, however, not an ostentatious one like the jeweled

sword, not intended to impress others by its ornate beauty but

concealed from them in its immense power.

On the evening he sat in the hall of the Rich Fisherman,

however, Perceval could not have received such a gift — “sin had cut

off his tongue.” Instead, Perceval receives the gaudy sword, a gift that

perfectly suits his condition at that moment, one that seems an

emblem of the chivalry Perceval is pursuing: very handsome on the

surface but containing a hidden flaw that makes it not only useless but

even dangerous. In The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes, Norris Lacy

develops this idea to the point of interpreting the sword as a symbol of

Perceval himself:

[D]espite the extraordinary qualities of this sword, it is destined to break in the moment of Perceval's greatest need; thereafter , it can be repaired only by its maker. Thus it is with chivalry, symbolized by the sword: in ordinary situations it is more than adequate, but to meet severe tests it must be remade by a higher conception of love and devotion. Perhaps it would be going too far -- or perhaps not? — to suggest a further parallel between the sword and the hero himself, for the latter also possesses a tragic flaw; he too will fail when he is severely tried, and the flaw can be repaired only by his own return to his maker. (109)

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The sword’s arrival is followed closely by the white-tipped lance

brought in by another squire, who does not, however, take it to the

host but rather carries it through the room and out again. Here is

another tool of the chivalric trade, a lance of pure white but marred by

a bright drop of red blood that runs from its tip down the shaft onto the

hand of the young man holding it. The lance, like the sword, can also

be regarded as an emblem of chivalry’s treacherous beauty but, as with

the sword, Perceval remains oblivious to its significance. In this case,

however, the reader is not supplied with any information that remains

unknown to Perceval — both reader and Perceval see the lance a single

time, and on both it makes a lasting impression. We should note here

something that has previously escaped notice of critics: upon first

sight, there is no reason for the viewer (rather Perceval or the reader)

to assume that the blood comes from the lance itself. If it were not for

the fact that later in the story others will refer to “the lance that

bleeds,” we would have no reason not to assume, as in any ordinary

case, that if a lance has blood on its tip someone has been wounded by

it. Indeed, the description of the lance’s passage through the hall does

not state that blood flowed continuously from the tip — it passes by

only once, and the narrator says only that a drop of blood ran from the

tip of the lance down onto the hand of the young man carrying it.

Therefore, if it should occur to literal-minded Perceval to ask anything

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about the origin of the blood, the question should be, “Who has been

wounded?”, not “Why does the lance bleed?” Perceval, however, who

sees only the lance, not the victim, is struck by what seems a marvel:

the lance itself “bleeds” and there is no hint of a wounded victim. The

reader will learn later, in the adventures of Gauvain, that the bleeding

lance, an emblem of chivalry’s terrible destructive power, is destined to

destroy Arthur’s kingdom of Logres and to be delivered to Arthur’s

enemy, ironically, by Arthur’s own champion, Gauvain:

“[Mes sire Gauvains randra]La lance don la pointe lermeDel sanc tot cler que ele plore. Que toz li reaumes de Logres,Qui jadis fu la tere as ogres,Sera destruiz par cele lance.” (6132-37)

(Gauvain will deliver [to the King of Escavalon] “the lance which weeps a teardrop of bright blood from the tip. For all the realm of Logres, which was once a land of ogres, shall be destroyed by this lance.”)

Here, the drop of blood that the lance “weeps” should remind us of

the tears of women throughout the romance who have been bereaved

by the destructive pursuit of chivalry.

The lance, then, is clearly connected with the destructive

violence of chivalry; it is, moreover, connected to Perceval himself,

although this connection is not indicated overtly. As A. D. Crow points

out, of all the marvelous objects brought into the hall, only the sword

is explicitly connected with Perceval (“Some Observations on the Style

of the Grail Castle Episode in Chrétien’s Perceval” 70). A connection

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between the lance and Perceval is suggested stylistically, however, in

the way its entrance is described:

Que qu’il parloient d’un et d’el,Uns vaslez d’une chanbre vintQui une blanche lance tintAnpoigniee par le milieu,Si passa entre le feuEt ces qui el lit se seoient,Et tuit cil de leanz veoientLa lance blanche et le fer blanc,S’issoit une got de sancDel fer de la lance an sometEt jus qu’a la main au vasletColoit cele gote vermoille.Li vaslez vit cele mervoilleQui leanz ert la nuit venuz … (3156-69, emphasis added)

(While they were speaking of one thing and another, a youth came out of a room holding a lance by the middle in his fist, and he passed between the fire and those seated on the bed, and everyone there saw the white lance and the white iron head; a drop of blood issued from the head of the lance, and that scarlet drop flowed down onto the hand of the youth. The youth who had come there that night saw this marvel … )

Two features of this passage suggest a connection with Perceval: the

repetition of the word vaslez and the repeated emphasis of the hand

gripping the lance. The first two mentions of a vaslet refer to the

squire carrying the lance, while the third refers to Perceval; the

narrator makes the distinction by calling him “the youth who had

come there that night.” The first youth is the one whose hand is

emphasized, gripping the lance (“qui une blanche lance tint

anpoignee”) and stained by the blood which drips from it (“jus qu’a la

main au vaslet / Coloit cele gote vermoille”). The close juxtaposition

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between the vaslet whose hand is colored with the red blood and the

vaslet who just a few moments earlier had gripped the splendid

sword, which “suited him very well at his side, and even better in his

fist” (3142-43: “de grand meniere / Li sist au flanc et mialz el poing”)

creates a striking similarity between the two, one which escapes the

narrator’s attention but should not evade the reader’s.

This similarity is further underlined by the bright red (vermoille)

blood that stains the vaslez’s hand, if we recall that the “youth who

had arrived that evening” removed his red (vermoille) armor before

entering the rich fisherman’s hall. A fairly explicit identification

between the color of Perceval’s armor and the blood that he spills as a

knight was established in the episode that immediately preceded

Perceval’s departure from Blancheflor, when the narrator described

Clamadeu’s arrival at Arthur’s court to turn himself over as a

prisoner, as he had agreed to do in exchange for Perceval’s sparing

his life. While Clamadeu was still some distance away, his vassal

Anguingueron (who arrived before him) recognized him from afar:

Clamadeu voient qui venoitTrestot armé si com il dut,Et Anguinguerrons le conut … …………………………Son seignor taint de sanc vermoilVit, et si nel mesconut pas,Ençois dit tot eneslepas:“Seignor, seignor, veez mervoilles!Li vaslez as armes vermoillesAnvoie ça, si m’an creez,

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Cel chevalier que vos veez: Il l’a conquis, j’an sui toz cerzPor ce qu’il est de sanc coverz.Je conuis bien le sanc de ciEt li meïsmes autresi,Qu’il est mes sire et je ses hom.Clamadex des Illes a non,Et je cuidoie que il fustTex chevaliers que il n’eüst Meillor an l’empire de Rome, Mes il meschiet a maint prodome.” (2722-24, 2730-46)

[They saw Clamadeu approaching, in full armor as he was required to be, and Anguingueron recognized him … He saw his lord stained with red blood and there was no mistaking him, and he immediately exclaimed: “My lords, my lords, behold a marvel! Believe me when I say that the youth with the red armor has sent that knight you see there. He has conquered him, I am certain of it, because he is covered in blood. I recognize his blood and the man himself as well, for he is my lord and I am his man. His name is Clamadeu des Illes, and I believed him to be a knight unsurpassed throughout the empire of Rome, but many a gentleman suffers misfortune.”]

In this scene, the association between the red of Perceval’s armor and

the red of spilt blood is made explicit, even becoming a mark of

recognition. Anguingueron is able to tell that the knight approaching

is wearing armor tinted red by blood, rather than by design, only

because he recognizes the man wearing it to be his master. So

thoroughly has Perceval drenched his opponent in his own blood that

one who did not know better might think the approaching knight was

wearing the armor of the Red Knight himself, but Anguingueron,

because he knows the man, knows that the red must be from his shed

blood, and from this surmises that he, too, is a victim of the Red

Knight.

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The mention of “sanc vermoil” in line 2731 is the first explicit

linking of the vermillion color of Perceval’s armor and the color of

blood itself, and the repetition of both terms in this short passage

(“red” twice and “blood” thrice) sets the association in the reader’s

memory. Therefore it seems reasonable to expect that an attentive

reader will find something remarkable in the juxtaposition of the

vaslet whose hand gripping the lance is stained by the blood which

runs from its tip and the vaslet who watches it pass by.

As if to ensure that the identification between Perceval and the

bleeding lance does not escape the reader’s notice, elements of this

scene will be repeated in the episode two mornings later when

Perceval becomes entranced by the sight of bright red drops of blood

set off by the white background of an inexplicable late spring snow. In

the previous chapter, we examined the significance of the blood, and

how it came to be on the snow, but here we should note that the later

scene reunites several significant elements of the earlier one at the

Fisher King’s castle: Perceval, a lance, red blood on a white

background and the mysterious nature of the juxtaposition. However,

while the reader may recognize that the later scene seems to echo the

former, as Rupert Pickens notes (1985), Perceval will remain oblivious

to the association:

Yet the lover lost in courtly contemplation of an image of his now distant lady fails to perceive through that same

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kind of sanblance a reality that is, according to the extant fragment, of all-encompassing significance in Perceval’s history: the Grail procession itself and, specifically, the Bleeding Lance. In fact, recollection of this mysterious phenomenon would have required somewhat less abstract thought processes than memory of Blancheflor. Perceval is well aware that the red spots in the snow are drops of blood. … Ironically, Perceval leans on his own lance to look down into the snow. (256)

As soon as Perceval notices the resemblance to Blancheflor’s

complexion, he forgets about the wounded goose, thinking of it no

more than he thought of the wound that must have produced the

blood on the white lance.

By now we should be able to answer the question that Perceval

failed to ask about the lance — on the figurative, if not the literal,

level.163 The lance bleeds, and will continue to bleed, because chivalry

is practiced more often as a form of assault than as protection and

defense. The long list of damaged and endangered women and of

violent and self-serving knights who populate the romance bear

testimony to this. Perceval is somehow complicit in their crimes by

association even if he does not participate in them directly, for he

unquestioningly pursues the dictates of the chivalric code — to the

extent that he understands it — without daring to violate its slightest

163 As Emmanuèle Baumgartner points out (106), the question Perceval is accused of failing to ask (“Why does the lance bleed?”) seems to directed toward a physical, rather than a metaphysical, cause — his bereaved cousin will ask him if he has seen “la lance don la pointe sainne, Et si ni a ne sanc ne vainne” (3515-16: “the lance whose point bleeds even though it has neither blood nor vein”) and if he asked why it bled.

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precept by asking an innocent question. As long as he, and others,

adhere to the letter while ignoring the spirit of the chivalric code,

helpless women will be terrorized and good men needlessly maimed

and killed, wives left widowed and children orphaned, and the hands

of young men like Perceval will be stained with the blood of their

victims.164 This is an insight that will not, however, be evident on a

first reading; it becomes apparent only when the reader has

recognized the flaws in the conventional practice of chivalry as it is

depicted in this romance.

“Who is served from the Grail?”: The Two Tables

Once we recognize a similarity between the splendid sword that

Perceval accepts from his host and the marvelous lance with its

mysterious teardrop of blood, it becomes easier to see the transit of

the lance as a separate and distinct event from the grail “procession.”

It would seem that Chrétien has placed the two events so close

together with a double purpose: to entice the unwary reader to view

them as a single phenomenon and to allow the more astute reader to

recognize in their juxtaposition a contrast rather than a similarity. We

have seen the poet use this technique of contrast-by-juxtaposition in

164 One might speculate that Chrétien had in mind something like the popular belief of the time, alluded to in Yvain, that a corpse would begin to bleed in the presence of its murderer; perhaps, in an analogous way, the lance bleeds in the presence of those who are implicated in its use. If Chrétien meant to suggest something like this, however, we should note that both Perceval and the Fisher King are present when the lance passes through the room bleeding — either or both may be indicted.

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numerous other instances, e.g., intercutting Perceval’s wilderness

adventures with scenes of Arthur’s court or juxtaposing apparent

triumphs with revelations of failure. In the present case, we can see

that there are significant differences between these two remarkable

objects carried through the great hall. The lance, which appears first,

passes once and is seen no more, carried by a vaslet or aspirant to

knighthood, and the marvel of the welling drop of blood is illuminated

exteriorly by the fire in the great hearth — set off, to be sure, by the

otherwise unmarred whiteness of the shaft and its iron head. The

lance is carried without any other accompaniment, as if to make sure

it will be seen without distraction. The grail, on the other hand — on

its first appearance at least — is preceded by two vaslets carrying

ornate golden candelabra, each with at least ten lighted candles

(3184-85), and followed by a damsel carrying an empty silver carving

platter. The grail itself is also carried by a damsel beautiful and richly

attired (3189); like the candelabra, the grail is made of gold, and is

encrusted with fine jewels. This party enters and exits the room

together, apparently as a single “procession.” The object at the center

is the one to which Perceval’s, and the reader’s, attention is attracted

– the grail, upon whose entrance the hall is filled with such brilliant

light that the large candelabra dim by comparison:

Quant ele fu leanz antreeA tot le graal qu’ele tint,

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Une si granz clartez i vintQu’ausi perdirent les chandoilesLor clarté come les estoilesQuant li solauz si lieve o la lune. (3190-95)

(When she entered there with the grail that she was holding, there came such a great brightness that the candles lost their own brightness as the stars do when the sun rises, or the moon.)

Only after this accompanying brilliance (and the maiden following

with the carving platter) is pointed out does the narrator describe the

grail itself:

Le graal, qui aloit devant,De fin or esmeré estoit;Pierres precïeuses avoitEl graal de maintes menieres,Des plus riches et des plus chieresQi an mer ne an terre soient:Totes autres pierres passoientCele del graal sanz dotance. (3198-3206)

(The grail which went before [the damsel with the carving platter] was of fine, pure gold; on the grail were many sorts of precious stones, among the richest and costliest on earth or in the sea – the stones on the grail undoubtedly surpassed all others.)

The ornamentation of the grail, and the superlatives with which the

narrator describes it, create a visual association between the grail and

the brilliant light, but it would be a mistake to assume that the light is

effused by the grail itself. Even the narrator does not make this claim;

rather, he says only that there was a great brilliance that appeared

when the damsel entered with the grail. Not only does he not say that

the grail produces the bright light (whereas he does claim that blood

welled directly from the tip of the lance), but the way in which the

brilliance is described — before and apart from the description of the

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ornate grail — suggests that it is a phenomenon separate from the

grail itself, coming from some separate, though closely related,

source.

The details that suggest this are so subtle that this distinction

might not occur even to a very careful reader, were it not for the

information imparted later by the hermit. We, however, returning to

the scene after hearing the hermit’s revelations to Perceval, recall

that, although he called the grail a “holy thing,” the sense he gives is

that it is holy because it serves a holy purpose, i.e., to bring a

consecrated Host to the spiritual and reclusive Grail King:

“Et del Riche Pescheor croiQue il est filz a celui roi Qui del graal servir se fait.Mes ne cuidiez pas que il aitLuz ne lamproies ne saumon;D’une seule oiste li sainz hon,Que l’an an ce[l] graal aporte,Sa vie sostient et conforte,Tant sainte chose est li graaxEt il est si espiritaxQu’a sa vie plus ne covientQue l’oiste qui el graal vient. ...”(6383-92)

(“And as to the Rich Fisherman, I believe he is the son of this king who causes himself to be served from the grail. But don’t think that it contains pike or lamprey or salmon; with a single Host which is brought to him in that grail the holy man sustains and strengthens his life; such a holy thing is the grail and so spiritual is he that his life requires nothing more than the Host that arrives in the grail.”)

In retrospect, we might notice that, in the Hermit’s account, both the

grail and the king are deemed “holy” because of their relationship to

the Host that the grail carries. Otherwise, as far as may be judged by

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the details given, the grail, for all its costly magnificence (to which the

Hermit never refers), would be but an ordinary serving dish, the sort

that might contain a large fish, such as a pike or a salmon. As Rupert

Pickens notes in his gloss on this passage in the Garland edition of the

romance:

Here, for the first (and only) time in Chrétien’s fragmentary poem, the extraordinary character of the Grail is revealed to be not so much what it is, a wonderfully beautiful serving dish … as what it contains, a life-sustaining consecrated Host. The light emanating from the Grail (3191-95) is doubtless also to be associated with the Host. (465)

We can see that the way the entrance of the grail is described seems

to support this interpretation, for the brilliant light is mentioned

separately from the description of the gem-encrusted dish.

Furthermore, we should notice that later notice of the grail’s repeated

passing makes no mention of an accompanying bright light.

Pickens goes on to say, “Thus, the Grail is ‘such a holy thing’

(6391) because of what is conveyed in it, not because, as in Chrétien’s

successors, of its intrinsic value as prototype of the Mass chalice, the

wine cup from the Last Supper” (465). Nonetheless, the modern

reader will have some difficulty reading Chrétien’s romance, even for

the first time, without thinking of Chrétien’s serving dish as the “Holy

Grail” of the later literary tradition. Jean Frappier acknowledges this

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at the beginning of his essay, “Le Conte du Graal est-il une allégorie

judéo-chrétienne?”:

Le Graal ne cesse pas de solliciter les imaginations. Qui s’en étonnerait? Ce mot nimbé de merveilleux et de sacré rappelle et résume en deux syllabes éclatante et fluides, bien dignes de la poésie pure, un mythe prestigieux, l’un des plus beaux dans le trésor légendaire de l’humanité, l’un des plus complexes et des plus ambigus aussi. (179)

Yet if we take pains to shake off the spell of the grail’s fabled

tradition, the Hermit’s words remind us that, for Chrétien’s

contemporaries, the term graal would evoke not a chalice or a sacred

relic but a familiar piece of serving ware, just the sort of thing to

carry a large cooked fish. The term graal is apparently an Old French

corruption of the medieval Latin gradalis, as attested in an eleventh

century Latin lexicon — a broad and somewhat deep dish (“scutella

lata et aliquantulum profunda,” quoted in the glossary of Roach’s

edition of the romance). Greimas’s Dictionnaire de l’ancien français

indicates that the term, through the Low Latin “cratalem,” derived

ultimately from Greek, suggesting a large bowl such as a krater. Yet

even an authority such as Greimas defines the term graal in light of

the later literary tradition, as a “vase, coupe” or, giving a secondary

definition, the“Saint-Graal, vase dans le quel Jésus but pendant la

Cène et ou Joseph d’Arimathie recueillit le sang de ses blessures.”165

165 Greimas offers his definitions based on their use in surviving texts, of which Chrétien’s Conte du graal is the earliest. And since Chrétien does not describe the size and shape of the vessel, apparently assuming that his readers

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The Hermit’s words, however, do not suggest any religious

identification of the object itself, nor do they suggest a chalice or

goblet. It is therefore, perhaps, unfortunate that most English

translations of Chrétien’s romance use the term “grail,” a word

freighted with meaning acquired later in the literary tradition.166 Of

all modern English translations of this romance, perhaps only that by

David Staines avoids the baggage of the term “grail,” referring to it

consistently as a “bowl” (although he entitles the romance, The Story

of the Grail — “The Story of the Bowl” would, perhaps, be too jarring

to readers who are familiar with the tradition!).

These things having been said, it seems that the grail differs

from the lance in some important ways. The lance seems to be a

would recognize its form, Greimas seems to assume — perhaps by a sort of backward logic — that if the Saint Graal of the later tradition was a chalice (holy cup), the unmodified graal would be an ordinary coupe or vase.

166 Paul Imbs, in “L'Element religieux dans le Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes,” argues that the term “grail,” as used by Chrétien, would have indicated a familiar and common object: first, because on its first appearance it is referred to as “un graal” (using the indefinite rather than the definite article), and, second, because later, when his cousin, questioning him about his experience the previous evening, asks if he saw the grail, he answers readily, as if he knew well what a grail was — something he would not have done if the grail were a unique or strange object, rather than a common kind of serving dish (36). Nonetheless, I cannot agree with Imbs’s further argument that, although the vessel is of a common form, it is “non seulement un objet saint, [mais] il est un objet sanctifiant,” able to transform an ordinary wafer of bread into food capable of sustaining the life of a man (38-39). Based upon this (it seems to me) unfounded speculation, he goes on to argue that the grail is a marvel in the Christian sense (i.e., miraculous) while the lance is a marvel in the Celtic or “pagan” sense (i.e., magical). I, however, in agreement with Rupert Pickens, find nothing in the text to suggest that the graal itself possesses any miraculous quality.

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genuinely magical or “marvelous” object. Although our analysis has

suggested the symbolic significance of the blood that flows from its

tip, there is no available explanation for the mechanism or direct

cause by which the blood is produced. On the other hand, we have

“de-mythologized” the grail as a marvel; lacking any direct evidence

to the contrary, it would seem to be but a vessel — beautiful, ornate,

precious, but containing no miraculous properties, since the light that

comes from it apparently is effused by the Host that it carries. This

fact, however, cannot easily be discerned until we have learned what

the Hermit reveals about it. As soon as we learn the nature of the

sustenance that the grail conveys — and the recipient sustained by

that food — the object itself dwindles in importance, just a dish that

ordinarily contains nourishment for the body only, not the soul.

The manner in which the grail’s transit through the hall is

narrated, however, is designed to fix our attention on Perceval’s

reticence to ask about it rather than the vessel itself, its purpose or its

contents.167 Twice the grail’s passing is mentioned, and each time

Perceval’s deliberate silence is pointed out: first when it appears with

the rest of the “procession,” and later as Perceval and his host sit at

supper:

167 Ironically, although the narrator repeatedly draws attention to the question that Perceval fails to ask — “who is served by the grail?” — he does not seem particularly interested in the answer to the question, and makes no reference to the grail’s purpose or destination.

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De la hanche de cerf au poivre Uns vaslez devant ax tranchaQui a lui traite la hanche aA tot le tailleor d’argent,Et les morsiax lor met devantSor un gastel qui fu antiers.Et li graax andemantiers Par devant ax retrespassa,Et li vaslez ne demandaDel graal ... (3250-59)

(A youth carved before them from the haunch of venison cooked with pepper, he who had carried the haunch to them on the silver carving dish, and he placed the portions before them on an uncut flat loaf of bread. Meanwhile, the grail passed back in front of them, and the youth did not ask about the grail ...)

The reappearance of the grail with the carving platter (now loaded

with a haunch of meat) underlines its function as a serving dish, a

function underscored by its repeated returns. However, the narrator

does not take note of this emphasis; instead he uses the grail’s return

to emphasize Perceval’s obstinate taciturnity:

Mes plus se test qu’il ne covient,Qu’a chascun mes don l’an servoit,Par devant lui trespasser voitLe graal trestot descovert. (3264-67)

(But he remained silent more than he should, for with each course that he was served he saw the grail cross in front of him in full view.)

On these subsequent appearances of the grail no mention is made of an

accompanying bright light; instead, the narrator merely says that each

time it passes trestot descovert (“completely uncovered” or “in full

view”).168 This detail emphasizes the fact that Perceval is pointedly

168 A lively debate over the significance of this term occurred in print among Jean Frappier and others in 1951 and 1952. Frappier seems to have favored the meaning “in full view” rather than “completely uncovered” — the former emphasizes

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(and, as he believes, politely) ignoring it; similarly, the bleeding lance

was carried between the large, bright fire of the hearth and the two

men seated on the bed, thereby making it impossible for anyone to

miss.169 It seems, therefore, that the brilliant light does not accompany

it on these subsequent passes, which would accord with its contents

(the Host) having been served to the reclusive hom espiritax, leaving

the grail on subsequent passes empty, without the sacred Host to emit

its brilliant light. This fact, however, does not seem of interest either to

Perceval or to the narrator.

The narrator, always concerned with social niceties, seems

interested in the grail chiefly as a reminder of Perceval’s gaffe in

that the grail could not be overlooked, while the latter interpretation was favored by those who tended to view the grail as a ciborium, a sacred vessel used to transport the consecrated Host outside of the Mass. A ciborium would normally be covered with a lid; one being carried without a lid would certainly be remarkable, therefore; for those who choose to view the grail procession as some sort of quasi-liturgical ceremony, having the grail travel trestot descovert raises questions of impropriety. Of course, to view the grail an ordinary serving vessel which just happens to contain a consecrated Host also puts it outside the bounds of ritual propriety, but at the same time it renders less contentious the precise meaning of trestot descovert – there would be nothing unusual in a serving bowl being carried either “in full view” or “completely uncovered,” and either interpretation would serve only to emphasize that the grail and its movements are plain for all to see.

For the published debate over the phrase, see, among others, the following series of articles that appeared in Romania: Vol. 71 (1950) — Jean Frappier, “Sur l'interprétation du vers 3301 du Conte du Graal: ‘Le graal trestot descovert’” 240-45; Mario Roques, “Note additionnelle á l'article de J. Frappier sur l'interprétation du vers 3301 du Conte du Graal: ‘Le graal trestot descovert’” 245-46; Vol. 72 (1951): Alexandre Micha, “Encore le ‘graal trestot descovert’,” 236-8; Vol. 73 (1952) — Jean Frappier, “Du ‘graal trestot descovert’ á la forme du graal chez Chrétien de Troyes “ 82-92; Vol. 74 (1954) — W. A. Nitze, “Encore une fois ‘descovert’” 224-7.

169 As Perceval entered the hall, we were told that the enormous hearth held “a very large fire of dry logs burning brightly” (3059-60: “un feu mout grant / De sesche busche cler ardant”), and that it was large enough to seat 400 knights around it.

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failing to ask a question that will later be pointed out — by both the

germainne cosine and the Hideous Damsel — to be a disastrous

omission. On the other hand, Perceval himself seems to have had a

perfectly natural, and quite innocent, curiosity about who was served

from the grail. The grail would have been recognizable to him as a

familiar type of serving ware, and its magnificence matched that of

the surroundings in which he and the Fisher King were served a

sumptuous banquet; the grail’s jewels, “among the richest and

costliest on earth or in the sea,” would have looked right at home

sitting upon the Fisherman’s costly ebony dinnertable with its cloth

whiter than any used by “legate or cardinal or pope.”170 To Perceval,

undoubtedly, this magnificent dish, passing ostentatiously back and

forth through the hall with each new course he was served, must have

signalled another, equally magnificent meal being served elsewhere in

the castle and made him wonder who the recipient was.

After speaking with his germainne cosine the next day, however,

Perceval seems to lose interest in that mysterious, unseen recipient as

soon as he is rebuked for his failure to ask; indeed, he appears to

forget all about his spectacular evening with the Fisher King once he

leaves his cousin, until the Hideous Damsel reminds him of his failure.

At that point, the grail and the lance both are reduced to emblems of

170 3243-45: “Mes que diroie de la nape? / Legaz ne chardonax ne pape / Ne manja onques sor si blanche.”

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that failure for which the Hideous Damsel so publicly upbraids him.

For the reader who revisits the scene in mind of the Hermit’s

information about the grail and its recipient, however, it will be

evident that the grail, with its repeated appearance with each dinner

course, is pointing to an alternative meal to that being enjoyed by the

host and his young guest.

Peter Haidu protests in Aesthetic Distance that there is nothing

in the description of events to suggest, in a linear reading, that the

grail indicates the presence of an alternative kind of food, spiritual

rather than worldly (173). Truly, only by reconsidering the scene after

reading the Hermit episode, and bearing in mind the actual contents

of the grail, can we recognize a marked contrast between the meal

Perceval shares with his host and that being enjoyed in the recesses

of the castle by an hom espiritax. On first reading, we were limited to

point of view of the ignorant, self-involved Perceval and that of the

narrator, who is more interested in Perceval’s behavior than in the

function of the grail; in retrospect, however, we can see that the

grail’s purpose is to draw attention to this alternative form of

sustenance.

Here, then, is another juxtaposition that draws attention to a

marked contrast: two meals and two sets of diners, within the same

castle but oblivious to one another. The meal that we see is elaborate

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and sumptuous, full of rare delicacies, and accompanied by a number

of wines and cordials, an impressive repast:

Li mangiers fu et biax et buens:De toz les mes que rois ne cuensNe empereres doie avoirFu li prodom serviz le soirEt le vaslez ansanble lui. (3281-85)

(The meal was both fine and good: the nobleman, and the young man along with him, was served with all the dishes that a king or a count or an emperor should have.)

The two diners appear to be so completely absorbed in their own meal

and conversation that they have no interest in what this other,

mysterious serving dish might carry. Yet for Perceval’s part, at least,

as the narrator points out several times, he has a real interest in that

other meal but suppresses it, while the Rich Fisherman apparently

never gives it a glance, occupying himself instead with his own rich

fare and his young guest. Although the man being fed from the grail is

his own father, the Fisherman makes no more reference to him than

he does to the grail. Thus, while Perceval is merely unaware of the

alternative meal, his host seems to ignore it deliberately,

concentrating instead on his own sumptuous spread.

Thus, in the great hall sit Perceval and his host, deliberately

ignoring the grail that passes by, not once but several times as they

partake of numerous rich and rare delicacies; meanwhile, in a nearby

chamber is the hom espiritax, whose sustenance consists of une seule

oiste. Brother of Perceval’s own mother, and father of his wealthy

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host, this solitary, saintly man remains in his room (the Hermit says

he never leaves it), unnoticed by his kinsmen in the adjoining hall. The

contrast between the two residents, father and son, and their ways of

life should remind us of the two ways alluded to in the prologue: the

way of worldly ostentation and largesse epitomized by the emperor

Alexander, famous for his lavish liberality171, and the way of Charity,

which hides its good works, embodied by Count Philip of Flanders, at

whose urging Chrétien has undertaken to compose “the story of the

grail” (see 61-68). This contrast between the two meals and those who

partake of them should remind us, once again, that Perceval has

chosen the left-hand path of fause ypocrisie, seeming to do good while

remaining vainglorious, rather than the hidden way of Charity

followed by the one who “abides in God and God in him” (Prologue

50).

Fanni Bogdanow recognizes in this scene an adaptation of St.

Bernard’s image of the Two Tables, which he employed in one of his

sermons. Bernard spoke of a banquet at which there was one table

offering all the delights of this world and another at which feasted

those for who were destined for God’s heavenly kingdom. In

Bogdanow’s analysis,

171 The lavishness both of the meal and of the narrator’s description of it are notable. See Crow for an analysis of the stylistic ornamentation with which Chrétien describes both the quality and the quantity of the table setting and the meal itself.

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[t]he table in the Maimed King's hall laden to overflowing with excessively rich food and the table in the invisible chamber where the Maimed King's saintly father will dine on the single wafer carried in the Grail are a transposition of Saint Bernard's two tables. The Grail passes before the guests between each course, and the Maimed King, no less than Perceval, testifies to his sinfulness in choosing each time the table filled with earthly delights. For a sinful soul “considers fortunate those at the worldly table,” whereas “a soul that has made some progress” would realize that they are “unfortunate sinners” and would have “pity not only on them but on himself for not sharing in the feast of those dining on celestial riches.” (261-62)

Perceval’s own account later reveals him to be a “sinful soul” who

“considers fortunate those at the worldly table”; when questioned by

his cousin the next day, he confesses how deeply impressed he was by

the mansion and his elegant host:

Et la pucele dist: “Biau[s] sire, Rois est il, bien le vos os dire, ...........................Et si a fet tel meison fereCom il covient a riche roi.— Dameisele, fet il, par foi,Voirs est ce qu dire vos oi,Qu’hersoir de ce grant mervoille oiMaintentant que devant lui ving.An sus de lui un po me ting,Et il me dist que je venisseLez lui seoir, si nel tenisseA orguel qu’il ne se levoitAncontre moi, car il n’avoitL’aaisement ne le pooir,Et je m’alai lez lui seoir. (3473 -74, 3498-3510)

(And the maiden said, “Fair sir, he is a king, I dare tell you, ... and he has had a mansion built for himself such as is fitting for a rich king.” “Damsel,” said he, “by faith, what I hear you say is true, for I marveled at this last evening as soon as I came before him. I held myself back from him a bit and he told me to come sit beside him and

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not to take as arrogance his failing to rise before me, since he had not the ability or the power to do so. So I went to sit beside him.”)

Clearly, what caused Perceval’s diffidence was not the Fisherman’s

infirmity but his own awe at the magnificence of the host and his

home. Undoubtedly he considered himself privileged to be there,

much less to be treated to such a magnificent meal. The awe he felt –

his reverence for worldly splendor – “cut off his tongue” in the

presence of the Fisher King and inhibited his own natural curiosity

about the marvels he encountered there.

Thus we see that Perceval’s following the path of vainglorious

chivalry prevents him from effecting the healing of the Fisher King

and the rescue of his kingdom. He ignores the Fisher King’s crippled

condition because he wishes to be polite (and, ironically, makes a

most obtuse reply when his host alludes to his physical frailty) and

because he is over-awed by the man and his castle; the same reasons

cause him to maintain silence before the marvels of the lance and the

grail. A false humility restrains him — not that true humility which, as

St. Bernard insisted, is born of self-knowledge, but a kind of self-

consciousness that is concerned not with what one is but with how

one is perceived by others. Ironically, Perceval’s pursuit of knighthood

is both the reason he was in a position to make such inquiries and the

reason he failed to do so: his persona as an accomplished knight won

him admittance to the Fisher King’s hall, but his eagerness to be

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thought polite and sophisticated, to follow the rules that Gornemant

had laid out for him, constrained his natural curiosity and made him

hold his tongue, an inhibition of his natural proclivity that proves

disastrous.

Yet Perceval is in no worse state than the man he holds in awe,

who is rendered impotent not only by his physical wound but also by

his pride. Although troubled and in need of help, as Blancheflor was,

he will not stoop to beg or entice his guest as she did; Perceval’s

slumbers that night will not be broken by his host’s imprecations. And

unlike Arthur, who freely confessed to Perceval his helplessness,

bereft as he was of knights to defend his cause, the Fisher King will,

just as obstinately as Perceval, maintain silence and thus fail to gain

relief or rescue. Like Perceval, his unwillingness to acknowledge his

own insufficiency will leave him frustrated and alienated from his

proper role as king and as son. Meanwhile, in the very next room

dwells his father, unacknowledged and ignored.

This, perhaps, suggests how asking about the lance and grail

might have resolved the plight of the Fisher King and his realm – a

question itself that begs an answer. While we can only speculate on

how Chrétien might have chosen to complete his romance, we can be

sure that the resolution of the Fisher King’s problem would not have

been a magical solution. As Rupert Pickens (1985) acknowledges,

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Chrétien’s Conte du Graal is not a question-unspelling fairy-tale. If it were, then the ignorant boy in the Waste Forest, not a knight for whom a marvelous sword is predestined, would suffice for the triumph. The point of the Grail and Lance questions in their various versions is that questions lead to questions and, ultimately, to fruitful, revelatory discourse with another human being — communication with the Fisher King. (265)

It is not simply that Perceval would have discovered that he was a

close relative of the Fisher King and his father, the Grail King — that

might have been enough to enlist Perceval in the cause of the

kingdom’s defense, but it would not have healed the Fisher King’s

wound (one of the predicted outcomes of asking the right questions).

How, then, would asking the questions have led to answers to the

Fisher King’s problems? Since by now we know at least part of the

answers to both of the unasked questions, we can offer a tentative

solution. The lance’s mystery is source of the blood that flows from its

tip. To ask about this would indicate an interest in the victim it has

struck and, as we have seen, both Perceval individually and knights

throughout the romance generally have shown little or no concern

with the victims of their actions (a fact amply illustrated in the

Gauvain narrative). To ask whose blood is on the lance, then, is to

show interest in those who are its victims and perhaps, in doing so,

finally to acknowledge the wanton destruction wrought by worldly

chivalry and even to take responsibility for their suffering. We know

that Perceval is not yet prepared to do this, because the next day

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when he meets the suffering Tent Maiden and the Proud Knight who

has been tormenting her, although he admits that he is the knight who

assaulted her, he will not admit any guilt or wrongdoing in the matter

(much as Gauvain later excuses his past abuse of Greoreas). To ask

about the lance, then, is to ask about the source of the blood, which

would remind the knights of their victims, a memory that might spark

remorse and contrition and signal a return to Charity. But Perceval is

not yet possessed of the humility necessary to see the evil effect of his

actions; it will require a long string of victims — at least sixty men,

defeated over five years — to make him recognize that all he has done

has been evil. So the destruction will continue and women will

continue to be widowed, children orphaned.

Asking about the grail, as the Hermit says, would have revealed

Perceval’s family connection with the mysterious recipient of the grail’s

spiritual food and with his host as well. However, it would also have

required the Fisher King to acknowledge his father and his father’s

manner of life; the Fisher King, as much as Perceval, is alienated from

his own proper identity and blind to the insufficiency of worldly

pleasures and pursuits to provide what he really needs. As it is, the

Fisher King and his father may inhabit the same house but they live

very different lives; although both live in retreat from the world, they

do so for very different reasons. The elder king has willingly chosen a

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hidden and spiritual life, rejecting what the world can offer even to the

point of refusing to leave his own room; his son, however, has been

forced into retreat by his physical injury and his pride, but he clings to

worldly pleasures, idle pursuits and lavish living. He, like Perceval,

remains mute as the grail passes by, inviting him to partake of another

kind of sustenance. If the question about the grail had been asked and

answered, a family rupture might have been healed and the life of

Grace revealed. Even so, it would require a person of humility, one who

acknowledged his own need for grace, to take advantage of that

possibility, but the Fisher King and his guest remain proud and

ignorant, silent before the enticement of the grail.

“Fol san eus”: (Mis)Understanding the Significance of Grail

Castle

Iin this re-reading of the grail episode, the the Fisher King takes

on a prominence that was completely lacking upon a first reading;

only reflection, focused by the Hermit’s comments, has allowed us to

see that in the Fisher King are reflected not only all the other

characters from whom Perceval receives hospitality, but also both

sides of the equation of worldly chivalry with suffering and loss.

Although the Fisher King’s injury resembles that suffered by

Perceval’s father before his death, when we look at the episode more

closely we notice that he also resembles Perceval’s mother, as a

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suffering kinsman whose distress Perceval selfishly ignores. This

similarity is brought to light only if we know what the Hermit later

reveals, the bond of kinship that links them all. In similar manner, the

Fisher King resembles Perceval himself, not only because he has

chosen a worldly life and ignores the grail, but because he too has a

parent nearby whom he neglects.

We can now see more clearly what the Hermit meant when he

indicated that Perceval’s sin against his mother prevented him from

asking about the lance and grail. The Hermit himself did not explain

what he meant by this — Perceval accepted the Hermit’s diagnosis

without question, but it is left up to the reader to work out his

meaning, which can be done only by revisiting “the scene of the

crime” and carefully examining all the clues found there. What we find

is, in effect, Perceval himself re-enacting his sin against his mother

when he ignores the Fisher King’s distress and instead self-

consciously pursues the dictates of courtly chivalry. The same self-

consciousness that causes him to ignore his host’s debility while

marveling at his rich attire and accommodation also inhibits

Perceval’s natural curiosity and makes him restrain his desire to

inquire about the lance and the grail. The two silences — the one

insistently pointed out by the narrator and the other noticeable only in

the light of Charity — spring from the same self-preoccupation.

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Upon reconsideration, we can also see something that the

unasked questions themselves suggest that both lance and grail are

important not so much for what they are as for what they indicate; both

point beyond themselves, to sin and suffering, to grace and

reconciliation. In this sense, their function — and therefore their

importance — is symbolic, rather than literal. Many readers, even in

light of the Hermit’s revelations, have overlooked this and fallen into

the trap of thinking of the grail and lance as mystical or magical

objects rather than as symbolic ones; ironically, those who have most

diligently labored to discern a presumed religious or mystical allegory

in the “grail procession” have fallen prey to the same kind of illusion

that snared Perceval, who once mistook a knight in shining armor for

God Himself. Focusing their attention on the objects themselves rather

than on the truths to which they point, such interpreters have been

dazzled and blinded to the real significance of grail and lance. Perceval

on the night he saw these objects was burdened by a sin that he did not

recognize; if he had been aware of his sinful state, he might have seen

that the lance and grail point to the means of amending his life — a

return to the love of neighbor by taking responsibility for the suffering

that self-serving chivalry inflicts, a return to the love of God by

recognizing his own insufficiency and the need for saving grace.

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In the end, we find that the enigmatic knot of the grail episode,

when carefully unraveled, proves to be not a flaw in the fabric of the

romance, but the thread that ties all its hidden themes together. It is,

however, a kind of parable, — i.e., a story which, on the face of it,

means little without someone to interpret it. The Hermit’s terse

explanation of Perceval’s experiences at Grail Castle provides the key

to understanding this enigmatic episode, by reorienting our attention:

while the narrator in the episode misdirects the reader’s attention to

superficial and vain concerns, the Hermit’s revelations redirect

attention to the forgotten and hidden theme of Charity. The reader

with “eyes to see” finds that, when the episode is reconsidered in the

light of Charity, the surface account is not obscure but a dazzling,

multifaceted reflection of all the other episodes in Perceval’s

adventures, which resolve into single image of sin and suffering

ignored, and grace, repentance, and reparation deferred.

Chapter 7 Memory and the Ethics of Reading Romance

I was obliged to memorize the wanderings of a hero named Aeneas, while in the meantime I failed to remember my own erratic ways…. St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions I.xiii (20)

began this reconsideration of Chrétien’s final romance

with two questions concerning memory (Perceval’s

memory and the reader’s), in the hopes that the answers to those

questions would shed new and revealing light on the story as a whole.

Therefore, it seems useful now to revisit the questions with which we

began and recapitulate the answers we have reached, in order to

evaluate what new conclusions may be reached about Chrétien’s final,

enigmatic romance.

I

Perceval’s Memory

The first question had to do with Perceval’s apparently faulty

memory: Why does Perceval frequently “not learn what he has often

heard,” yet fasten on trivial details that he inevitably misconstrues?

And what can this tell us about his character? Perceval, as we first saw

him, was young, carefree, inquisitive, and impulsive: the hideous

clatter of clashing armor put him in mind of devils, whom he thought

boldly to oppose with his javelins; a moment later, the sight of sunlight

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glittering on polished armor reminded him of the beauty of God and his

angels, and he prostrated himself in ready adoration. Both of these

impulses speak well of him: he is capable of both courage and devotion.

However, he was rather careless about the object of his devotion: as

soon as he learned that the resplendent beings in the forest were not

God and his angels but knights, he instantly and unquestioningly

transferred his devotion to knighthood, knowing nothing more about it

than its shining armored surface — forgotten the danger of demons,

forgotten the beauty and goodness of God, knighthood became the

obsessive object of his devotion, displacing all else, even love for his

own mother. The pursuit of chivalry not only distracted Perceval from

memoria Dei but also from memoria sui — the memory, or knowledge,

of who he himself is. It seems clear that we should see this as a

deliberate and culpable failure. Perceval failed to recognize his own

condition and identity in those moments that Donald Maddox calls

“specular encounters,” which should have opened his eyes to see

himself as he truly was. But for most of his career Perceval remains

unreflective, and so he remakes himself into a knight, obliterating his

identity as son, brother, cousin, along with its attendant

responsibilities and consequences. Chrétien does not let us dismiss

this as mere youthful enthusiasm, but subtly implies that Perceval’s

embrace of knighthood was accompanied by a concomitant

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abandonment of his concern for others (especially his mother) and for

God. Ironically, however, the abandonment of his original identity

made it impossible for Perceval to achieve perfection in his new

identity as a knight, a fact which finally becomes clear to him when he

meets his hermit uncle.

This turning away from Charity — from concern for others and

for God — is indicated by Perceval’s characteristic forgetfulness (or, we

might say, his selective memory), which causes him to ignore whatever

does not interest him, although he remains obsessively aware of

anything that bears upon his pursuit of knighthood. His self-absorption,

however, is not lessened but confirmed by taking up the practice of

knighthood, which tends to encourage and indemnify willfulness

(consider, for instance, the Proud Knight of the Heath or Blancheflor’s

would-be ravisher, Clamadeu). Even the courtly chivalry practiced by

the knights of King Arthur has a corrupting influence, encouraging

vainglory rather than selfless service. This effect is evident even in

those aspects of Perceval’s personality that had been most innocently

charming, such as his natural curiosity: the naïve inquisitiveness that

prompted him to interrogate the first knights he met gradually gives

way, under Gornemant’s tutelage and his own growing awareness of

social expectations, to curiositas in the original sense of the word —

being burdened with cares. This is illustrated most clearly the night of

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the grail procession: although giving every appearance of being an

accomplished knight, Perceval is so burdened by the anxiety to appear

socially correct that he defers the questions prompted by his natural

curiosity. Ironically, this concern for appearances later earns him the

public rebuke of the Hideous Damsel before Arthur and his court, at

the very moment when they are celebrating his successes as a knight.

The Bernardian Analysis

In some way, then, Perceval’s personal faults and those of

chivalry itself are similar. Viewing them both through the lens of

contemporary moral understanding, as provided by the great twelfth-

century spiritual writer, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, we have seen that

the faults of Perceval and of courtly chivalry spring from a similar

source — pride or, as Chrétien hints in the prologue, vainne gloire,

which is itself fause ypocrisie, causing the knight to be too much

mindful of himself and too little mindful of the needs of others.

Perceval’s great sin, pointed out to him by the holy hermit, is that he

ignores the suffering of others (particularly his own mother) and, as

we have seen, conventional knights, although they vow to succor the

helpless, not only ignore but frequently inflict suffering. We can say,

then, that both Perceval in particular and courtly chivalry in general

are deficient insofar as they forget both God and neighbor and

operate from essentially self-serving motives. The remedy for both of

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them, then, should be similar: to recognize their deficiencies, to

relinquish the “false hypocrisy” of their empty vow to honor God and

give help to the helpless. Perceval does this when, after five years of

consistent victory on the field of combat, he admits the uselessness of

what he has accomplished; success has brought him not pleasure but

pain, a sense of worthlessness that humbles him and makes him

realize what a fraud he is. Although Perceval’s sense of futility may

seem unexpectedly out of character, it conforms perfectly to the

analysis of St. Bernard as he describes the movement of the soul away

from pride and toward humility:

When in the light of Truth men know themselves and so think less of themselves it will certainly follow that what they loved before will now become bitter to them. They are brought face to face with themselves and blush at what they see. Their present state is no pleasure to them. They aspire to something better and at the same time realize how little they can rely on themselves to achieve it. It hurts them and they find some relief in judging themselves severely. (The Steps of Humility and Pride 45, V.18)

Perceval aspired to something beautiful when he desired to be a

knight, but what he has achieved falls far short of the beauty that first

inspired his quest. Now he feels the pangs of humility, which St.

Bernard defines as “contempt of one's own excellence” (42, IV.14).

Disillusionment with his own success makes possible Perceval’s return

to the path of Charity and prepares him to amend his sins of

forgetfulness, by causing him to remember God (memoria Dei) and,

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recognizing himself as a sinner (memoria sui), to turn to God in

repentance. This also makes it possible for him to remember others,

which Bernard calls “the second degree of truth,” reached when those

who have recognized their own inadequacy “look beyond their own

needs to the needs of their neighbors, and from the things they

themselves have suffered they learn compassion” (46, V.18). So,

although Chrétien did not complete the story of Perceval, we are left

with the expectation that his further chivalric adventures would be

infused with Christian Charity, allowing Perceval to achieve the

chivalric perfection to which he had first aspired.

The Reader’s Memory

When we recognize the way Perceval’s personal transformation

reflects contemporary teaching on spiritual conversion, we can see

that the question of Perceval’s memory is not an extraneous one, but

is intimately connected to central theme of the romance. Of course,

Chrétien does not make this connection explicit; rather, he requires

the reader to reflect — i.e., to exercise his own memory properly — in

order to be able to understand what The Story of the Grail is really

about. This brings us back to the second question that we set out to

answer: why does the Hermit episode so intrusively disrupt the flow of

the narrative and unsettle the reader’s enjoyment of the romance?

Our analysis has demonstrated that this episode is the key to

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provoking reflection in the reader, in part by showing the fruits of

Perceval’s own reflection (his penitence) without actually showing the

process of reflection; the sudden shock of finding Perceval so

remorseful and ready to admit and amend his earlier faults makes the

reader suspect that his own reading to that point has been faulty. In

causing the reader himself to question whether he should “repent his

faults” qua reader, Chrétien creates what Donald Maddox calls a

“virtually specular relationship” between Perceval and the audience,

in which the reader, as Perceval presumably has been doing during

the five hidden years of his quest, must reflect and question why his

efforts have proven so fruitless and caused him such a sense of

malaise.

The Augustinian Connection

Judging from the texts commonly used in twelfth-century

education, most twelfth-century readers would have been accustomed

to associating reading, reflection and self-knowledge. This association

had developed over hundreds of years, shaped in large part by the

writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, whose strong influence upon the

medieval understanding of memory we have already acknowledged. In

After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text, Brian Stock

argues that in his Confessions “Augustine [identified] the reflective

self with the reader” and “thereby inaugurated the age of the self-

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conscious reader/thinker in the Western Tradition.” From Augustine’s

day to Chrétien’s own, the Confessions was one of the most frequently

read works after the Bible, and one which also provides an key

illustration of the importance of memory in the process of self-

examination, repentance and conversion. And, despite the obvious

differences between the form and purpose of Augustine’s Confessions

and Chrétien’s Conte del Graal, the latter shows the clear influence of

Augustine’s work.

Narrative pattern

First, if we confine our attention to the narrative portion of the

Confessions and that portion of the Conte del Graal that pertains to

Perceval, the general plots of the two stories are remarkably similar.

The following plot outline could describe equally well either the story

of the young Augustine or that of Perceval:

A young man, growing up in a rather isolated backwater, has been taught the fundamentals of the Christian faith by his mother, but he turns from his upbringing and escapes the maternal influence in pursuit of a worldly occupation, causing his mother great distress. Nonetheless, throughout his secular pursuits, the young man is the beneficiary of his mother’s prayerful intercession.172

Having achieved considerable success in his chosen profession, the young man ultimately finds it unsatisfying. Only then does he turn to God with his whole heart, and experience a deep conversion, with the promise that God

172 Perceval, of course, is unaware of the his mother’s protective intercession until his hermit uncle tells him of it, while Augustine, unable to escape his mother, is aware of her constant prayers for him, but does not appreciate them until much later.

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will make of him something much greater than anything his worldly ambitions had grasped at.

Now, in their particulars, the worldly careers of Augustine and

Perceval may seem quite different: the intellectual Augustine pursued

success in the teaching of rhetoric and the study of philosophy, while

Perceval, who seems almost a simpleton by comparison, uses brawn

rather than brains to succeed as a knight. And yet, below the surface

of these worldly pursuits, lies a more fundamental object. We have

already noted that Perceval’s personal quest began when he flung

himself worshipfully at the feet of a knight, whom he mistook for God

in his glory. This suggests a thematic echo of the Confessions:

The great theme of the Confessions is announced at the very outset: “Quaeram te, Domine,” (“I will seek you, Lord") . The search for God, who is the Truth, is the subject of the whole book. But from the outset this search is beset with problems, the greatest of which is the problem of knowledge itself: for how can we seek God unless we know what we are seeking? and how can we know Him unless we have already sought Him out? (James Earl, “The Typology of Spiritual Growth in Augustine's Confessions” 15-16).

Because of his unreflective and inarticulate nature, Perceval

never reaches an explicit recognition that in seeking perfection as a

knight what he really sought was God, yet when he is reconciled to

God after his confession to the hermit, it seems that these two quests

have merged. It is up to the reader to recognize this, by reflecting on

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the significance of the Hermit episode and its relationship to the rest

of the romance.

Typological method

Earlier, I examined the way various aspects of the Hermit

episode are reflected in earlier, analogous episodes. In Chapter 2, I

suggested that there is a “typological” relationship between these

analogous episodes, and proposed that the Hermit episode can be

seen as the antitype of which earlier episodes are types. For instance,

in Chapter 4 I indicated the ways in which the Hermit episode

parallels and fulfills the quest begun in the opening episode in the

Gaste Forest, while in Chapter 6 we saw how the Hermit episode is

prefigured in the Grail episode. These correspondences, of course,

will not be recognized in a straightforward, linear reading, but

become evident only in retrospect. This explains why a linear reading

of the romance — i.e., one that expects a causal sequence of events —

is so badly derailed by the Hermit episode: nothing prepares us for

what transpires there. Per Nykrog touches on this when he comments

on Chrétien’s deliberately enigmatic method of exposition: “[L]e

lecteur est mystifié parce que les informations dont il a besoin pour se

former une opinion sur ce qui est raconté ne lui seront fournies que

bien plus tard - ou pas du tout” (Chrétien de Troyes: Romancier

Discutable 49). The Hermit episode, then, is the source of the

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necessary information, provided “bien plus tard,” by which we can

understand the full significance of earlier episodes (particularly, as we

have seen, the Grail episode). This is entirely in accord with what I

earlier designated the “typological method” of Chrétien’s use of

analogous episodes. As Northrop Frye indicates in his discussion of

Biblical typology in The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, “A

retrospective procedure is often followed in typology … The types are

frequently established, or at least interpreted as such, only after the

antitypes have appeared” (81-82). This is why it is of key importance

to recognize that the Hermit episode is the antitype of the earlier

episodic types; this understanding helps to dispel the obscurity of the

events at Grail Castle and illuminates the true nature of Perceval’s

quest from the instant he first conceived it, in much the same way

that, according to a typological exegesis of Scripture, “[i]n the Old

Testament the New Testament is concealed; in the New Testament,

the Old Testament is revealed” (Frye 79).

If we take this parallel with Scriptural typology a little further, it

suggests that Perceval’s decision to seek knighthood rather than God

is a type of Fall, and that his reconciliation at Easter initiates a new,

“redeemed” kind of chivalry; this is one more way in which the Conte

del Graal resembles the Confessions. In The Great Code, Frye asserts

that modern, secular literary critics have a blind spot where this kind

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of typological organization is used, because “no other book in the

world … has a structure even remotely like that of the Christian Bible”

(80). However, it seems that writers, and readers, in Chrétien’s day

would have had little difficulty recognizing a typological method of

exposition even in a secular, fictional work like the Conte del Graal.

After all, as Frye points out, “[t]ypology is a form of rhetoric” like any

other, one which easily becomes “a mode of thought and a figure of

speech” (80). Indeed, Augustine seems to model the structure of his

Confessions quite naturally on the Biblical story of fall and

redemption, yet the following description of that work by James Earl

might as easily have been describing the story of Perceval:

This, of course, is the great theme of the Confessions: the search which is a return to God. For Augustine had been suckled on Christ’s name, and his many wanderings in search of the truth ironically end where they began, in the re-cognition at last of what he had already once possessed, and then lost -- but not forgotten entirely. In this pattern he recapitulates too the Fall and Redemption of Man, paradise lost and regained. (“The Typology of Spiritual Growth in Augustine’s Confessions” 24)

In just such a way, the Hermit episode returns Perceval to the waste

forest, a family home, and the forgotten motive of his quest; we might

expect that, in a finished version of the romance, Perceval’s perfected

knighthood would have restored the Fisher King’s realm, making it a

type of “paradise regained.”

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Reading dynamic

It would seem, then, that Chrétien modeled his romance on

Augustine’s Confessions in a number of ways: not only is the basic

plot of the Perceval narrative similar to that of Augustine’s life up to

the time of his conversion, but the structure of both stories is

constructed typologically, and, mutatis mutandis, their central themes

are similar. However, while Augustine makes his theme explicit

almost from his opening words (“Thou hast made us for Thyself and

our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee,” X.i), Chrétien

deliberately obscures the theme that he will pursue, introducing it

allusively in his prologue and then distracting the reader from it

almost immediately thereafter by his description of the charmingly

comical Welsh youth. However, there is one further similarity: once

the narrative is well advanced, each work engages the reader in the

implications of the story that has been told. In Book X of the

Confessions, Augustine explicitly engages the reader’s self-

consciousness in what had been, until that point, a soliloquy

addressed to God, when he raises the question:

What therefore have I to do with men that they should hear my confessions … ? Men are a race curious to know of other men’s lives, but slothful to correct their own. Why should they wish to hear from me what I am, when they do not wish to hear from You what they are themselves? (190, X.iii.3)

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He goes on to suggest that his meaning will be well taken “by those

whose ears Charity has opened to me,” who will focus not on the

scandalous nature Augustine’s sins but on God’s goodness in helping

him to overcome them. There is also the suggestion that this

charitable reader will identify his own state with the sinful

Augustine’s and apply to himself the lessons Augustine has learned

through his reflection, and be stirred similarly to repent and be

converted.

In a somewhat similar way, Chrétien engages the reader in a

process of reflection that will bring him (if he is similarly attuned to

Charity) to recognize that, as a thoughtful reader, he, like Perceval,

has faults that he should amend. Thus, from the point at which the

narrator abruptly abandons the Gauvain narrative to return to

Perceval, who “had so lost his memory that he no longer remembered

God” (6183-84), we readers find ourselves in an situation analogous to

Perceval’s, searching our own memory to find the forgotten theme of

Charity, and we, like Augustine in the Confessions, find that God was

there all along. In retrospect we can see that, as quickly as Perceval

forgot God when he discovered that the splendid beings he

worshipped were men in armor, so we, the moment the tale of

chivalry began, quickly forgot the theme of Charity introduced in the

prologue. Yet, as we saw quite vividly in our reconsideration of the

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Grail episode, by turning back in memory, being mindful of the

Hermit’s revelations, we were able to see with new clarity features

what had been completely obscure on first glance; we had been just

as oblivious to the meaning of the events at Grail castle as Perceval

himself had been. In other words, the reader initially failed in his

vocation as reader for much the same reason that Perceval failed

adequately to fulfill his vocation as knight: each forgets Charity; the

way for each to correct his fault is through “penitence” and

amendment of the way each one practices his vocation. For the

reader, this means to reflect and reconsider the story in the light of

the theme proposed in the prologue and, thus, to uncover new

meaning that had otherwise lain undetected and which may, in some

important respects, contradict the first, more superficial reading. In

much the same way, the Augustine who narrates the course of his

earlier life detects there a meaning that remained entirely

unsuspected by the younger Augustine who lived it, frequently

remarking, “But I realized none of this at the time.”

The Conte del Graal in Critical Context

This Augustinian understanding of memory as something that

can reveal what has been present all along is particularly important in

clarifying the Grail episode, which has consistently proved the most

obscurely enigmatic for critics. According to my reading, however, it

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seems that the Grail episode is not meant to be comprehensible until

we have been supplied with the information revealed by the Hermit

(i.e., we can understand it only retrospectively) or, much less likely,

unless we have kept our attention firmly fixed upon the theme of

Charity (which Chrétien seems actively to have discouraged, given his

manipulation of the reader’s attention). Therefore, only a

retrospective consideration, enlightened by attention to Charity,

reveals the true significance of this episode. And what is revealed is

exactly what was hinted at in the poem’s prologue, i.e., a choice

between two ways of proceeding: the way of Charity or the way of

vainglory. Perceval, chivalry itself, and the reader are implicated in

this choice and, for each and all, the choice makes all the difference

between blessed success and frustrated failure.

The consequences of a wrong choice are clear: witness

Perceval’s frustrated quest to return to Grail Castle, Gauvain’s

adventures spiraling haplessly out of control, and the largely fruitless

efforts of many critics to reconcile the various parts of the romance in

a unified reading of the whole. Those critics who have tried to dismiss

the prologue and the Hermit episode as religious red herrings,

insisting that Chrétien was a secular-minded sophisticate whose

religious references were mere rhetorical flourishes or sops to Church

authorities, have made the mistake of overlooking what are perhaps

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the two most important clues to what Chrétien was really up to; on

the other extreme, interpreters who, on the strength of those religious

references have tried to decode the Grail episode as if it were a dense

allegory, have also grievously distorted the meaning of the

romance.173 There seems to be, however, an emerging critical

consensus that Chrétien, although not a heavy-handed moralist, really

did hope to provoke his audience to reflect on the moral implications

of his tale. Gone, for the most part, are the critical outcries of the late

twentieth century against the excesses of “Robertsonian” readings.

Instead, “Christianist” readings that demonstrate the romance’s

thematic unity are becoming more common and more readily

accepted, perhaps in part because they are less forced than earlier

allegorical readings; for instance, at least one recent major study by a

scholar of recognized authority, Barbara Sargent-Baur’s La Destre et

la senestre: Etude sur le Conte du graal de Chrétien de Troyes, makes

a lengthy and detailed examination of the way the theme of Charity

thoroughly informs the romance. Along with other recent studies,

such as those of Antoinette Saly analyzing the episodic structure of

the romance and the way this structure brings to light thematic

correspondences between the two separate narrative strands, an

emerging consensus of critical understanding finds a poem which,

173 For examples of the former, see Tony Hunt and Brigitte Cazelles; for the latter, Holmes & Klenke, Olschki, and Jacques Ribard.

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although tantalizingly unfinished, is clearly masterfully planned and

crafted, intricately conceived yet unified at every level, by a poet who

challenged his audience to exercise all their faculties as readers —

moral as well as technical — to discern the intended meaning of his

romance.

I believe that the present study contributes to this emerging

view by revealing how carefully Chrétien manipulated his material to

ensure that a Christian interpretation would be, if not the only

possible one, certainly the most satisfactory and satisfying one,

capable of accounting for all the elements — including those, on the

face of it, most problematic— in a way that no superficial, linear, or

insistently secular reading can. If modern readers have had difficulty

arriving at such a satisfying reading, this may be due not so much to

the unfinished state of the poem as to our lack of the mental habits

and skills that would have seemed natural to Chrétien and his

readers. On the other hand, it also seems quite likely that Chrétien did

not want even his contemporary readers to arrive easily at a

comfortable interpretation — as Per Nykrog insists, it seems that he

wished to be discutable, to force his readers to admit that a facile

reading proves unsatisfactory, to provoke them to discuss and reflect

rather than take the tale at face value, and to identify themselves with

Perceval’s plight in order to see how they themselves were implicated

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in the meaning of the story. Nykrog suggests that the critique of

secular chivalry implicit in the Conte del Graal (and virtually all of

Chrétien’s other romances) extended beyond the bounds of literature

into the real world of the twelfth-century, and was intended to cause

his readers to “parler de choses qui les regardent directement sous le

voile discret d’une discussion sur une fiction qui ne les regarde pas”

(47). My own reading does not insist on this social dimension (although

I believe that Nykrog’s view is probably correct), but proposes that the

reader was intended to identify more personally with the narrative

trajectory of the poem and the moral development of its protagonist,

causing him to recall that if he, like the poet’s patron Philip, is to

prove rich soil for the seed of Chrétien’s romance, he must remember

Charity.

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Index

Alanus de Insulis, 40

Alexander the Great, 19, 28, 35, 37, 39, 41, 80, 81, 89, 108, 128, 140, 144, 205, 228, 229, 362

Anguingueron, 108, 109, 124, 125, 126, 127, 132, 137, 270, 324, 344, 345

Aristotle, 53

Armstrong, Grace, 268, 271

Auerbach, Erich, 59, 60

Augustine of Hippo, Saint, 13, 18, 21, 22, 32, 40, 59, 74, 84, 86, 164, 165, 175, 212, 372, 379, 380, 383, 384

Confessions, 21, 33, 74, 164, 212, 372, 378, 379, 380, 382, 383, 385, 391

De Trinitate, 21, 143, 165

influence on literature, 22, 378

Baumgartner, Emmanuèle, 327, 330, 347

Benton, John F., 24, 25, 26

Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint, 22, 84, 85, 86, 90, 143, 144, 161, 162, 163, 164, 202, 275, 279, 282, 288, 362, 363, 364, 375, 376

The Steps of Humility and Pride, 84, 85, 164, 277, 278, 280, 376

Bible, 13, 18, 26, 60, 378, 382

references and allusions in text, 13 35, 36, 38, 39, 40

blood, 208, 231, 268, 269, 271, 272, 273, 275, 337, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 351, 355, 366

Bloomfield, Morton W., 52

Bogdanow, Fanni, 23, 143, 144, 161, 162, 164, 166, 176, 330, 333, 362

Carruthers, Mary J., 20, 21, 84

Cassian, John, 84

Cazelles, Brigitte, 11, 288, 387

characters

Arthur, 11, 12, 74, 83, 87, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 112, 115, 126, 127, 129, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 149, 158, 167, 168, 172, 179, 194, 196, 201, 211, 231, 233, 246, 261, 265, 304, 305, 306, 320, 326, 332, 365, 374

396

Blancheflor, 50, 98, 109, 126, 136, 196, 247, 248, 269, 270, 272, 274, 278, 300, 301, 302, 303, 306, 311, 317, 324, 327, 328, 344, 347, 365, 374

Clamadeu, 108, 109, 127, 132, 137, 247, 324, 344, 345, 374

damsel of the tent, 83, 96, 97, 99, 101, 102, 117, 137, 210, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262, 263, 265

Fisher King, 52, 55, 74, 76, 78, 172, 184, 191, 196, 208, 210, 221, 223, 224, 257, 285, 286, 289, 290, 292, 293, 295, 297, 298, 299, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 313, 314, 316, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322, 324, 326, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 336, 338, 339, 340, 346, 348, 352, 359, 361, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 383

Gauvain, 2, 3, 15, 30, 42, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 79, 88, 137, 159, 185, 187, 189, 221, 222, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 248, 249, 250, 251, 266, 267, 269, 276, 278, 296, 297, 342, 366, 385, 387, 399

germainne cosine, 173, 211, 248, 256, 273, 303, 306, 315, 332, 358, 359

Gornemant, 46, 49, 51, 52, 55, 78, 80, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 126, 131, 132, 135, 169, 170, 171, 172, 196, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 217, 227, 241, 259, 263, 298, 299, 300, 302, 303, 315, 365, 374

Grail King, 351, 366

Greoreas, 246, 250, 251, 266, 367

Guinevere, 17, 107, 131

Hermit, 16, 29, 74, 79, 216, 223, 230, 232, 234, 251, 253, 276, 281, 283, 291, 292, 306, 308, 323, 333, 334, 339, 352, 353, 355, 359, 360, 361, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 377, 380, 383, 385, 386, 387

Hideous Damsel, 185, 186, 189-92, 201, 207, 208, 220, 224, 292, 305, 315, 320, 322, 358, 359, 375

Keu, 109, 110, 115, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 136, 137, 194, 231

la Orguilleuse, 230, 246, 247, 248, 249, 278

li Orguilleus, 106, 113, 114, 118, 125, 127, 258, 265, 266, 267, 269, 271

397

Perceval’s mother, 16, 44, 50, 71, 75, 76, 78, 82, 83, 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 102, 106, 108, 110, 116, 142, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 163, 166, 167, 168, 171, 175, 177, 182, 183, 184, 187, 191, 193, 195, 197, 198, 203, 206, 210, 211, 213, 218, 220, 221, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230, 235, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 263, 264, 270, 273, 275, 296, 300, 307, 308, 309, 311, 313, 314, 315, 316, 318, 320, 322, 323, 325, 328, 329, 334, 339, 361, 368, 369, 373, 375, 379

Perceval's mother, 94

Red Knight, 104, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 118, 124, 134, 138, 304, 346

Charity, 12, 18, 19, 28, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 63, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 111, 118, 132, 133, 140, 141, 142, 144, 162, 206, 214, 215, 227, 228, 229, 230, 253, 255, 275, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 289, 311, 313, 329, 362, 367, 369, 371, 374, 376, 377, 384, 385, 386, 388, 390

chivalry, 11, 12, 42, 111, 120, 132, 133, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 150, 152, 155, 156, 159, 166, 195, 196, 201, 202, 204, 205, 207, 209, 212, 213, 214, 226, 229, 231, 232, 234, 235, 238, 243, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 252, 255, 272, 275, 278, 280, 282, 290, 294, 299, 303, 306, 311, 315, 316, 317, 320, 321, 328, 331, 333, 340, 341, 342, 347, 364, 366, 368, 369, 370, 373, 374, 375, 382, 385, 387, 389

Christ, 18, 19, 39, 59, 61, 71, 197, 199, 200, 206, 218, 279, 280, 311, 383

Comfort, William W., 12

Cosman, Madeleine Pelman, 171, 253

Courcelle, Pierre, 22, 143

Crow, A. D., 298, 342, 362

curiositas, 83, 84-86, 111, 137, 139, 140, 164, 214, 280, 281, 282, 305, 331, 358, 364, 365, 369, 374, 375

Delbouille, Maurice, 51, 289

Dembowski, Peter F., 51

Duggan, Joseph J., 12

Earl, James W., 61, 74, 380, 383

Erec et Enide, 17, 32, 145, 149, 187, 219

errantry, 53, 67, 70, 79, 83, 86, 87; see also curiositas

398

Fein, David A., 33, 34

Flori, Jean, 11

forest, 82, 87, 91, 96, 97, 104, 105, 106, 150, 156, 160, 163, 195, 196, 198, 211, 213, 215, 294, 296, 307, 313, 325, 383

forgetfulness, 17, 84, 214, 226, 374, 376

Frappier, Jean, 4, 236, 287, 353, 357, 358

Freeman, Michelle A., 12

Friedman, Lionel, 219

Frye, Northrop, 381, 382

Gilson, Etienne, 85

God, 19, 22, 39, 40, 65, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 84, 87, 89, 90, 93, 97, 105, 116, 118, 128, 136, 141, 147, 154, 155, 161, 162, 163, 165, 179, 200, 201, 203, 204, 206, 208, 209, 213, 214, 217, 220, 225, 226, 227, 230, 232, 240, 249, 256, 263, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 309, 311, 329, 338, 340, 362, 370, 372, 374, 375, 376, 379, 380, 382, 383, 384, 385, 401

Gouttebroze, Jean-Guy, 27, 40, 294

grail, 4, 6, 7, 12, 29, 70, 75, 76, 77, 78, 87, 138, 180, 182, 183, 186, 188, 192, 193, 208, 209, 210, 215, 220, 221, 224, 256, 257, 283, 285, 286, 288, 289, 291, 295, 305, 306, 308, 310, 313, 314, 315, 316, 318, 321, 329, 331, 334, 335, 336, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 364, 365, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371

grail procession, 4, 9, 43, 75, 185, 203, 211, 220, 225, 257, 286, 287, 295, 310, 318, 321, 334, 336, 337, 338, 347, 349, 356, 357, 370, 374

Gray, Douglas, 22

Green, D. H., 60

Greimas, A. J., 106, 228, 324, 354

Haidu, Peter, 44, 53, 253, 258, 288, 290, 291, 360

Hindman, Sandra, 11

Hofer, Stefan, 62

Holmes, Urban T., 7, 10, 24, 387

humility, 40, 90, 144, 162, 199, 205, 206, 219, 222, 227, 237, 238, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 364, 367, 368, 376

Hunt, Tony, 13, 25, 35, 149, 387

hypocrisy, 28, 40, 80, 89, 132, 137, 229, 331, 362, 375

399

identity, 17, 28, 77, 78, 125, 144, 145, 148, 150, 151, 154, 158, 159, 160, 161, 169, 171, 173, 177, 178, 184, 191, 194, 196, 198, 199, 206, 212, 221, 237, 239, 240, 256, 258, 271, 320, 367, 373

Imbs, Paul, 354

irony, 44, 45, 159, 180, 262, 272

Javelet, Robert, 21

Klenke, M. Amelia, 10, 24, 254, 287, 387

Kline, Ruth, 228

knights & knighthood, 11, 19, 26, 27, 28, 35, 44, 50, 53, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 77, 78, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 125, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 140, 142, 152, 154, 156, 157, 160, 163, 164, 165, 178, 179, 186, 187, 188, 189, 198, 199, 201, 217, 232, 234, 239, 242, 244, 246, 250, 258, 263, 269, 270, 271, 272, 275, 278, 294, 304, 311, 312, 317, 325, 328, 332, 338, 347, 358, 365, 366, 373, 374, 375

Lacy, Norris J., 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 273, 295, 296, 306, 313, 340, 404

lance, bleeding, 4, 70, 78, 87, 95, 110, 111, 124, 138, 168, 180, 186, 188, 192, 193, 208, 209, 210, 215, 220, 221, 224, 251, 256, 257, 289, 291, 293, 305, 308, 309, 310, 311, 315, 329, 330, 331, 334, 335, 336, 337, 340, 342, 343, 346, 347, 348, 351, 355, 358, 359, 364, 365, 366, 369, 370

Lancelot, 17, 159

Le Goff, Jacques, 20

Le Rider, Paule, 8

Leclercq, Jean, 282

Lot-Borodine, M., 254

Luttrell, Claude, 333

Maddox, Donald, 11, 12, 14, 114, 145, 190, 247, 373, 378

Maddux, John S., 16, 222, 276, 281

Meister, Peter, 13

Méla, Charles, 146, 151, 160, 162, 283

memory, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 32, 45, 56, 65, 68, 84, 98, 150, 152, 157, 175, 180, 195, 209, 212, 220, 233, 258, 274, 281, 285, 290, 294, 308, 315, 346, 347, 367, 372, 374, 377, 378, 385, 386

memoria Dei, 22, 28, 373, 376

memoria sui, 22, 28, 143, 165, 212, 373, 376

400

Ménard, Philippe, 176, 181, 282, 283, 289

mercy, 72, 116, 117, 118, 124, 125, 126, 131, 208, 209, 225, 228, 278, 280

Micha, Alexandre, 358

Miner, Earl, 61

Mourant, John A., 212

mystery, 5, 221, 291, 295, 321, 366

names, 151, 152, 157, 160, 177, 180, 240, 339

narrative, 6, 16, 19, 23, 28, 29, 33, 43, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 60, 62, 63, 66, 68, 72, 114, 127, 148, 178, 222, 223, 231, 233, 236, 243, 250, 251, 253, 259, 268, 271, 273, 282, 291, 295, 296, 297, 298, 307, 313, 366, 377, 379, 383, 385, 388, 390

narrator, 34, 40, 43, 51, 65, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81, 92, 96, 98, 100, 116, 121, 138, 160, 167, 174, 175, 176, 188, 190, 192, 215, 216, 217, 218, 221, 222, 232, 237, 245, 259, 267, 268, 270, 290, 292, 295, 298, 299, 314, 319, 327, 328, 334, 338, 341, 343, 344, 350, 356, 357, 358, 360, 361, 362, 369, 371, 385

Newhauser, Richard, 85

Nitze, W. A., 358

Nykrog, Per, 9, 11, 12, 27, 80, 120, 381, 389

Olschki, Leonardo, 10, 287, 387

Owen, D. D. R., 35, 62, 63, 228, 287

parables, 38, 42, 371

penitence, 46, 76, 218, 219, 222, 226, 227, 231, 266, 277, 313, 339, 377, 385

Philip of Flanders, 19, 28, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 80, 81, 82, 89, 108, 128, 140, 144, 206, 228, 229, 362, 390

Pickens, Rupert T., 4, 6, 28, 31, 40, 47, 69, 79, 151, 233, 291, 294, 295, 321, 347, 352, 353, 355, 365

point of view, 52

pride, 85, 141, 163, 165, 241, 242, 252, 275, 278, 365, 368, 375

prologue, 4, 12, 13, 18, 19, 25, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 44, 80, 86, 88, 89, 108, 128, 140, 141, 144, 205, 214, 227, 229, 281, 289, 290, 295, 333, 362, 375, 384, 385, 386, 387

Putter, Ad, 26, 27

questions, unasked, 74, 76, 153, 172, 183, 185, 186, 189, 190, 192, 221, 222, 223, 241, 263, 322, 331, 357, 366, 370, 374

401

readers & reading, 11, 15, 16, 19, 23, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 77, 78, 79, 82, 87, 88, 92, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 108, 120, 138, 142, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 158, 159, 160, 161, 177, 179, 188, 190, 192, 195, 198, 203, 205, 214, 215, 216, 218, 220, 221, 222, 223, 226, 229, 230, 231, 233, 239, 240, 241, 245, 250, 255, 257, 258, 260, 261, 263, 264, 267, 269, 274, 277, 281, 289, 290, 292, 294, 295, 298, 302, 315, 332, 334, 338, 341, 344, 346, 348, 349, 351, 353, 359, 369, 371, 372, 377, 378, 380, 384, 385, 386, 390

Red Knight, 304

Red Knight, Perceval as, 111, 112, 114, 124, 127, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 185, 186, 232, 235, 238, 269, 296, 325, 326, 345

red, significance of, 108, 110, 127, 179, 341, 344, 345, 346, 347

Ribard, Jacques, 387

Riquer, Martín de, 2, 3, 10, 62

Robertson, D. W., Jr., 13, 18

Roques, Mario, 155, 358

Rutledge, Amelia A., 252, 253

Ryding, William W., 54, 56, 57, 187

Saccone, Antonio, 42, 137

Saly, Antoinette, 55, 63, 233, 234, 296, 297, 388

Sargent-Baur, Barbara N., 12, 13, 31, 35, 46, 47, 177, 388

Saunders, Corinne J., 105, 195

Seaman, Gerald, 24

self-interest, 89, 102, 115, 121, 123, 125, 132, 304

self-knowledge, 22, 23, 85, 90, 143, 144, 147, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 171, 191, 199, 277, 364, 378

sin, 75, 78, 84, 85, 117, 127, 164, 182, 193, 206, 210, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 252, 253, 263, 267, 276, 279, 282, 286, 308, 317, 322, 330, 331, 339, 340, 369, 370, 371, 375

snow, blood on, 43, 72, 231, 267, 268, 269, 273, 274, 275, 346, 347

specular encounters, 145, 146, 147, 158, 171, 172, 182, 183, 187, 189, 190, 191, 194, 206, 207, 373, 378

speech, abusive, 81, 93, 108, 115, 127, 128, 132, 136, 140, 248, 324, 331, 383

Staines, David, 228, 355

Stock, Brian, 378

402

structure, episodic, 11, 19, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 171, 186, 198, 203, 207, 230, 233, 235, 264, 276, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 300, 303, 306, 307, 312, 313, 314, 316, 317, 318, 320, 326, 371, 380, 382, 383, 388

suffering, 72, 100, 172, 191, 210, 218, 220, 224, 226, 245, 250, 252, 255, 257, 261, 263, 264, 267, 272, 275, 302, 303, 305, 307, 314, 316, 317, 320, 326, 327, 332, 366, 368, 370, 371, 375

sword, 124, 203, 258, 299, 316, 337, 338, 340, 342, 344, 348, 366

symbolism, 9, 25, 57, 58, 289, 334

Topsfield, L. T., 22, 143, 153, 189, 190

typology, 59-61, 64, 74, 380-83

Uitti, Karl D., 12

vainglory, 19, 28, 35, 40, 80, 86, 90, 126, 129, 160, 198, 205, 215, 235, 243, 251, 281, 374, 387

Vinaver, Eugene, 54, 57, 58, 59

voluntas propria, 90, 97, 119, 132, 140, 142, 278, 326

women, 78, 85, 96, 97, 99, 116, 119, 120, 131, 169, 197, 206, 213, 227, 229, 234, 237, 246, 247, 248, 251, 258, 264, 267, 270, 272, 274, 275, 294, 300, 302, 303, 306, 310, 317, 342, 347, 367

Yvain, 4, 17, 43, 149, 150, 187, 190, 195, 219, 348