Remembering God: The Function of Memory in Chrtien de Troyes Conte del Graal Lisa A. Nicholas, Ph. D.

University of Dallas, 2007 Dr. 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 Chrtiens 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, Chrtien 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. Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Hermits revelations. Once the importance of memory in this romance has been recognized, one can discern strong narrative, structural, and

thematic similarities between Chrtiens romance and Augustines 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 Chrtien 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 Chrtien de Troyes Conte del Graal, 2007.

Table of Contents
THE BRANIFF GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS ...............................................iii Remembering God: The Function of Memory in Chrtien de Troyes Conte del Graal by Lisa A. Nicholas............................................................iv B.A., Rockford College, 1980 M.A., University of Dallas, 1998.....................................v Table of Contents................................................................vii Chapter 1 Enigma and Interpretation: The Critical Challenge of the Conte del Graal .................1 The Enigma of the Conte: Critical Controversies..........................2 Intrinsic Difficulties: The Unfinished Work...........................2 Extrinsic Difficulties: The Problem of Anachronism.............6 Fresh Approaches, New Problems.......................................9 Memory, the Protagonist, and the Reader .................................14 Memory in Chrtiens Romances.......................................16 Augustinian Memoria ........................................................19 Chrtien and His Audience................................................22 Chapter 2 The Seed of Romance and the Readers Memory....30 Audience Collusion......................................................................32 Prologue............................................................................33 Point of View......................................................................41 Form and Structure.....................................................................50 Analogous episodes...........................................................51 Interlacement....................................................................58 Assessment and Reassessment..................................................62 Cause for Reflection..........................................................65 The Hermits Revelations .................................................71 Chapter 3 Aimless Pursuits: Chivalry and the Path Away from God....................................................77 Curiosity and the Will..................................................................81 Wandering Down the Left-Hand Path................................83 Charity and Voluntas Propria.............................................86 Knights of the Wilderness: Unbridled Willfulness........................93 The Abuse of Women........................................................94 Self-Will and Force.............................................................99 Volsist ele ou non: The Language of Force...................103 Knights of the Court: Vilenie Restrained...................................107 Defense of the Helpless...................................................115 Mercy to the Defeated.....................................................119

Sins of Speech.................................................................122 Chivalrys Defects.....................................................................126 Self-Interest.....................................................................127 Idleness...........................................................................128 Hypocrisy.........................................................................130 Curiosity..........................................................................131 Chapter 4 Par le non conuist an lhom: Memory, Identity, and Self-Knowledge.......................136 You who have the name knight...........................................140 By the name the man is known....................................142 Son of the widow lady..................................................147 More beautiful than God..............................................154 Youll do everything rudely..........................................159 I know you better than you do me.........................................162 Perceval the Welshman................................................167 Perceval the Wretch.....................................................172 Fortune is bald behind..................................................176 Call me Nephew.....................................................................184 At Home in the Forest......................................................187 Memory and Reconciliation.............................................189 Recalling Chivalry............................................................193 Chapter 5 Remembering Charity: Signs Along the Path to God.......................................204 The Way to the Hermits Chapel...............................................206 The Reader Repents........................................................210 Knotted Signs..................................................................211 Chivalrys Defects.....................................................................219 Vainglory.........................................................................223 Abuse of the Weak..........................................................231 Suffering Along the Way...........................................................238 Woman of Sorrows..........................................................241 Blinded by Beauty...........................................................253 Returning to Charity, Returning to God....................................260 Humility and Penitence...................................................262 Stumbling over Charity.............................................................267 Chapter 6 Return to Grail Castle: A Reconsideration............270 Blinded by the Light: The Meaning of the Grail Episode...........271 Grail Castle: A Hall of Mirrors?..................................................278 Wealthy Hosts: Gornemant Fisher King.......................282 Distressed Hosts: Blancheflor Fisher King...................284 Damsels in Distress: Blancheflor Germainne Cosine...287 Royal Receptions: Arthur Fisher King..........................288 Journeys End: Hermit Fisher King...............................290 Suffering Kinfolk: Mother Fisher King..........................295 Finding the Center...........................................................301 Grail Castle Reconsidered.........................................................304

Unasked Questions..........................................................306 Why does the lance bleed?: Chivalrys Dangerous Glamor ...................................................................................314 Who is served from the Grail?: The Two Tables...........330 Fol san eus: (Mis)Understanding the Significance of Grail Castle..........................................................................349 Chapter 7 Memory and the Ethics of Reading Romance........352 Percevals Memory....................................................................352 The Bernardian Analysis..................................................355 The Readers Memory...............................................................357 The Augustinian Connection............................................358 Narrative pattern ..................................................359 Typological method................................................360 Reading dynamic...................................................363 The Conte del Graal in Critical Context.....................................366 Works Cited......................................................................370 Index................................................................................ 384

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

lthough Chrtien 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, Chrtiens final Arthurian romance, has exercised an irresistible attraction upon readers and interpreters in Chrtiens 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 Chrtien drew his last breath, letting the pen figuratively fall from his hand over the unfinished manuscript. While a number of Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens own intentions in the substantial fragment that he left behind. The result is a widely scattered critical

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

2 field, lacking consensus even on such basic questions as whether Chrtien 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 Chrtiens 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. 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
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.
2

3 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 Chrtien 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 Chrtien had literally gasped his last and dropped his pen. This abrupt ending, which occurs in the midst of a lengthy account of Gauvains 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 Chrtiens 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 hermits answers suffice to fulfill the unasked questions? One can hypothesize how, or whether, a Conte del Graal finished by Chrtiens hand would have resolved such questions, but any conclusion reached must remain tentative and speculative.4

Among others who argue against the unity of the romance, Martn de Riquer, for instance, argues that the time discrepncies between the Perceval and Gauvain narratives are evidence of two separate tales ineptly joined. Frappier, for instance, states with confidence that on ne peut gure douter quil retrouvait le chteau du Roi Pcheur ( Chrtien de Troyes 176), but even such an unremarkable claim is based on unspoken assumptions about Chrtiens intentions.
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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, at the end of the Perceval narrative, the Welsh knight meets his hermit uncle, the hermits 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,
In his prologue, Chrtien 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

5 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 Percevals failure to ask about these objects, the hermits revelation seems to confer upon the details of the grail procession a religious significance which cries out to be explained. What explanation Chrtien 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 Chrtiens 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, written by other hands apparently without reference to any narrative plan of Chrtiens 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 Wolframs Parzival and the
See Rupert Pickenss introduction to the Garland edition of the Conte for a detailed discussion of the surviving manuscripts.
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6 anonymously penned Perlesvaus, or supplying a back story to Chrtiens tale, as in Robert de Borons Le Roman de lestoire dou Graal. Indeed, Chrtiens enigmatic Conte spawned so many imitations and retellings that, within a century or two of its writing, Chrtiens own romance sank into oblivion under the growing numbers of its literary offspring. Extrinsic Difficulties: The Problem of Anachronism Thus, the very popularity of Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens enigmatic grail had long since been displaced by the Holy Grail of later, better-known romances. Only when Chrtiens work came to be 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 Chrtiens seminal work in the light of those later, more familiar works, in this manner projecting onto Chrtiens romance expectations raised by later stories of the Holy Grail. 7 This sometimes resulted in
Urban Holmes, as late as 1970, in his Chrtien de Troyes argues that, since Chrtiens earliest imitators transformed the grail into the Holy Grail, it was natural
7

7 harsh criticism of Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens 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 Wolframs 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 Chrtien as the authors of the Grail Continuations and Wolfram von Eschenbach would have had some cultural intuition into Chrtiens symbolic references and source texts which then was reflected in their own works. If so, the interpretations of Chrtiens romance implicit in their own literary creations might have interpretive value for later readers, who must approach Chrtiens work across a cultural abyss of many centuries. However, one can easily see that, even among Chrtiens 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

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 in Robert de Borons Joseph of Arimathea, which depicts it as a holy relic, the chalice used at the Last Supper, and Wolframs 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 Chrtiens unfinished work. Clearly, even a very careful and deliberate comparison between Chrtiens 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 Chrtien 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 mdivales du Conte du Graal. Le confondre dans un cycle du Graal, linterprter partir des allgories de ses pigones et t, ma-t-il sembl, le trahir (7). Per Nykrog, in his effort pour dgager les romans de lemprise que les dveloppements ultrieurs ont gards sur eux (50), seeks to avoid not only the interpretations made by continuators but also those of modern interpreters who anachronistically impose upon Chrtiens works ideological or psychological schemata quite foreign to Chrtien or his original audience.

9 Fresh Approaches, New Problems Modern scholarship, as well, then, has obfuscated Chrtiens romance almost as frequently as it has clarified its meaning. Once Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens 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 Chrtien 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.

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

10 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 Chrtiens work. To the contrary, this burgeoning of critical approaches, rather than clarifying, in some ways has added to the confusion surrounding Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens 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 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
Per Nykrog states, [L]interprtation ne connat en principe de bornes que celles qui limitent limagination de lhermneute. Car une composante fondamentale de la gerbe mthodologique, ou thorique soulignait que le discours critique ne doit pas tre compris comme faisant rfrence une vrit une et solide qui soit l, dans le monde dit rel. Puisque tout contact avec une ralit tait a priori impossible, tout ce quon pouvait proposer tait une lecture, qui ne saurait tre rfrentielle que dans la mesure o elle se rfrait au texte matriel quon a sous les yeux. Selon un bon-mot polmique souvent rpt, le texte devint prtexte pour un exercice de lingniosit du commentateur." (30) Brigitte Cazelles The Unholy Grail provides such a reading which, while brilliantly constructed, does little to
9

11 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 Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens work from within the context of his own culture, and therefore helps to bring the modern readers experience of the work closer to that of Chrtiens original audience. Recent decades have also seen a growing number of studies that examine Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens romances. 12 While
The works of Jean Flori and Donald Maddox, for instance, apply historical insights into the practice of chivalry to Chrtiens works. Sandra Hindmans Sealed in Parchment suggests one way of trying to recapture the readings of early audiences by noting how surviving manuscripts of Chrtiens 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. Recent studies of this kind include Duggans The Romances of Chretien de Troyes, which examines underemphasized features; Maddoxs The Arthurian Romances of Chrtien de Troyes analyses the depiction of chivalry and the Arthurian court; Nykrogs Chrtien de Troyes: Romancier discutable attempts to recapture imaginatively the point of view of the twelfth century courtly audience; and Uitti and Freemans Chrtien de Troyes Revisited reads the romances in the context of Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens earlier romances. William Comfort did not even include The Story of the Grail among his translations of Chrtiens Arthurian Romances, perhaps because Perceval is technically an outsider to Arthurs court and the romance therefore is not, strictly speaking, Arthurian. However, one may suspect that the choice to exclude Chrtiens final romance was influenced by the attitude that views the final romance as atypical. 11 10

12 a number of these comparative studies have been quite helpful in identifying points of continuity among Chrtiens 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-Baurs La Destre et la senestre, which connects Percevals personal development to the significance of the grail by examining it in the light of Charity, the theme introduced by Chrtien in the poems prologue. One major division that remains in the field of Chrtien scholarship, particularly with respect to The Story of the Grail, is that which divides secularist from christianist interpreters. 13 Just one of many critics who insist that Chrtiens 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 Contes 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

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 Robertsons ideas were caricatured and largely dismissed without fair consideration in the 60s and 70s, but should now be given a fresh hearing.

13

13 prologue and hermit episode to be indicative of the poets 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, 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 Chrtiens work may well leave one wondering what kind of approach will prove adequate to the interpretive task. In The Arthurian Romances of Chrtien de

14 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 storys 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 nave 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 Chrtiens 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 Percevals obviously faulty memory he is frequently given significant

15 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 Percevals exercise of memory. The second prominent feature that stirred my interest was the strange intrusion of the hermit episode, interjected into the story of Gauvains 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 readers own (mis)use of memory as if Chrtien 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

I am indebted to John S[tephen] Madduxs doctoral dissertation, Sens et Structure du Joseph d'Arimathie: Essai d'Histoire Littraire (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.

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16 Memory in Chrtiens 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 Percevals poor memory; i.e., Percevals forgetfulness may appear to be due to navet or foolishness rather than culpable willfulness. The thematic centrality of memory is, however, readily apparent in Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens 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
In her parting advice to him, his mother remarks that, while hell probably be inept as a knight, since he hasnt been properly trained, on the other hand mervoille est quant an naprant / Ce qu lan voit et ot sovant (507-508: Its a wonder when someone doesnt learn what he has often seen and heard). This proves to be a rather ironic commentary on Percevals entire career.
15

17 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, Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens final romance, The Story of the Grail. Unlike his earlier works, however, Chrtiens final romance presents the theme of memory in close connection to that of Charity, a theme introduced in the poems prologue. Charity, argued D. W.

18 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, Chrtiens prologue, opposing Philips Charity to Alexanders 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 Chrtiens 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

19 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 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

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?]

16

20 the exercise of mental recall. 17 This may explain why modern interpretations of The Story of the Grail that focus on Percevals 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 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

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.
18

17

De Trinitate X. The Book of Memory 43.

19

21 writings.20 The importance of memory is also emphasized in another of Augustines best known works (in the Middle Ages as today), his Confessions, which illustrates the important role that memory plays in the souls 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 littraire, 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 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 Augustines Confessions may have shaped Chrtiens romance in some unexpected ways. Augustines 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 Chrtiens own century, St Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote extensively on the need for

Robert Javelets Image et resemblance au 12e sicle traces, among other things, the various versions of the Trinitarian model of the soul treated by medieval spiritual writers.

20

22 self-knowledge in developing virtue and growing closer to God. At least two Chrtien scholars have already examined some of the ways in which Bernards teaching is reflected in Chrtiens Story of the Grail. Leslie Topsfield, in his 1981 study of Chrtiens 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 Topsfields findings to demonstrate how Bernards writings, particularly those on the dictum nosce teipsum (know thyself), can illuminate many of the most enigmatic portions of the Conte. Both St. Bernards spiritual writings and Topsfields and Bogdanows modern analyses of his influence will be instrumental in our examination of the role memory plays in the story of Percevals way of perfection as a knight. Chrtien and His Audience In the following chapter, I will indicate a number of methods that Chrtien employs not only to engage but to manipulate the readers 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 Chrtien wrote for a literarily unsophisticated courtly audience who would have been ill-equipped to

23 recognize or respond to the narrative machinations that I will suggest Chrtien 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 Chrtien and his courtly audience (or postulated upon good evidence) supports the likelihood that Chrtien 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 Chrtien de Troyes, it is very likely that he was a cleric (possibly in minor orders, although perhaps even a canon of Saint Loup de Troyes 21), 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 Chrtien 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 Chrtien 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 Seamans contention that one may find a middle ground between the extremes of

21

See Benton 561.

24 those such as Holmes and Klenke, whose work contends that [Chrtien 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 Seamans assertion that Chrtien, 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 believe that the available evidence suggests, at any rate, that Chrtien 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 Chrtien was writing provide evidence that supports this latter view. John F. Bentons 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 Chrtiens 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 Provenal troubadour poets. Benton shows that

25 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 Chrtien, 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 Building upon the evidence offered in Bentons article, Ad Putters Knights and Clerics at the Court of Champagne draws a more detailed picture of the members of the court who served as Chrtiens 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). Chrtiens audience, then, would include clerics who, trained in Scriptural exegesis, would have been adept at recognizing allegorical meaning hidden below the surface of

Thus Marie, by providing Chrtien with both the matiere (content) and the san (meaning) of that romance, far from promoting courtly love, might have suggested that he satirize the troubadours exaltation of adulterous love.

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26 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 Chrtien 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 Chrtien was a cleric who was sometimes at court and 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 Chrtien and his audience is assumed by the study that follows. I believe that my analysis of the romance will
23

Putter notes that Henry himself was frequently praised as a man of great

In addition to this evidence, Gouttebroze in "Sainz Pos lo dit, et je le lui argues that Chrtien may have been at least a sub-deacon, who would have served as lector in liturgical celebrations. Per Nykrog suggests that Chrtien 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 Chrtien to work en symbiose avec eux et faonner ses contes en vue de donner la plus grande satisfaction possible ce public privilgi avec lequel il tait en rapport personnel et direct. (45) If Nykrogs idea is correct, not only would it support the notion that Chrtien de Troyes est un romancier qui voulait tre 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 Chrtien wanted his romances to be [d]iscutable et non pas indtermin.)
25

24

27 demonstrate the validity of that assumption. 26 In the following chapter, I will address the ways in which Chrtien engages and manages the focus of his audiences attention, introducing the key theme of Charity in the poems 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 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 Percevals 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 Percevals 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

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.

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28 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 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 Chrtien 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 poems fragmentary state should be of minor consequence compared to the meaning Chrtien hoped the thoughtful reader would be able derive from careful reflection upon the substantial portion that he

My reading of the romance supports the critical consensus that, far from being a cobbled-together combination of Chrtiens own Perceval story and a separate romance on Gauvain (written by Chrtiens 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.

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29 completed, an enigma which may shed its veils before the eyes of one properly mindful of its subtleties.

Chapter 2 The Seed of Romance and the Readers Memory

Crestiens seme et fet semance Dun romans que il ancomance, Et si le seme an si bon leu Quil ne puet estre sanz grant preu (7-10)28

rom the very first words of Li Contes del Graal, Chrtien 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 apprend l'auditeur ou au lecteur avis que le rcit 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 faon d'crire chez un romancier pourtant expriment et dont la manire 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 Chrtien hoped to stimulate, although the early Continuations and re-tellings of Percevals story can
From the prologue: Chrtien 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.
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31 at least suggest the ways in which early readers understood the Conte. Modern readers, who must artificially reconstruct the medieval readers experience of romance, have frequently experienced difficulty in discerning Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens contemporary audience, and that this discomfort is a part of Chrtiens design.29 That is, Chrtien 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 this way, much as a pearl owes its genesis to an irritating morsel of grit, an astute reading of The Story
Although I shall refer to the reader, in doing so I include the likelihood that many of Chrtiens first audience would, in fact have been listeners. In the prologue of his earliest extant romance, Erec et Enide, Chrtien 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 romanciers efforts. In general, then, questions of orality seem of relatively little importance in discussing the audiences reception of this romance and I, therefore, consistently refer simply to the reader, rather than making cumbersome references to the listener as well. 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, Chrtien exploits the readers memory in this way, causing him to recall from his memory details perceived earlier but not yet fully digested.
30 29

32 of the Grail is produced only by the readers grappling with the very features which seem most irritatingly inexplicable. Chrtien, 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 Chrtiens romances in particular, is the authors intimation that his reader is a person of refined sensibilities and sophistication, capable of appreciating the careful conjointure produced by the poets efforts. This does not simply flatter the readers 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 earlier romances, Chrtien referred openly to his own care in composition and the readers need for careful

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, Chrtiens engagement of the reader is much less overt in The Story of the Grail, but serves much the same purpose; on the other hand, the narrators comments are often (deliberately) misleading.

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33 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 Chrtien 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 Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens earlier romances could not have been so completely abandoned in The Story of the Grail, and they assume, therefore, that the prologues 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 backcloth to Chrtiens encomium of Philip of Flanders, and that the prologues function, as in The Knight of the Cart, is simply to serve as a

34 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 Chrtiens romance. From the opening line of the prologue of The Story of the Grail, Chrtien hints that this romance will present a different kind of challenge to the reader. Although these first 68 lines ostensibly serve

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

32

35 to praise the virtue of Philip of Flanders, the nobleman who gave him the book from which Chrtien 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 Chrtiens romance and then as an exemplar of Christian virtue. Chrtien 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 espande Que fruit a cent dobles li rande ; Car an terre qui rien ne vaut Bone semance seche et faut. Crestiens seme et fet semance Dun romans que il ancomance, Et si le seme an si bon leu Quil 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. Chrtien sows and casts the seed of a romance that he begins, and sows it in such a good place that it cannot be without great profit )

Before the name of Philip is mentioned, Chrtien has already suggested two possible kinds of readers for this romance: those who prove to be worth nothing, in whom the seed of Chrtiens romance

See Claude Lutrells The Prologue of Crestiens 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.

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36 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

Chrtien identify the latter sort with Philip, and explicitly link this fruitful soil with the virtue of Charity: Quil le fet por le plus prodome Qui soit an lempire de Rome: Cest 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 Philips actions, yet the connection between Charity and the reader is implicit from the very first lines, as is the link between the poets intention and the readers 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 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

37 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 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

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

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, Chrtien 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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38 sower, or Chrtien, and that of the reader with a right mind and heart who provides good soil for the romance that Chrtien sows. In case the reader should have heard and not understood, seen and not perceived, Chrtien 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 Chrtiens seed and the reader who rien ne vaut. Drawing from Matthews gospel, Chrtien characterizes Philip as the humble almsgiver who does not let his left hand know what his right hand does (Matt. 6.3), while Alexanders 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, Chrtien quotes from Augustines interpretation of this passage, which identifies the right hand with Charity (Philip) and the left hand with 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
This interpretation, which Chrtien refers to as the traditional one (39: selonc lestoire, of so the story goes), is found in Augustines sermon 149, cap. xiv and in Chrtiens own century was reiterated by Alanus de Insulis (Liber in distinctionibus dictionum theologicalium).
38 This reference is one of Chrtiens famous mistakes often noted by critics: although the verse quotes the First Epistle of John, Chrtien attributes it to Paul (Sainz Pos). It is quite likely that this mistake was deliberate on Chrtiens part. Rupert Pickens, in Le Conte du Graal (Perceval), suggests that Chrtien 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 Gouttebrozes Sainz Pos lo dit, et je le lui 37

39 who prove to be good soil for the word of God, is the essential element which characterizes Philips 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, Chrtien 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 Chrtiens generous and virtuous patron, Philip of 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 Chrtiens 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

40 readers: those who, like Philip, will prove good soil for the seed of Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens 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, Chrtien suggests that in this romance audience collusion will require something more than 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
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 racconto che in fatti ordinari nasconde insegnamenti di realt superiori. Questinsegnamento non immediatamente comprensibile, ma il valore di racconto della parabola rimane inalterato, cos come si pu gustare il romanzo come vain et plaisant senza preoccuparsi del san che lautore 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
39

41 Point of View Chrtien 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 narrators interventions almost completely absent, but so are any representations of the protagonists internal state of mind. 40 Here we find no allegorical representations of Percevals internal conflicts, such as appeared in the depiction of Yvains lovesickness. 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 Chrtiens earlier romances, he is not (at least, at first) an accomplished and courtly knight of Arthurs court, the sort of figure who would immediately appeal to and resonate with Chrtiens 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

value of the parables 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) The only two notable exceptions occur during the grail procession, when the narrator not only draws attention (more than once) to Percevals 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 Percevals reverie. As we shall see, however, the narrator is often misleading.
40

42 reader move from supercilious amusement to admiring approval of Perceval. While Percevals transformation is frequently remarked by critics (often with unqualified approval), the gradual shift in the readers sympathies is seldom noted, perhaps because it is so subtly engineered by Chrtien. This manipulation can be discerned from the very first scene, in the contrast between the unnamed young rustics 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, 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, Percevals 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, Percevals uncharitable behavior becomes associated with his nave foolishness and, as his

43 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 readers 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. Chrtien designs this shock (which will occur to every reader who has, until this point, happily noted Percevals progress and growth) to produce two effects: first, to cause the reader to search his memory for any clues to the cause of Percevals (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.

44 A variety of techniques is used to effect this shift in the readers 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 Percevals approach to Gornemants 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 nave in both, but the readers perception of the two scenes is quite different because his perception of Perceval has changed. In the first, the untrained youth is riding without direction and comes unexpectedly upon a castle when: Torna li vaslez a senestre Et vit les torz del chastel nestre, Quavis li fut queles 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, Percevals 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

45 The other parts of the

castle are then described in the order in which they come into Percevals 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 Percevals side of the river. Both Chrtiens emphasis that this is Percevals interpretation of what he is seeing (avis li fu) and his repetition of the term born serve to emphasize the rather absurd navet 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 welltraveled person (such as the reader). The account of Percevals approach to the fishermans 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. Chrtien describes his approach: Maintenant cil san va amont
41 In Roachs 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). Guiots copy, upon which Pickens bases his edition, repeats chastel here. The T manuscript provides a more striking illustration of Percevals 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.

46 Tant 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 val Le chief dune tor qui parut. Lan ne trovast jus qua Barut Si bele ne si bien asise: Quarree fu, de roche bise, Savoit 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.)

Again, Chrtien uses repetition for emphasis (amont, mont), but to somewhat different purpose here, for his intention is not to draw attention to Percevals 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

47 described in the order in which they would come into view as his gaze drops from the horizon to the valley floor, yet Chrtien makes no overt reference to Percevals literal perspective. He does, however, remark upon the beauty and situation of the edifice, which echoes the description of Gornemants castle as being well-situated and wellfurnished within (1320-21). This is a clue that we are seeing from Percevals 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 readers perception of the castle. The first difference is 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 Gornemants 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

48 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 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 lapele mais tricheor / / Des que il trove ou herbergier). The reader, having come to identify with Percevals 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 Percevals impression that the castles 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

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.

42

place that can wink in and out of existence,

43

49 but the text itself does

not support this interpretation or rather, it supports it only if we accept Percevals perception as astute. If we do, perhaps we should also believe that the towers of Gornemants castle literally sprang up out of the rock before Percevals very eyes. A number of narrative techniques work to bring about this shift in the readers point of view. While in earlier romances Chrtien 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 Gornemants castle a single comment by the narrator (avis li fu) served to distance the reader from Percevals perception, in the approach to the Fishermans castle the narrators commentary is absent, replaced by Percevals 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 Percevals perception, in the later passage emphasis is given to the fact of Percevals movement upward (he goes amont, he

Maurice Delbouille, in Ralit du chteau du Roi-Pcheur 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 Chrtien adopted the motif of the faerie castle of the Celtic Other-World.

43

50 arrives an son la mont, he is an son le pui), so that the reader, accompanying him up the hill, becomes wedded to Percevals point of view and therefore is similarly perplexed not to find a lodging when he arrives on the hilltop. In this way, Chrtien employs a number of narrative techniques, along with his management of aesthetic distance, to manipulate the readers point of view.

Form and Structure

It is quite possible that Chrtiens 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 Chrtien scholars have, for the most part, overlooked this important aspect of Chrtiens 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

51 suggest a careless form of construction (655). This prejudice may have originated in Aristotles remarks on disjointed plots in tragedy in his Poetics,44 and certainly the modern readers unspoken (and often unconscious) Aristotelian expectation 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 Chrtiens 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
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).
44

52 similar episodes is generally not so much necessarily logical or sequential but analogous. In The Rise of Romance, Eugne 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 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

53 episodic form, then, is created by this web of analogous relationships between otherwise unconnected incidents.45 The two episodes already mentioned, Percevals visits to Gornemants and the Fisher Kings castles, can serve as an illustration 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 castles 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 readers perception of Perceval and his actions. Although the repetition of similar episodes might, in the hands of a lesser romancier than Chrtien, become monotonous, suggesting paucity of

Antoinette Saly, in La Rcurrence des motifs en symtrie inverse et la structure du Perceval de Chrtien 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. This series, for instance, includes such disparate scenes as Percevals approach to the colorful tent, his arrival at Carduel, and his visit to the hermits chapel.
46

45

54 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 readers recognition and interpretation of both the similarities and the differences that 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 Chrtien 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

55 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. 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 Chrtiens Conte del Graal. Yet both Vinavers and Lacys 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:

56 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) This explanation, however, seems somewhat awkward and misleading. Analogous episodes do not symbolize one another. Norris Lacys 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 Lacys definition quoted above (i.e., that an event elucidates its antecedents [while] the antecedents also prepare the reader for the event) with Erich Auerbachs 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

Auerbachs definition of figural interpretation derives from the

typological reading of Scripture, which was a predominant form of

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.
47

exegesis throughout the Middle Ages.

48

57 Perhaps Lacy hesitated to

make an explicit connection between analogous episodes and the figural or typological method (preferring instead to concur with Vinavers 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 nonscriptural 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

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). In the medieval Christian view, the Old and New Testaments were regarded as a single, continuous record of Divine Revelation and human history.
49

48

58 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 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 Chrtien 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 Chrtiens 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

59 events which prefigure and follow it (the types), in the Conte del Graal there is a central episode which elucidates all earlier analogous episodes 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 Chrtien 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 Chrtiens 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

Such interpretations include those put forth by Martn 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 (Chrtien de Troyes und der Conte del Graal).

50

connection between the two narrative strands.

51

60 Yet the 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 Salys study, La Rcurrence des motifs en symtrie inverse et la structure du Perceval de Chrtien 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 piets Percevals meeting with his grieving cousin as she holds the body of her decapitated lover at the foot of an oak and Gauvains encounter with a maiden cradling the body of a grievously wounded knight under an oak she demonstrates how Chrtien in the later episode seeks to remind the reader of the similar earlier episode, and to dclencher le mcanisme de la mmoire par la rptition dun mot propre [i.e., chesne, oak] faire resurgir la
Some critics also argue that the structure of the Conte as we have it is too different from the customary structure of Chrtiens earlier romances, but such an argument can hardly be considered compelling, since Chrtien makes it clear from the very first lines that he is doing something rather different in the Conte. 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.
52 51

61 premire vision (24). From her analysis of these two scenes, she goes 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 mme plan (32), they have a single link which ties them together: Lermitage, dont le hros est Perceval, apparat comme un pisode pivot qui commande la

distribution des aventures de Gauvain et dispose en chiasme les deux itinraires (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 dordre architectonique en rapport troit avec le sen chrtien du roman (29). Second, she identifies the relationship between the two narratives as being essentially typological i.e., the Gauvain adventures, [charges] dune signification relative autre chose quelles mmes, seem to have importance only to the extent that they mirror those of the Perceval story and prefigure Percevals eventual success in his own quest. Finally she notes that, in this understanding of the romances overall structure, a number of details which would otherwise seem strange and inexplicable can be seen as integral parts of Chrtiens overall design and, more

62 importantly, la signification doit en tre cherche a lintrieure du roman, qui a ceci de particulier quil ne saurait jamais sexpliquer que par rfrence lui-mme. La solution des problmes quil 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 readers memory finally begin to sprout and bear fruit. Up to this point, Chrtien, 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 Arthurs court on their twin quests to amend past faults and restore personal honor. For some 3300 lines, the reader is pleasantly distracted from Percevals story as he follows the adventures of Gauvain. When the narrator turns once more to consider Percevals 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 lestoire, / 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 detour away from the

63 account of Gauvains adventures, back onto the path of Percevals quest, but that path seems unfamiliar after the long excursion into the Gauvain narrative. The readers 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 nanora. 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 Gauvains 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, Chrtien has quite daringly chosen to employ a technique which is familiar to modern readers and movie-goers, but which must have been startling to Chrtiens early audience the flash forward, combined with a brisk cut-away. With very little warning, Chrtien has whisked the reader five years into the future and away from Gauvain, back to Perceval. The technique is doubly disorienting because, after this brief episode, the reader will shortly be sent back five years and dumped back into the Gauvain story.

64 In addition to this spatial and temporal disruption, there is also a sharp change in tone. The Perceval to whom the reader is reintroduced so abruptly hardly seems the same knight who was recently the darling of Arthurs 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 Percevals 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 Gauvains wanderings. It is a calculated jolt by which Chrtien 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 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. Chrtien

65 intends both Perceval and the reader to be awakened from oblivion and restored to mindfulness of necessary things. And while, in Chrtiens 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 Gauvains exploits. The memory of Percevals 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 readers reflection, delivering several successive shocks which reveal key themes that will guide the readers 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 Arthurs court: Thus he filled five years and never bethought himself of God (6202-03: Ensi les cinc anz anplea, / Conques 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-

66 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 Gauvains adventures have interrupted Percevals 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 Percevals 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) It is almost as if Chrtien makes these early adventures of Gauvain merely an illustrative footnote on Percevals unremarked five years, as if to say: For five years, Perceval engaged in the usual sort of knighterrantry. For examples, see Gauvain.

67 Whatever may have happened during those five years, it seems to have served no purpose in furthering Percevals quest, for he is no closer to learning whom the grail serves and why the lance bleeds. As he will confess to the hermit, Percevals 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 avint Que il par un desert aloit Cheminant, si com il soloit, De totes ses armes armez, Sa trois chevaliers ancontrez, Et avoec dames jus qua dis, Lor chies and lor chaperons mis, Et saloient trestuit a pi Et an langes et deschauci. (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.)

6330-31: Sire, fet il, bien a cinc anz / Que je ne soi ou ge me fui. (Sir, he said, Its a good five years since I have known where I was going.)
54

53

6333: Nonques puis ne fis se mal non. (Nor have I ever done anything but

ill.)

68 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 hermits 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 mothers death or the distress he had caused the Maiden of the Tent 55, 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
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.
55

69 who watched with approval as Perceval mused pleasantly on the image of his lady loves complexion upon the late snow, and shortly thereafter comported himself quite courteously before Arthurs 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 Percevals 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 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

70 may recall that Percevals 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 Percevals 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 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 Augustines 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

71 how our object guided us to itself, even while it remained hidden from us. (The Typology of Spiritual Growth 22-23) The Hermits 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: San ai puis e si grant duel / Que morz esse est mon vuel) since the day that he failed to ask the necessary questions at the Fisher Kings 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 penitents identifying himself as Perceval. Upon hearing this, the hermit tells 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,

72 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 mothers dying benediction, which has provided him divine protection and saved him from death and imprisonment. If Perceval was unmindful of his mothers 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, Percevals 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 branch of Percevals 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 lan 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.)

73 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 mothers 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 hermits 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 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 uncles ascetic manner of life until, in our last glimpse of him, he receives Holy Communion on Easter morn mout dignemant (6473).

In 6271-72, the penitents identify the hermit: Ne ne vit, tant par est sainz hon, / Se de la gloire de Deu non.

56

74 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 Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Kings health and realm, the answer to that 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

75 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 Percevals earlier deeds, but on those of Gauvain as well. Although the point is easily overlooked, when the narrator turns again to Gauvain, 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, Chrtien creates a more marked parallelism between the exploits of Perceval and those of Gauvain. The readers 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 readers perception of what he is reading; to jolt

76 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 lestoire, Senefie la vainne gloire Qui 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 Charit 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: Mes je proverai que li cuens Valt mialz que cist ne fist asez, Car il ot an lui amassez Toz les vices et toz les max Dont 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.) From the prologue: The left hand, so the story goes, signifies vainglory, which comes from false hypocrisy. Approaching Gornemants castle: The young man turned to the left As Per Nykrog notes regarding this, the beginning of Percevals first chivalrous adventure, Cela suffit dj pour nous avertir quil est dans la mauvaise voie (191).
58 57

78 The narrator goes on to enumerate the counts superior virtues: Li cuens est tex que il nescote Vilain gap ne parole estote, Et sil ot mal dire dautrui, Qui que il soit, ce poise lui. Li cuens aimme droite justise Et leaut et sainte Iglise, Et tote vilenie het, Sest plus larges que lan ne set, Quil done selonc levangile Sanz ypocrisye et sanz guile, Qui dit: Ne saiche ta senestre Le bien quant le fera la destre. Donc sachoiz bien de verit Que li don sont de charit Que li bons cuens Felipes done, Conques nelui nan areisonne Fors son franc cuer le debonere Qui li loe le bien a fere. Ne valt miax cil que ne valut Alixandres, cui ne chalut De charit ne de nul bien? (21-32, 51-56)
(The count is the sort who doesnt 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 Percevals pursuit of chivalry. 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

79 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 mothers 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 havent known where I was, and I havent 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 Gods approval. Despite the fact that his first glimpse of knights sparked in him a religious impulse to revere God, Percevals five year quest for perfection as a knight is, in fact, a long detour away from God. 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

80 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 Percevals 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.

Curiosity and the Will

Curiosity was the beginning of all sin St. Bernard of Clairvaux, The Steps of Humility and Pride

81

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 monks 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 step of pride.59 St. Bernard
See Richard Newhausers The Sin of Curiosity and the Cistercians (73) and Augustinian Vitium Curiositatis and its Reception (110-11).
59

82 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 tienne Gilson notes in La Thologie 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 souls salvation, and the path of curiosity, which leads into sin and all manner of vices: Nous sommes, en face de ces deux mthodes, comme devant la bifurcation initiale des deux routes (Gilson 182). These two diverging paths correspond

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.

60

83 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, Percevals 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 naloie Fors 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 vow not to rest until he completes his quest dooms him to constant,

84 restless searching. Only when he meets his hermit uncle and turns back to God will Percevals 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, Chrtien 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 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

85 Chrtien composed his romances the world of the romance had become an entity in itself. Chrtien saw that it must now be compared with reality (20). While all of Chrtiens 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 Arthurs 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 of Charity, for neither has much to do with the charitable motive of protecting the weak and defenseless.

86 Charity and Voluntas Propria In the prologue, Chrtien 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 Chrtien 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 propria, which wills nothing for anyone save itself, and voluntas communis, which is better known as Charity.61

Porro communis voluntas charitas est Saint Bernard, In tempore Resurrectionis, sermo II, 8; PL 183.286.

61

87 If we recognize that Percevals 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 chivalrys 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 Percevals 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, 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 mothers will. When the vaslet is first introduced, he is identified as the son of the widow

88 lady, and he is dutifully about his mothers 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 mothers 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 man anseignerai, Einz ferrai si tot le plus fort Dun des javeloz que je port Que ja naprochera vers moi Nus des alters, si con je croi. (119-24)
(But I will scorn this teaching, and indeed Ill not sign myself, but Ill strike the strongest one so fast with one of the javelins Im 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 mothers 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 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

89 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 mothers authority, much less for her wellbeing. 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 readers point of view and Percevals: 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 vaslets 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 mothers teaching and immediately complies with her advice that one should worship and adore God. It is this second instance, in which the vaslet obeys his mothers instruction, that makes him look foolish and comical, both to the party of knights and to the reader. It would seem that Chrtien is indicating not the boys disobedience to his mothers teaching, but his proclivity to ignore sound advice and to act upon his own will.

90 The comicality of the boys 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 mareisonez, Mes mout iroie volantiers Au roi qui fet les chevaliers, Et girai, cui quil an poist. (473-77, emphasis added)
(Give me something to eat, he said. I dont know what youre going on about, but Im very eager to go to the king who makes knights, and Ill 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 mothers instruction regarding proper 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

91 series of maternal permissions (it will be fine with me, I give you leave) and restrictions (I forbid you to go further, if youll stop for my sake),62 and she makes it clear that the initiative in the relationship should always remain with the pucele. The mothers 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 widows son is wont to use his javelins as offensive weapons (Ill strike the strongest of them with one of the javelins Im carrying), and his mothers desire to deprive him of them before he sets off suggests that she fears he will only get himself into trouble with them.63 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

bon miert et bel (535), vos doin gi / congi (537-38), and Le soreplus vos an defant (530-31). The futility of removing two while leaving one, and the dangerous potential of that one, was suggested by Percevals earlier comment to the knights in the wood when he remarked that any one of these three javelins is better than a single knights lance, because he can, with just one, kill as many as he likes, and do so from a distance (202-07).
63

62

92 man who prefers to do his own will, rather than show deference to the desires or well-being of another.

Knights of the Wilderness: Unbridled Willfulness

Einz vos beiserai, par mon chief, Fet li vaslez, cui quil soit grief (675-76)64

93

he following episode, Percevals 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 Percevals notice.

Perceval to the maiden of the tent: But Im going to kiss you, by my head, said the lad, No matter who it harms!(676-77).

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94 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 mothers 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 hasnt had his breakfast and he is hungry. Upon entering, however, he quickly forgets all thoughts of God when he sees a sleeping damsel. His mothers 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 sons 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. Instead of providing a veneer of good manners, the widow ladys

95 instructions, distorted by the boys 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 non65 but also a jeweled ring that he espies on her finger and forcibly wrenches from her hand. In his garbled memory of his mothers 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 selfrestraint 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 damsels hand suggest that only his ignorance prevents the scene from escalating to one of all-out rape 66. At any rate, his physical hunger for food soon distracts him from any lingering sexual impulses, and he falls greedily upon the meat pies and wine that he finds near the bed.
65

He kissed her, whether she wished it or not (690).

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 didnt think about it one way or the other).

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96 In a cursory reading, this shocking scene is rendered laughable by the boys 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 mothers chambermaids.) Two important aspects, however, prevent the attentive reader from dismissing this exchange as mere buffoonery. The first is the damsels 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 mothers case, her terror over her sons late return home may have seemed disproportionate to the danger suggested by the boys 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 widows panicked swoon upon

97 hearing her son pronounce the word chevalier may have seemed, at the moment, a ludicrous over-reaction. However, the widows

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 vaslets 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 maidens knight-companion and his outraged reaction against Percevals violation of her, quickly provides information that counteracts the readers tendency to excuse the ignorant youths actions as comically innocent gaffes. Just as Perceval simply ignored his mothers 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, as earlier, he abandons the abused woman without a backward glance. Yet, while the mothers 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 maidens anguished cries that she will suffer grievously because of the vaslets thoughtless abuse. As Perceval continues on his

98 way, the readers attention is detained at the tent until the damsels lover returns: Ensi remest cele plorant. Puis nala gueres demorant Que 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 knights 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 Welshmans 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.

99 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 womans trouble out of mind. The knights callousness toward his lady love is reminiscent of Percevals 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, Percevals 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 the jealous, selfcentered conduct of the knight suggest that the practice of chivalry will tend only to reinforce and codify his innate willful aggression. The roughmannered 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,

100 and the exchange that transpires between the knight and the pucele is the readers first view of how a knight treats a lady. It is significant that Perceval does not witness the knights 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 Percevals 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 maidens paramour violates chivalrys 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. 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 Arthurs 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

Perceval apparently models his own behavior closely on that of the knights he has met. We may note, for instance, that Perceval does not dismount, upon entering either the tent or Arthurs hall, because, as he says, The knights I met never dismounted (966-67).

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101 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 Arthurs 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 Arthurs 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 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

102 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 maidens paramour, later identified as li Orguilleus de la Lande, or the Proud 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 Arthurs castle, threatening Arthurs 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
The term is usually translated as heath.Greimas Dictionnaire de lancien franais gives the meaning of lande as contre boise. Perceval refers to the knights he met an la lande, i.e., in the Waste Forest near his mothers 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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103 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 chivalrys 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 maidens 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 rene an est antree, De grant duel et dire anflamee, An sa chanbre ou ele socit: Ne cuit pas, se Dex mait, 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 dont think shell ever come out of there alive.

104 The ludicrous excess of Guineveres 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 jaie Qui plus me het et plus mesmaie, Ma ci ma terre contredite, Et tant es fos que tote quite Dit quil 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 hell 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 quil an poist (477), he wrenched the ring from the maidens hand volsist ele ou non (690), and he eventually vows to bring his mother back to Biaurepere voile ele ou 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 nan ferai autre justise (812), a phrase that reverberates in Percevals determination to have the red armor (Et dahez ait qui

alters quiert!),

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105 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 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 Blancheflors castle and, after Percevals 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 mans glittering vermillion armor that he seems unaware of the mortal

858: And damn anyone who desires any other! The exclamation by the tent maidens 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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106 danger presented by the Red Knight. For the same reason, he later seems oblivious to the sarcastic malice that underlies Keus words when, after Perceval demands that Arthur grant him the Red Knights armor, Kay snidely exclaims: Amis, vos avez droit. Alez lui tolir orandroit Les armes, car eles sont voz. Ne feistes mie que soz Qant por ce venistes ici. (983-87)
(Friend, youre right! Go straightaway and seize those arms from him, theyre yours! You werent at all foolish when you came here to get them.)

Perceval, as ever, hears what he wants to hear and, ignoring Arthurs 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 anger, and that anger gets the Red Knight killed by a Welsh javelin. So instinctively does Perceval retaliate against the Red Knights thumping him with the butt of his lance, that it quickly becomes clear why Percevals 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 Arthurs kingdom
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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107 from a grave threat. However, by donning his victims 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 knights 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.

Knights of the Court: Vilenie Restrained

Cest lordre de chevalerie Qui 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
71

This is the order of chivalry, which should be without villainy.

108 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. Before Perceval, by virtue of Gornemants 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 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,
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 Arthurs 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 Knights 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).

109 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 Arthurs 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 errant Orguilleus (who, one suspects, roams about looking for trouble), Gornemants 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 Gornemants 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.

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110 Thus, although his

young protg 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 Percevals transition from rough bully to courtly knight. Many critics have considered this process of 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 Gornemants 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 Percevals natural aptitude for the martial aspects of knighthood, Gornemant is prepared to invest him formally with the order of chivalry, but Percevals speech and dress indicate that he lacks the social polish that would allow him to mix easily in

As Donald Maddox shows in The Arthurian Romances of Chrtien 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. 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 Percevals development as a knight is both limited and illusory.
74

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111 polite circles. The young mans superficial crudeness, however, belies an innate quality of character which seems to shine through his rough manner, as noticed by the members of Arthurs 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: se li vaslez est nices, Sest il espoir mout gentix hom, Et se ce li vient daprison Quil ait est 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 Arthurs 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 Percevals 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

112 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 Gods assistance, Perceval must refrain from idle chatter and from the constant references to his mother that make him sound naive. Percevals 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 the narrator will draw attention to Percevals inappropriate obsession with the prohibition against talking too much. The impression thus created is that Percevals 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 quil vos covaingne Combatre a aucun chevalier, Ice vos voel dire et proier:
1672-73: li est vis / Que ce est biens quil ansaigne (What he was instructed to do seemed good to him).
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113 Se vos an venez au desus, Que vers vos ne se puisse plus Desfandre ne contretenir, Einz lestuisse a merci venire, Qua escant ne lociz. Et gardez que vos ne soiez Trop parlanz ne trop noveliers: Nus ne puet estre trop parliers Que sovant tel chose ne die Quan li atort a vilenie; Et li saiges dit et retret: Qui trop parole pechi fet. Por ce, biau[s] frere, vos chasti De trop parler. Et si vos pri, Se vos trovez pucele ou fame, Ou soit dameisele ou soit dame, Desconselliee daunune rien, Conselliez la, si feroiz bien, Se vos consellier la savez Et 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 youll 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 mostier Proier Celui qui tot a fait Que de vostre ame merci ait Et quan cest siegle terren Vos gart come son cresten.

(Ill 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.)

114

At first glance, these two rules seem to correspond to the double law of Charity virtuous behavior toward ones 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 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 Percevals departure from Gornemants 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 Percevals 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. Percevals arrival at the besieged Biaurepere gives us ample opportunity to see these chivalrous principles in practice.

115 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 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 days ride away, languishes in famine and peril: Mout li ostel et mout joiant Vos fist, que il le sot bien faire Come prodom et deboneire, Puissanz et aeisiez et riches. Mes ceanz na 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, Ive
76

As Per Nykrog points out in Chrtien de Troyes: Romancier discutable (191-

116 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 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: preus, / Mout sainz hom et religeus).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
92), Gornmenants deficiencies as a knight and a gentleman are noticeable only in retrospect, when the reader realizes the prodhoms apparent detachment from his nieces 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.

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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117 offering any help. Again, the narrator creates a sharp contrast between an unhelpful knight and a desperate maiden: Si sandormi auques par tans, Quil nestoit de rien an espans. Mes sostesse pas ne respose Qui an sa chanbre estoit anclose. Cil dort a eise, et cele panse (1923-27)
(And he fell asleep quite promptly, for he hadnt 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 selfinterest 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 dshabille 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 aloser Li chevaliers, se fere lose, Conques cele or autre chose Ne vint plorer desor sa face,
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.
79

118 Que que ele antandant li face, Fors por ce quele li meist An corage que il anprest La batille, sil lose anprandre Por 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.)

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 loci et conquier, Vostre drurie require An guerredon quel soit moie: Autres soldees nan prandroie. (2083-86) 80
(If I kill and conquer [your enemy], I demand that your love-service be mine, as recompense; Ill 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

This last phrase, echoing as it does the Proud Knights Ja nan ferai autre justise, sounds more like an ultimatum than a courteous appeal.

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119 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. 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? Percevals 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, Percevals following the approved form of battle probably saves Anguingerons 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

120 taught, drawing out the combat until the wounded Anguingueron falls under Percevals repeated blows and begs for mercy. Perceval at first refuses, but then remembers that his mentor 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 Percevals prowess: Biax amis dolz, Or ne soiez pas si estolz81 Que vos naiez merci de moi. Je vos creant bien et otroi Que ja en est li miaudres tuens Et chevaliers is tu mout buens, Mes non pas tant quil fust cre Dome qui ne lest ve Et qui nos conest andeus Que tu par tes armes toz seus Masses an bataille mort. Mes se je le temoing tan port Que tu maies darmes oltr Vean mes genz, devant mon tr, Ma parole an sera cree Et tenors an sera see, Conques chevaliers not greignor. (2207-25)
(Fair sweet friend, now dont 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 hadnt 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

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 Chrtien 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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my own tent, my word will be believed and your fame will made known, greater than any knight has ever had.)

121

Anguingueron is as crafty in his manipulation of Perceval as the besieged maiden was: both appeal to Percevals sense of self-interest by 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: Percevals 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. Percevals 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 Arthurs court, and thus fears no violent reprisals there, for he willingly agrees to this arrangement.

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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122 Sins of Speech In the end, Percevals decision to send Anguingueron to Arthurs court could hardly have served the cause of his fame better. When first Anguingueron and, shortly thereafter, his master Clamadeu arrive at Arthurs court, Arthur immediately recognizes in their descriptions of the red-armored knight who defeated them the brash young Welshman who so effortlessly liberated Arthurs realm from an imminent threat. By the time the Orguilleus de la Lande arrives a few days afterward, defeated by the same young knight, Arthurs 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 Percevals conquests, he berates Keu for alienating such a promising young knight through his rash and imprudent speech. Misuse of his tongue seems to be Keus 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 Arthurs court, as attested early in the narrative by Arthurs rebuke of Keu after he maliciously urges the Welsh boy to go seize the Red Knights 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,

123 Sest il espoir mout gentix hom, E se ce li vient daprison Quil ait est a vilain mestre, Ancor puet prez et saiges estre. Vilenie est dautrui gaber 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 doesnt 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 Percevals rude behavior, and once to describe Keus 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 Chrtien 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), Chrtien specifies one of the vices that Philip shuns: The count does not heed vulgar gossip or arrogant speech 83 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
Here Chrtien uses the phrase parole estote, which as mentioned in an earlier note, may be rendered either foolish or haughty speech.
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124 is concerned about his reputation and others opinions of him; therefore it is understandable that he would pay heed to gossip about himself and others. Philip, however, not only refrains from such vulgar practices himself, but doesnt like to hear of others engaging in them, either. Gossip and arrogant talk are counted among the tote vilenie that Philip hates. Arthurs 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 male Dotent trestuit, si li font rote, Quil nest pas sages qui ne dote, Ou soit a gas ou soit a certes, Felenies trop descovertes. Ses felons gas trop redotoient Trestuit cil qui leanz estoient, Conques 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 prise Estoit ele bien respassee, Mes obless ne passee La honte navoit ele mie, Que mout es malvs qui oblie San li fet honte ne leidure: Dolors trespasse et honte dure An home viguereus et roide, Et el malvs 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 cowardly: pain passes away and shame endures in a vigorous, hardy man, but in a coward it grows cold and dies.)

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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. Keus vile insults are condemned as vilenie (997: Vilenie est dautrui 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 Arthurs hall on horseback to the deliberate maliciousness of Keus 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 charcoalburner 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 persons 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 Arthurs golden goblet, committed an oevre villainne et laide so serious that Guinevere was on the point of

126 suicide and the king was distracted from the imminent threat to his kingdom.

Chivalrys 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 it applicable clearer sense why of socially

unacceptable

behavior,

becomes

Gornemants

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 knights 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 is) in

127 terms of self-interest: advertising ones prowess by sparing defeated opponents who can attest to that prowess; protecting ones reputation by avoiding loose talk that might cause offense; increasing ones 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.

128 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 qua la cort na atandu Ou li rois et li chevalier Estoient asis au mangier. La sale fu par terre aval, Et li vaslez antre a cheval An la sale qui mout fu lee Et longue et de marbre pavee. Et li rois Artus fu asis Au chief dune 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, Nil ne set le quel il salut, Que le roi miene conut, Tant quYonez contre li vint Qui an sa main un costel tint. (880-96)
(He didnt stop until he reached court, where the king and the knights were 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 didnt know whom to greet for he certainly didnt recognize the king until Yonet came toward him, holding a knife in his hand.)

129 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 Knights rude entrance into the hall, when he brashly demanded Arthurs 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 kings 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 Percevals inadvertent act of salvation in killing the Red Knight is undercut by the fact that he has simply done what none of Arthurs knights bothered to do, i.e., respond to the Red Knights 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 Arthurs 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 siege for many months; Gornemant may also be one of the knights

130 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 cest li rois Artus liez; Et de ses conpaignons iriez Qui as chastiax se departirent, La ou lemeillor sejor virent, Nil ne set comant il or va: De cest li diax que li rois a. (832-38)
(The King of the Isles has been vanquished, and about this King Arthur is glad; but hes angry about his companions who have left for their castles, where they find the stay more pleasant, and he doesnt know how they are faring: thats 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 Arthurs troubles, for when Perceval claims that Arthur has knighted him, Gornemant replies, So help me God, I shouldnt have thought that he would remember such things at this time. Id think he would be occupied with other things than making knights84; 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 continuously commits hurtful sins of speech, in violation of one of the three cardinal rules of chivalrous behavior. The members of the court seem

1352-55: Se Dex bien me doint, / Ne cuidoie cor an cest point / De tel chose li sovenist. / Del cuidoie quil li tenist / Au roi que de chevalier faire.

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131 to fear Keus insults more than they would an armed opponent. Although Arthur complains bitterly of the cost of Keus 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 kings favorites, as we learn after Keus 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 lavoit tandre / Et mout lamoit an son corage, / li anvoie un mire mout sage ). Keus 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 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

See Saccones La Parola di Dio e la parola di Chrtien nel Conte du Graal: La Vera storia di Perceval for one possible explanation of Arthurs tolerance of Keu. Saccone draws interesting parallels between Arthurs relationship to his favored underlings and the Biblical account of King Davids indulgence of his children.

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132 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 Knights testimony to Percevals 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 ma si bien a gr servi Que par mon seignor saint Davi Qu lan aore et prie en Gales, Ja mes an chanbres ne an sales Deus nuiz pres a pres ne girrai Jus quatant que je le verrai Sil es vis, an mer ou an terre, Einz movrai ja por laler 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, Ill never again lie in the same chamber or hall two nights in a row until I see him, if hes alive on sea or on land. Rather, Ill 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. Arthurs quest, however, seems quite silly, because the 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: Lus que li rois ot ce jur Si furent tuit asser

133 Quil ni avoit que de laler. Qui lors vest dras anmaler Et covertors et oreilliers, Cofres anplir, trosser somiers, Et chargier charretes et chars Quil n an mainent mie a eschars Tantes et pavellons et trez: Uns clrs sages et bien letrez Ne post escrire an un jor Tot le hernois et tot lator Qui fu aparelliez tantost. Ensi con por aler an lost Se part li rois de Carlion, Si le sivent tuit li baron; Nes pucele ni remaint Que la rene ne li maint Por 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 didnt skimp on tents and pavilions and shelters: a wise and learned clerk wouldnt 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. The lasting impression made by Arthur and his court is one of utter frivolity: they greet Percevals 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

134 purpose than to vary the scenery; and even Arthurs 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 Arthurs 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, 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 Percevals progressive growth in

135 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 lhom: Memory, Identity, and Self-Knowledge

N il nest mervoille, ce mest vis, San ne set ce quan na apris; Mes mervoille est quan[t] an naprant Ce que lan voit et ot sovant. (506-08)86

s we saw in the previous chapter, Percevals 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 navet and ignorance at the beginning of the story mark him as a comical figure and earn the readers amused indulgence of his foolish actions. As the romance progresses, the young Welshmans navet gives way to social sophistication and professional prowess, and the readers indulgence turns to approval, even admiration. However, one important aspect of Percevals ignorance is not dispelled by his growth in courtly and chivalric

The mothers fretful words to her son as he sets off to become a knight: Its no wonder, it seems to me, if someone doesnt know what he hasnt learned; but the surprising thing is when someone doesnt learn what he has often seen and heard.

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137 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. Percevals 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 selfknowledge in her essay, "The Mystical Theology of Bernard de Clairvaux and the Meaning of Chrtien 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. Pauls letters to the Corinthians and the Galatians, [Bernard] warns against being too concerned with worldly matters at the expense of spiritual ones, for one can only reap what
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-mme de Socrate 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 selfknowledge) and was extensively developed by twelfth-century writers, including Richard of Saint-Victor, William of Saint-Thierry, and Bernard of Clairvaux. Bogdanow takes her lead from Lesley Topsfield, who in Chrtien de Troyes: A Study of the Arthurian Romances first noted correspondences between the Contes del Graal and Bernards spiritual doctrine.
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138 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 Pauls second letter to the Corinthians is the same one alluded to in Chrtiens 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 Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Maddox calls specular encounters. In Fictions of Identity in Medieval France,

139 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 Chrtiens romances, this kind of episode frequently marks the crucial moment in the

protagonists 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 Erecs case, the speculum is the opinion of others, but in other cases it might be objective information such as the revelation of a characters 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 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;

140 second, that they so seldom have the customary effect of provoking reflection or changing the course of Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Mla 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 heros gaze takes in our desire (Perceval 257). Thus, through the frequent use of episodes that hold up a revealing mirror to Percevals life and actions, Chrtien constantly reminds us that we as readers are implicated with Perceval in a quest for identity and self-knowledge.

You who have the name knight

Estes vos Dex? Nenil, parfoi. Qui estes dont? Chevaliers sui.

141 Ainz mes chevalier ne conui, Fet li vallez, ne nul nan vi Nonques mes parler nan 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 knights 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. 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 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
Percevals exchange with the knight in the wood: Are you God? Nay, by faith! Who are you then? Im a knight. Ive 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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142 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 youths 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 fathers 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 fathers 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 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.

143 For the reader familiar with Chrtiens earlier romances, this is a very odd introduction to the romances hero, if such the widows son is. Of course, it is not yet clear that this young rustic will be the central figure of the romance, for often enough Chrtien has chosen to delay the introduction of his hero until the knights relation to Arthurs 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; Yvains adventures do not commence until his cousin Calogrenant has recounted his own experience at the

marvelous spring. These precedents might suggest that the widows son is of no direct consequence, a bit player used to set the scene for the heros entrance. Only when it becomes apparent, as it shortly does, that the widows son is indeed the tales central figure will the reader sense just how odd the heros 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 Chrtien, outside the context of Arthurs court, the poets tactic is as purposeful as the widowed mothers, in removing Perceval as far as possible from 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

144 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 Yvains 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 widows son has grown up knowing himself not as Perceval, son of Sir X, a knight of Pendragons court, 90 but only as fair son, fair brother, fair lord. 91 These familiar appellations, however, seem to contribute little to the youths sense of himself. That

In point of fact, the reader will never learn the name of Percevals father, mother, or any other family member. The importance of family identity is not framed in references to fame or worldly honor.
91 See Pickens and Kibler, Appendix I, for Percevals account of his names. This interpolated passage appears in only two of the surviving manuscripts, and thus is not included in Pickenss reconstructed edition of the now-lost Alpha text, but in fact it reflects the usage found in the authentic portions: we hear his mother call him biax filz several times, the chief knight himself addresses him as biaus frere, and the field hands address him as sire. Mla 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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145 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 navet 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 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 peoples 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

146 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 readers esteem, for the reader, unlike the young Welshman, realizes that the boys 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 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
92

What Leslie Topsfield says of his behavior later at Grail Castle seems equally

147 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 mothers 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 mothers 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 mothers instruction to worship God, and had thrown himself down in prostrate 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 ore Les plus beles choses qui sont Qui 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! Didnt 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.)

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).

148 In one breath, the boy rejects both his mothers authority and Gods 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 mothers 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 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:

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 quil 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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149 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: Li vaslez antant mout petit A ce que sa mere li dit. A mangier, fet il, me donez. Ne sai de coi mareisonez, Mes mout iroie volantiers Au roi qui fet les chevaliers, Et girai, cui quil an poist. (471-76)
(The boy hardly listens to what his mother is telling him. Give me something to eat, he says, I dont know what youre talking about, But I would very willingly go to the king who makes knights, and I will go, no matter whom it displeases.)

150 Neither his mothers desperate pleas nor his familys 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 grievous gaffes, advises him always to ask the names of his companions because par le non conuist an lome (544: by the name one knows the man). His mothers 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
As further events shall show, the foolish youth retains a clear but unreflective memory of his first encounter with knights, which he uses as a rigid template for his own behavior. In Arthurs 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, Ill never get down. (966-69).
94

151 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 boys lineage, particularly since he intends to present himself for knighthood without credentials. To the reader familiar with the ways of the court, the boys 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 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 boys lineage, the reader does not. Long before the laughing maiden prophesies the boys 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 mothers

152 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 boys family background while keeping the youth himself effectively ignorant of it has the effect of heightening the readers 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 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 (Mla 258); ironically, however, that same reader, once informed of the boys family legacy, is likely to embrace him in the role of knight and follow his adventures with enthusiastic approval.
This anticipation will never be fully satisfied, for the youths 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 boys true identity and will accept, rather, the new identity he creates for himself as chevalier.
95

153 Thus, by revealing the boys family background but concealing his name, the narrator heightens the readers sense of anticipation and leads him down the left-hand path of romance that leads to a tale of worldly honor and vainglory. The boys anonymity also acts as a red herring to attract the readers 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 widows account, suggesting that the young bumpkin will eventually be revealed to be the scion of a noteworthy chivalrous line. Attentive readers, however, will not fail to recognize that the mothers 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 mothers 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.

As noted earlier, this ploy is strengthened by the mothers advice to her son to inquire after his companions names because par le non conuist an lome.)

96

154 More beautiful than God This choice is not inconsequential but rather, as Fanni Bogdanow points out, it lies at the root of Percevals failure as a knight. Analyzing Percevals actions in the light of Bernards teachings on the importance of self-knowledge as the basis of all virtue, Bogdanow finds that Chrtiens portrayal of Perceval corresponds closely to Bernards 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 Percevals 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 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 (Mla 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 Chrtien, 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 Chrtiens own century by spiritual writers, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux, who recognized self-knowledge to be fundamental to the life of virtue

155 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 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 mothers 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 anseignier Que por aus se doit an seigneier; Mes cest anseign desdignerai, Qu ja voir ne man seignerai, Einz ferrai si tot le plus fort Dun des javeloz que je port Que ja naprochera vers moi Nus 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 Ill not cross myself; rather, Ill strike the strongest of them all with one of the javelins Im carrying so that none of the others will approach me, so I believe.) Bernards 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.
97

156 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 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). Percevals interest in the knights at first is simply curiosity, the first step of pride, which, as Bernard notes, may

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.

98

157 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 Percevals 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 ones by natural right and while receiving benefits to usurp the benefactors glory. (On Loving God 97; II.4) This arrogance arises out of Percevals imperfect knowledge of himself, which is, as we see here, closely connected with his ignorance of God.
99 We may recall that Percevals appreciation of the knights 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 nan porroie / Ne ja mes aprs ne corroie (271-76: Lord knight, may God keeps the hinds and stags from such hauberks, for I wouldnt be able to kill any, nor would I ever hunt them again.) He seems to view the knights as particularly wellequipped animals.

158 In Augustinian terms, we may say that the Welsh youth possesses memoria sui only in its most basic, unreflective state: i.e., he is selfconscious 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 Augustines 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 childs mind may be thought to know 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: Chrtien 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.

159 Youll do everything rudely By the time Perceval leaves his mothers house, Chrtien has firmly established this dangerous discrepancy between appearance and reality, made graver than it might have been by his mothers 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, chivalrys 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 shining knight rather than that of the impoverished refugee. His mother, however, is deeply ambivalent about her sons ambition still wishing to protect him, yet realizing that he is headstrong and undeterred. The veve dames 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

160 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 narrators 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, sil poist estre). This suit of clothes is apparently the mothers way of extending the protective obscurity of their secluded retreat in the Gaste Forest soutainne, as if to say to the world, Hes just a backward boy, dont 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:

Ironically, by removing two javelins and leaving him with one, his mother actually transforms him into a caricature of a knight with a lance.

100

161 Mal seroiz afeitiez del tot, Nil nest mervoille, ce mest vis, San ne set ce quan na apris; Mes mervoille est quan[t] an naprant Ce qu lan voit et ot sovant. (504-08)
(Youll be awkward at everything, nor is it any wonder, I think, for a person doesnt know what he hasnt learned; but the wonder is when someone doesnt 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 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 sil 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: dont take advantage of women, be careful in choosing your friends, and dont 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

162 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 his Welshman mother so will reject the sociallyand

unacceptable

identity

carefully

constructed

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 fui Chis ta mere mout lonc termine: Je sui ta germainne cosine Et tu es mes cosins germains. (3562-74)101

ritics often cite Percevals sojourn with Gornemant as one of three key moments of instruction that mark stages in his

development, the first being his mothers parting advice and the third the hermits instruction assigned as penance. They assert that these three key moments indicate a gradual but steady development of Percevals character: the mothers advice is that directed toward an ignorant child; Gornemants is the instruction given to a new knight; the hermits finally adds a religious dimension, like a final coat of

The words of Percevals cousin: I know you better than you do me, for you dont know who I am. I was brought up together with you for a long time, in your mothers house: I am your first cousin and you are my first cousin.

101

163 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 tutelage marking the vaslets 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 Percevals 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 Percevals selfknowledge; 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

Madeleine Cosman even suggests that Gornemants instruction is a necessary corrective to the mothers defective teaching and blames the mother for Percevals literal-mindedness. I would argue that the blame lies with Perceval, in his selfish and selective retention of both his mothers and Gornemants teaching.

102

164 character. The first we have already examined: his mothers 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 hermits chapel, where a whole network of familial relationships and personal truths is exposed. In both these series of episodes reflecting (or seeming to reflect) Percevals development, his mothers home in the Waste Forest and his uncles 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 Gornemants 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 mans life, the central episode reveals him to be a wretch (cheitis), not only guilty of contributing to the devastation of the Rich Fishermans realm and the suffering of many widows and

165 orphans by his refusal to ask needful questions, but also personally responsible for his own mothers death. Perceval readily accepts Gornemants pronouncement that he is now truly a knight, and proceeds to act as one, yet he reacts not at all to the weeping damsels accusation that he should call himself Perceval 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 mothers 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. Percevals 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 Percevals 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.

166 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 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 bessi, / Ne por ce na son duel lessi). 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 aunts 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.

167 Both the participants of this catechism seem well-rehearsed in their recital, with Percevals answers coming as rapidly and unhesitatingly as the maidens questions, so that when she asks, Comant avez vos non, amis? he answers without a moments pause, Percevax li Galois. Perceval the Welshman The narrator assures us that Perceval guesses his name (3540: devine), although he didnt know if he spoke the truth or not. But he spoke the truth and didnt know it (3540-43). This statement is so ludicrous as to defy credence, hardly more credible than the narrators assertion that the youths 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

168 not in an act of deliberate rumination, but rather returns in an inadvertent belch of memory.103 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 narrators 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 heros name might in fact be another instance of Chrtiens 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
103 Philippe Mnard, in La Rvlation du nom pour le hros du Conte du 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 Chrtien uses this term, Mnards own explanation of the use of devine is equally unconvincing: i.e., that Chrtien, wishing to reveal gradually Percevals 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 problme technique, Mnard suggests, Chrtien prtend donc que son personnage a lintuition de son nom. Sur les conditions de cette dcouverte lauteur glisse (58). Despite the shortcomings of this explanation, Mnards article presents a useful survey of theories concerning this troublesome passage and offers some interesting insights into Chrtiens use of family connections in the story of Perceval.

Fanni Bogdanow makes the important observation that Chrtien, 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).

104

169 boys identity in the mothers account of the family history and her axiomatic teaching that by the name one knows the man105; finally, in asserting that the vaslet does not remember but rather divines his true name, the narrator brings the readers anticipation to a climax and focuses all attention upon the new revelation. This masterful sleight-ofhand has consistently bamboozled critics into believing that the boys 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 boys 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 Chrtien hoped to achieve, i.e., that of distraction from what is truly revealed when the young knight exclaims, Perceval the Welshman.

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. See Sargent-Baurs Le jeu des noms for a thorough discussion of names, their concealment and revelation, in this romance.
106

105

170 Perceval is generally taken as the important portion of his selfidentification: 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 antreset Que Galois son tuit par nature Plus fol que bestes an pasture: Cist est ausi com une beste. Fos est qui delez lui sareste, Sa 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. Anyones a fool to tarry beside him, if he doesnt 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 peoples 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 mamant, Qua rien nule que li demant Ne respont il onques a droit, Einz demand de quan quil voit Comant a non et quan an fet. (235-241)

(My lord, what is this Welshman telling you? He doesnt know all the rules, said the lord, so help me God, for he never answers a single thing that hes asked straight out. Instead, he asks about everything he sees what its called and what you do with it.)

171

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-reproach and irony

in his blurting out that he is Percevax li galois.

107

172 It seems that he is

not simply identifying his country of origin, but

rather saying, Im

Perceval the Idiot! Perceval the dolt who doesnt know the rules of polite behavior! Perceval who, because he doesnt 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 didnt know any better. Perceval the Wretch In the end, the young knights calling himself Percevax li Galois is a moment of anticlimax, quickly overshadowed by the maidens

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 cousins rebuke as an accusation of a social, rather than a moral, fault. Ironically, if he really had been acting like the nave galois he once was, he would not have hesitated to ask about the bleeding lance and luminous grail.
108

107

reaction to his name, which reveals more than the name itself.

109

173 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 dont 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 is or mesavantureus Qant tu tot ce nas demand, Que mout esses amand Le boen roi qui est maheigniez, Qu toz est regaaigniez Ses manbres et terre tenist, Et si granz biens en avenist! Mes or saches que grant ennui En avandra toi et autrui. Por le pechi, ce saches tu, De ta mere test avenue, Quele est morte de duel de toi. (3550-60)

As Mnard notes in La Rvlation du nom, perhaps the most significant result of the revelation of the name Perceval is that it sparks recognition in his family members. Chrtien carefully conceals Percevals 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.

109

(How unlucky you are now that you didnt 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.)

174

Not only does she reveal the grave cost of his failure, to himself and others, but in the same breath gives news of his mothers death, another evil attributable to him. And lest he doubt how grave those evils are, she elaborates: Ne ne me poise mie mains De ce quensi test mesche Que tu nas del graal se Quan an fet et ou lan le porte Que de ta mere qui est morte, Ne quil fet de ce[st] chevalier Que jamoie 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 mothers death (3586: Felon conte mavez cont!), 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

175 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 mothers demise little more than an inconvenience which causes him to revise his travel plans. He also seems to assume that his cousins 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 naloie Fors por li que veoir voloie? Autre voie mestuet tenir, Et se vos voleiez venire Avoec moi, jel voldroie bien, Que cist ne vos valdra mes rien Qui ci gist morz, jel vos plevis. Les morz as morz, les vis as vis. (3587-96)
(And since she has been put in the ground, what should I go on seeking, since I didnt 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, Id 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.)

176 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 Percevals 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. Chrtien 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 selfreproach to his naming himself Perceval the Welshman. By the time he arrives at the place where Arthurs court is stationed, however, whatever taint of self-reproach or social failure might have clung to that 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 Arthurs kingdom by his impulsive murder

177 of the threatening Red Knight and who, as the new Red Knight, sent so many hostages to Arthurs court to vindicate the laughing maidens predictions of his greatness. Perceval, dressed in Gauvains clothes, is received at court as another Gauvain, the finest knight of Arthurs realm. He is, to all eyes, at the acme of chivalric success, fted at Arthurs 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 chauve Derriers et devant chevelue. Maudahez ait qui te salue Et qui nul bien tore ne prie, Que tu ne la retenis mie, Fortune, quant tu lencontrast. (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

The maiden goes on to describe in some detail the exact consequences of Percevals failure to ask appropriate questions about the bleeding lance and the grails recipient. What the cousin had left unspecified,
The hideous damsel refers to the proverb that one must seize Fortune by 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.
110

178 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 Damsels 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 courts 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 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 Damsels invitations to adventure, Perceval appears to believe that he can vindicate himself by acting in a similar way. Ignoring the

179 Hideous Damsels 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 Percevals 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 cousins inconsolable grief, he suggested the practical response of avenging her lovers death,111 so by responding to the Hideous Damsels denunciation as if it were a challenge to take up a new adventure, Perceval acts not as a 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
111

Another death for which Perceval is (indirectly) responsible.

180 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. Percevals pledge to search ceaselessly for lance and grail is really just the standard knights response to a challenge. Yet with that single phrase, tot el, the narrator deflects the readers attention from the utter futility of Percevals vow to make good his earlier failure. Most critics take at face value what the narrator says and assume that Percevals quest is somehow significantly different than the others, but there seems to be little reason to believe this, other than the narrators 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 narrators assertion that somehow Percevals quest is different, asserting: This is a further step in Percevals 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) 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, Percevals 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 Damsels denunciation of Perceval and her

181 invitation to adventure for the other knights, Chrtien emphasizes that Percevals reaction to the Hideous Damsels 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, Percevals 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 Percevals fault, if the Hideous Damsel is correct in her assertion that Percevals chance will not come again.113 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 Percevals situation which will then cause him to alter his course of action. The narrators assertion that Perceval has pledged himself to a quest that is tot el suggests that this is exactly what happens, and Topsfields contention that Perceval reflects and chooses indicates

Chrtien certainly does not endorse trial by combat as a method of deciding guilt, as its use in Yvain makes clear. See Donald Maddoxs The Arthurian Romances of Chrtien de Troyes: Once and Future Fictions for an excellent analysis of Chrtiens critique of this and other courtly conventions. 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.
113

112

182 that Topsfield has read this episode as a specular one. Closer attention, however, reveals that this is merely illusion, more of the narrators 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 cousins revelation held up a mirror to Percevals 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 mothers death and the languishment of the Fisher King and his realm. Why then, we might ask, does he respond to the Hideous Damsels public accusation that he is responsible for the suffering of the Fisher Kings realm, when he completely ignored his cousin telling him much the same thing? Several factors may be important. First, the ugly maidens denunciation, delivered amidst the courts celebration of his arrival, is an affront to Percevals 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

183 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 cousins accusation immediately out of mind. The Hideous Damsels public denunciation, however, strikes him as a call to chivalrous action, and he jumps at the chance to redeem himself in the courts eyes. Yet even though Perceval acts as if the Damsels 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 narrators insistence that Perceval intended to ask about the lance and grail at a later time, the Hideous Damsel emphasizes that Percevals guilt lies in the deferment of his questions: Mout est malereus qui voit Si bel tans que plus ne covaigne, Satant ancor que plus viax vaigne. Ce est tu li malereus Qui ves quil fu tans et leus De parler et si te tas! Asez grant loisir en es! En mal er tant te tesses ... (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 )

184 In just a few lines, the Hideous Damsel emphasizes at least five times that it was Percevals procrastination that caused the trouble, underscoring her assertion that hell 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 pechi, ce saches tu, / De ta mere test 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 cousins private assurance that his failure was due to a sin, he might have taken the remedial route of self-examination and repentance. The fruitless outcome of his quest is due, to an important degree, to Percevals 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 clamer Et 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

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.

114

185 sense of crisis provoked by Percevals 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 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, (104142).115 Perceval has wandered long and far since Arthurs fool first
This is what Arthurs 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
115

186 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 Arthurs 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 mothers information about the family heritage and his cousins accusation of his guilt both in the death of his mother and in the continued desolation of the Grail Kingdom. Percevals chosen identity as knight has been
all the lordship of knighthood). 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.
116

187 affirmed not by his own inward judgment of himself but by the approval afforded him by others: Gornemants acknowledgement of his mastery of arms, the grateful acclaim of Blancheflor and her rescued city, the celebratory reception of Arthurs 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 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 Fishermans 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 Percevals 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

188 imagine those two households lying at opposite extremes of the same great, solitary forest where people seek refuge from the ravages of chivalrys 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 worldly cares as they devote their lives to spiritual pursuits, a practice that was miniaturized and made accessible to ordinary laypeople through the Churchs observation of Lent. Both these practices, however, have their roots in the Gospel account of Christs triumph over the devils 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 Percevals 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

189 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 Percevals 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 mothers house. Yet the two episodes are not duplicates but rather inverse reflections: here, Perceval plays the role of the armed knight who startles the humblyclad 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 mothers house, and now, as he approaches his uncles dwelling, he is clothed only in humility, entering the chapel naked of arms, weeping, and on his knees.

190 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, Chrtien ties both these kinds of

reconciliation to Percevals 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 chevaliers Lareste et dit: Biax sire chers, Don ne creez vos Jhesu Crist Qui la novele loi escrist Et la dona as crestens? Certes il nest reisons ne biens Darmes 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 Percevals 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 knights armor, but now the tables are turned. He himself is the

191 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 knights 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 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: / Cest lordre 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 festes? / Que demandastes? que questes? 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 crestens puisse feire / Qui ben voelle a Damedeu pleire (6278-80: The greatest duty that any Christian can do who truly wishes to please God).

192 From the time of Gornemants 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 (619394), 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 Damsels assertion that his failure at Grail Castle was essentially a failure to act, while he ignored his cousins 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 hermits 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

193 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 the important element missing from Percevals practice of chivalry. At the hermits 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 Percevals 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 Gornemants castle, and he does this by being reconciled to God and to his family. Recalling Chivalry Percevals sojourn with Gornemant marked one of the three teaching episodes that many critics have identified as being structurally significant, the first being his mothers advice before his departure, and the last being the penance prescribed by the hermit. As we have already seen, Perceval ignores most of his mothers teaching, and what he does retain he misinterprets. The same is true of his

194 reception of Gornemants instruction, as testified by his disastrous silence before the Grail procession. Yet it is possible that, once again, Chrtien, in emphasizing that Perceval misunderstood Gornemants advice against garrulity, employed misdirection to distract the reader from the rest of Gornemants instruction. After giving Perceval his spurs and sword, Gornemant declared that he was 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 Gornemants advice echoes what Percevals 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 readers 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.

195 Now, however, at the hermits chapel, Gornemants 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 evoke earlier superlatives describing the order of chivalry in general (the highest order God ordained) and, in particular, Percevals prophesied destiny to become the one who shall have all the lordship of chivalry. In their original context, both the laughing maidens prophecy of Percevals greatness and Gornemants 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 hermits 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 Gornemants commendation of knighthood. Earlier in the same passage, James advises:

196 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 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 prologues 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 (1820: 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 prologues sown word of romance and the sown word of Christs 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 hermits consoil, and the next verse suggests that Perceval may finally take to heart and act upon the hermits 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

197 orphans, and to be diligent in the worship of God, Percevals willing acceptance of his penance suggests that he will, finally, become a doer of the word, and not a hearer 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

198 conventional, or vainglorious, knight i.e., one who depends upon 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 anz Que je ne soi ou ge me fui, Ne Deu namai ne ne le crui, Nonques 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 ait De lame de son pecheor. Sire, chis le Roi Pescheor Fui une foiz, et vi la lance Don li fers sainne sanz dotance, Et de cele gote de sanc Que a la pointe del fer blanc Vi pandre, rien nan demandai: Onques puis certes namandai. Et del graal que ge i vi Ne soi pas cui lan an servi ... (6330-46)
(Sir, he said, Its been a good five years since Ive known where I was, nor have I loved God or believed in Him, and Ive 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; Ive 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 Damsels 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 years

199 of trying to find the grail and lance again seem to confirm the Hideous Damsels 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: San ai puis e si grant duel Que morz esse est mon vuel, Et Damedeu an oblai, Ne puis merci ne li crai Ne ne fis rien que ge sesse Par coi merci avoir esse. (6347-52)
(And since then Ive suffered such sorrow that I might have wished I were dead. And Ive 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:

200 Frere, mout ta ne Uns 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 che Au chief del pont devant la porte, Et de ce[st] duel fu ele morte. Por le pechi que tu en as Tavint que tu ne demandas De la lance ne del graal, Si tan 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 hermits reaction to Percevals 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 mothers dying prayer has protected him from suffering even greater harm, including imprisonment and death. What is more, although the hermit clearly labels Percevals 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 ses, / Cui lan an sert, fol san es.) The cost of that folly was that Perceval did not learn that

201 his own uncle was served from the grail, the brother of both the hermit and his own mother, and that his host was that mans own son, Percevals 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 hermits 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 mothers 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 selfconsciousness 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 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

202 agreement to adopt his uncles 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 uncles face, he finally recognizes himself in that family resemblance. Percevals 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 Augustines 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 Percevals 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 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

203 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 droit Ensi con nos somes venu Tex antresaignes i femes Por ce que nus nesgarast (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: Percevals quest for perfection in knighthood, and the readers journey into the meaning of the romance, which in many ways parallels Percevals own progress toward chivalric perfection. From the very first lines of the prologue, Chrtien 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 Percevals 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-

The penitents reply to Perceval when he asks them the way to the hermits 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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205 hand path of self-serving vainglory. In a very real sense, Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Percevals 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 told that what he had heard made him weep (6281-82: Ce que Percevaux

206 o ot / Le fist plorer). The shock for the reader is not so much the news imparted by the penitents as it is Percevals 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. Percevals reaction seems not only excessive but out of character. This is not the Perceval we thought we knew.

The Way to the Hermits Chapel

Ce que Percevax o ot Le fist plorer, et si li plot Que au saint home alast parler. (6281-83)118

hen last we saw him, Perceval was about to set off from Arthurs 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 Arthurs 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 We know Perceval the successful knight. Even the additional information that

What Perceval had heard made him weep, and he wished to go speak to the holy man. We have already seen that the narrator prefers to skip over unnecessary details, e.g. in the description of Percevals dinner with Gornemant, where he simply notes that they had plenty to eat and drink (1546-48).
119

118

207 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 Percevals 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 woods 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 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 days significance and the custom of penitence are explained to him, what

208 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 mothers death and who has never shown any emotion other than impulsive anger. Even the penitent knights 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 Percevals tears show that he is not the man he was. The narrator, here as elsewhere, does not describe Percevals interior state, either directly or indirectly. Although he says that Perceval was so tormented in his heart that he didnt 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 Percevals heart, such as those in The Knight with the Lion that describe Yvains enamorment with Laudine, nor is there even an exterior monologue such as the one in which Enid reveals her concern over her husband Erecs dereliction 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
See Lionel Friedmans 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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209 the tears appear suggests what that interior state is, for Percevals 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 genoiz Tantost com antre an la chapele, Et li bons hom a lui lapele Que mout le vit sinple et plorant, Et jus ques au manton colant Leve des ialz li degotoit. Et Percevax qui mout dotoit Avoir vers Damedeu mespris, Par le pi a lermite pris, Si li ancline et les mains joint, Et li prie que il li doint Consoil, 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.)

Percevals confession, and the hermits 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

210 seem that the Hideous Damsels 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 Percevals alienation, and the fault for which the hermit imposes penance. Perceval accepts both the hermits 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 leaves the question about the lance tantalizingly unanswered. In fact, his explanation of Percevals sin stirs up new questions which beg to be answered: how did Percevals 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

211 Perceval is wrong about the nature of his error, what is the true cause of his contrition? The readers burning questions are intensified by Percevals calm acceptance of the hermits 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 didnt 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 Percevals conscious decision to defer his questions, now he rather pointedly ignores the questions that must be arising in the readers mind, abruptly changing the subject and turning away from Perceval, in order to return to Gauvains adventures. Knotted Signs At this point, it becomes apparent that the narrator will provide no direct help in answering the readers questions. Indeed, the 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 Chrtien 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 hermits counsel as calmly and implicitly as

212 Perceval seems to do, perhaps he would best be served by adopting Percevals 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 mans retreat. They tell him: Sire, qui aler i voldroit, Si tenist cest santier tot droit Ensi con nos somes venu Par cest bois esps et menu, Si se prest garde des rains Que nos noames a noz mains Qant nos par ilueques venismes; Tex antresaignes i fesmes Por ce que nus ni esgarast Qui vers ce[st] saint hermite alast. (6287-96)
(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 hermits chapel. Are there, perhaps, knots in the narrative, which the poet has made with his own hands, which will help us reach a

John S. Maddux, in La penitence de Perceval, suggests that this is precisely Chrtiens intention: [N]ous avons dit que, en raison des problmes poss par lpisode relatant le repentir du hros, le lecteur se voit presque oblig a relire toute lhistoire. A ces deux lectures correspondent deux conceptions diffrentes du chevalier gallois. Lune delles ne serait pas plus fausse que lautre, en ce sens que Chrtien aurait voulu que le lecteur passe par toutes les deux (60).

121

213 place at which we can accept the Hermits 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 Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Percevals omission as foolishness (6380: Fol san es) and explains that this reticence was caused by an earlier sin: Frere, mout ta ne Uns pechiez don tu ne sez mot, Ce fu li diax que ta mere ot De toi quant tu parties de li Por le pechi que tu en as Tavint que tu ne demandas De la lance ne del graal, Si tan 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 )

214 The hermits interpretation of Percevals actions is surprising, not because he identifies Percevals 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 mothers prayer has protected him from greater hardship than he has already endured: Et neusses pas tant dur Sele ne test comand A Damedeu, ce saches tu, Mes sa parole ot tel vertu Que Dex por li ta regard De mort et de prison gard. (6369-74)
(And you wouldnt have lasted this long if she hadnt 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.)

The hermits 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 Gods protection; Percevals sin would have been (literally) mortal, if not for his mothers intercession. The hermits words are troubling not only because they upset our assumptions about the events at Grail Castle, but also because they suggest that Percevals quest for knighthood has been tainted from the

215 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 Percevals silence before the grail procession, he does not contradict Percevals assertion that in five years of successful chivalrous exploits he has done nothing but evil, nothing that would merit Gods 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 Percevals years of successful combat and adventuring have brought him nothing but a heart full of anguish. Percevals third self-accusation, that he has never thought of God in five years, is also allowed to pass without comment, except in 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 tame pitiez te prant, Si aies an toi repantance Et va el non de penitence Au mostier einz quan autre leu Chascun 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 Percevals required penance is based, suggesting that his forgetfulness of God

216 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, Cest uns servises qui po grieve, Et Dex laimme por verit Por ce quil vient dumilt. Se pucele aide te quiert, Aiue li, que miex len 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 youll be better for it. This will be a perfect act of Charity.)

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 hermits penance is little more than a reiteration of the Gornemants instruction when he dubbed Perceval and the veve dames advice when Perceval was preparing to leave her. However, this is not a case of simple repetition, for while Percevals 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

217 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 (Klines This service is commendable and Kiblers This is the full penance) or because, in attempting to be more precise, they fall flat (Owens 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

Chrtien 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 reoit, / Et Dex qui toz les segrez voit / Et set totes les repostailles /Qui sont es cuers et es antrailles.
123

122

See Greimass Dictionnaire de lancien franais for the etymology of

almosne.

218 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 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, Chrtien 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, Chrtien 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 Percevals sins (both those of which he accuses himself and those that

219 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 Percevals 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 readers reconsideration of the romance should be guided by attention to the themes they indicate. In the following 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.

Chivalrys Defects
Biax sire, or pran de moi justise Tel que ja mes nule pucele Qui de moi oie la novele Nost dire a nul chevalier honte. Bele, fet il, a moi que monte Que 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 Percevals story, and

then an equally abrupt return to the Gauvain narrative. If, as we have

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?

124

220 maintained, the strange insertion of the account of Percevals penitence into the sequence of Gauvains adventures is done deliberately and purposefully, we must recognize that Chrtien has chosen this device not only to force the reader to reconsider his assessment of Perceval and his actions but also to redirect the readers attention in his reading of Gauvains story, which has barely begun to unfold. Therefore, it seems that the first knotty signpost 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 beloveds fair cheeks, Gauvain waits nearby for the unidentified stranger to complete his reverie so that he may escort him to Arthurs tent to meet the king. By his sensitive appreciation of the other knights 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 Gauvains 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

221 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. Percevals subsequent adventures will be hidden from view as the narrator chooses to follow Gauvains travels instead. As noted earlier, at the very position where one might expect to find a description of Percevals 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 Gauvains 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 Percevals 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 Gauvains story (which follows the Hermit episode), those issues cannot fail to intrude upon the readers enjoyment nor to color his appreciation and assessment of Gauvains behavior. For this reason, the attentive reader is likely have differing assessments of the two portions of Gauvains story.125
125

The Gauvain narrative is worthy of a more thorough analysis than we can

222 Even without the Hermitage intervention, the reader would notice a distinct change in tone between the two segments of the 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 Gauvains 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 Percevals actions lacked any truly charitable motive, similarly and more overtly, in Gauvains first adventures we see the exemplary knights customary polish and success undermined by the mockery and manipulation of women and the vengeful rage of wronged knights. Whereas Percevals 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
afford it here. Rupert Pickenss The Welsh Knight: Paradoxicality in Chretien's Conte del Graal provides an excellent analysis of the way Gauvains adventures invert and illuminate the themes of the Perceval narrative. Antoinette Salys La Rcurrence des motifs en symtrie inverse et la structure du Perceval de Chrtien 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.
126

See Antoinette Salys La Rcurrence des motifs for a full discussion of the

223 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 portion corresponds to the early part of Percevals 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 Gauvains sufferings are the inevitable outcome of past misdeeds whose injustice had previously been masked by chivalrys 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 Gauvains 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

chiastic relationship between Gauvains adventures and those of Perceval.

224 and the incoherence of its ethical system. The first fault exposed is the chivalric systems dependence upon the motivation of personal reputation and material gain. Courtly chivalrys 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 Arthurs court to face his accuser in Escavalon, he travels with 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 Gauvains 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 Tintagels 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 Gauvains

225 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 Gauvains adventures, however, stripped of his many warhorses and shields, Gauvain will be humiliated by being forced to ride a sorry nag that he steals from an insubordinate squire. In this latter part of Gauvains 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.

As Jean Frappier notes in Chrtien 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).

127

226 A second sign of Gauvains vanity is his false humility concerning his identity. Although he is the most accomplished and renowned knight of Arthurs realm, he does not brag about who he is but conceals his name until someone directly asks for it (5588-91). 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 ni est pas conez, / Car onques mes ni fu vez); 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 Gauvains 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
128

In his deeds as Red Knight, Perceval created exactly this kind of

227 Gauvains 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 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 mesnie Le roi Artu? Dame, ol voir. Estes vos, gel voel savoir, De chevaliers de leschargaite Qui on mainte prosce faite? Dame, nenil. Bien vos an croi. Et estes vos, dites le moi, De ces de la Table Reonde Qui sont les plus prisi del monde? Dame, fet il, ge noseroie Dire que des plus prisiez soie, Ne me faz mie des meillors Ne ne cuit estre des peiors. (8076-88)
(But are you of King Arthurs household? My lady, indeed I am. Id 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 readers eyes, if not in the ladys) by referring to himself in the

anticipation, apparently inadvertently.

228 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. Dame, Gauvains est li ainz nez Et li seconz est Agravains, Li Orguilleus as dures mains; Gaerez et Gaers Ont non lis altre dui aprs. Et la rene li redit: Sire, se Damedex mat, Ensi ont il non, ce me sanble. Car plest Deu que tuit ansanble Fussent or ci avoeques nos! Or me dites, conuissiez vos Le roi Uren? (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.

229 (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 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. Gauvains stubborn adherence to his own rule of modesty turns out to be as foolish as Percevals literal-minded obedience to Gornemants 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 Gauvains case as in Percevals, 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. Gauvains culpable silence, like Percevals, is

230 caused by foolish pride: each is so concerned with the impression he makes on others that he never considers those around him. Gauvains 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 heros 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 san Se plus dire le vos ooie! Si mat Dex, ge ne porroie Jus qua set jorz vivre ceanz, Ne plus que jus qua set vinz anz, Por ce que ge ne man ississe Totes les foiz que ge volsisse. Atant sanest jus avalez, Si san rest el pales antrez Mout correciez et mout pansis (7983-93)

(Host, he said, Shut up about that! Youll drive me out of my mind if I hear you say anything more about that! So help me God, I wouldnt be able to stay here seven days, any more than I could for seven score years, if I couldnt leave anytime I wished. At that he left and went downstairs and re-entered the great hall very angry and moody )

231

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 Gauvains 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 Tiebauts daughters use their feminine prerogatives to manipulate and control Meliant and Gauvain for their own purposes. The younger daughters 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 chivalrys code to assist a damsel when she requests aid and, also, because it suits his own desires: he was sorry to have to 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.

232 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 sisters 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 Meliants 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 maidens abuse of Gauvain in this episode is benign. However, in the second portion of Gauvains 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 wounds and lies at the brink of death. Over the maidens 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,

233 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 couldnt 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 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 Arthurs land. However, Gauvain himself will soon be tormented by a maiden who has suffered a similar

234 indignity and who forces Gauvain to suffer as a surrogate for the general crimes of chivalry. This hateful and haughty damsel, later identified as lOrguilleuse 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 doutre a toi parla, Samor an moi mal anplea, Quil mama et ge ha lui, Car il me fist si grant enui Quil ocist, nel celerai mie, Celui a cui gestoie amie. Puis me cuida tant denor fere Qua samor me cuida atraire, Mes onques rien ne li valut, Que au plus tost que il me lut De sa conpeignie manblai (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 Ill 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 )

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

235 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 damsels 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 Clamadeus 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: Mes de mon premerain ami, Quant morz de lui me departi, Ai si longuemant est fole Et de si estoute parole Et si vilainne et si musarde Conques ne me prenoie garde Cui jalasse contralant, Einz le feisoie a escant, Por ce que trouver an volsisse Un si ireus que gel fesse A moi irier et correcier Por moi trestote depecier, Que piece a volsisse estre ocise. (8899-8911)

(But since death parted me from my first sweetheart, Ive 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 hotheaded that I could make him become irate with me and punish me by slashing me to pieces, because for some time Ive wished to be killed.)

236

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 Percevals 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 monte Que ge de vos justise face? Ja le Fil Damedeu ne place Que vos por moi enui aiez. Mes or montez, ne delaiez, Sirons jus qua ce[l] chastel fort (8916-21)
[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 dont delay, well go as far as that castle ...]

There is a double entendre in Gauvains reply. The maiden asked him to take justice against her129 (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

8912-15: Biax sire, or pran de moi justice / Tel qu ja mes nule pucele /Qui de moi oie la novele / nost dire a nul chevalier honte.

129

237 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 (Gauvains 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 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 selfserving 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.
130

By this point, Gauvain has learned that the dameisele is his sister.

238 The numerous parallels and similarities between Gauvains experiences and those of Perceval draw attention to Percevals 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 Gauvains 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, the very women that the courtly knight is supposed to defend and cherish.

Suffering Along the Way

Qant Percevax vit defolee La noif sor coi la gente jut Et le sanc qui ancor parut, Si sapoia desor sa lance Por esgarder cele sanblance, Que li sans et la nois ansanble La fresche color li resanble Qui ert an la face samie, Si panse tant que il soblie (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

239 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 Percevals confession of having been a worthless knight. Our reading of Gauvains 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 Percevals confession to his hermit uncle, although there the vices of pride and neglect were less pronounced, softened by Percevals ignorance and navet. While still 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 Percevals 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 Chrtiens, but this apparent non sequitur has considerably exercised critics for twenty-five years.131 (53)
It is now another twenty-five years since Rutledge wrote those words, but the problem has not yet been resolved.
131

240 A number of critics resolutely resist the hermits suggestion that Percevals entire career as a knight has been damaged by his neglect of his mother. Madeleine Cosman shifts the blame for Percevals 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 Percevals shortcomings even as he excuses Percevals 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 Hermits explanation reflects the profound meaning of the narrative, Haidu goes so far as to suggest that the hermits assessment of Percevals 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 hermits 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, Rutledges 1981 article provides a good overview of the major critical stances on this question,

241 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 hermits interpretation is consistent with contemporary Church doctrine on the character of mortal sin. 132 Whatever the merits or interests of these arguments individually, collectively they raise at least one question that is relevant to our own investigation: if we accept the hermits diagnosis of the true nature of Percevals 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

Both of these general views, the psychological and the legalistic, seem to me to be more indicative of twentieth century preoccupations than of twelfth century ones. Although I hope to show that the depiction of Perceval and his problems is perfectly consistent with the spiritual theology of Chrtiens 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.

132

242 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 chivalrys destructive 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 familys 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 widows concern for her son and his future hardships are mirrored in another woman of sorrows, Percevals 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
133

She also hinted that her own family has suffered similarly (see 405-413).

243 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 beloved knight. Not only does she seem an embodiment of the kind of grief and loss that cost the life of Percevals mother, but she explicitly equates the two. After learning Percevals identity and his failure to ask about the grail and lance, she identifies herself as his cousin who grew up with him in his mothers 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 mains De ce quensi test mesche Que tu nas del graal se Quan an fet et ou lan le porte Que de ta mere qui est morte, Ne quil fet de ce[st] chevalier Que jamoie et tenoie chier Mout por ce que il me clamoit Sa chiere amie et si mamoit 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, Percevals cousin was equally grieved by the loss of her aunt. What is more, equal to both

244 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 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 Percevals fault. The next episode shows this to be true, when Perceval, in pursuit of the knight who has killed his cousins 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 Percevals 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 Percevals earlier indiscretions have been the cause both of the death of his cousins 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 and

245 recall that Percevals 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 Chrtien is teasing the readers 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 Percevals 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 mentions its rider, suggesting that the scene is being described from
It is likely that the cousins 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.
134

246 Percevals 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 Percevals approach to Gornemants 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 fishermans 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 Percevals 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 doubleentendres for the reader, which, as the attentive reader will notice, emphasize the disparity between the apparent and the real

significance of what is being said. Like the last sorrowful damsel

247 Perceval met, this one is volubly lamenting her fate as he approaches and greets her: Lor dist il, Bele, Dex vos saut! Percevax qui latainte lot. Et quant la damesele lot, Si sanbruche et respond an bas: Sire qui salue mas, Tes cuers ait ce que il voldroit, Et si ni ai ge mie droit. Et Percevax respondu a Qui de honte color mua: Por Deu, bele amie, por coi? Certes ge ne pans ne ne croi Que ge onques mes vos vesse Ne rien nule vos mes fesse. Si as, fete le, que ge sui Tant cheitive et tant ai dennui Que nus ne me doit salur: Dangoisse me covient sur Qant nus mareste ne esgarde. Voir, ge ne me preneoie garde, Fete Percevax, de ce[st] mesfet. Por vos fere honte ne let Certes 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 Ive 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 didnt 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 the damsels response to his greeting as a rebuke for having taken notice of her condition when he politely should have ignored her, and he

248 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 maidens 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 Welshmans 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 didnt 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 urges him to leave her before her knight returns and seeks vengeance for his trespass: Ha! Sire, fet ele, merci!

249 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 youll 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 Percevals 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 Percevals 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

The second use of this term was Gornemants aphoristic instruction against the social gaffe of being too talkative (1634: Qui trop parole pechi 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: Ce sont ange que je voi ci. H! Voir, or ai ge mout mal pechi, Or ai ge mout esploiti Qui dis que cestoient 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.)

135

250 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 maidens 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 cousins denunciation of Percevals sin in causing his mother deadly sorrow, the use of pechiez in this context should attract the readers 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 Percevals behavior with the maiden of the tent and his mistreatment of his own mother. Additionally, there are a 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

251 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 mothers anguished swoons and impassioned entreaties as if they never happened. No, there can be no excusing Percevals 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 maidens 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 revenge against a young Welshman who disgraced his amie by forcing kisses from her, stealing her ring, and even eating the knights 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

252 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 damsels 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 Quele a fete sa penitence, Que ge sui cil qui la beisa Mau gr suen, et mout lan pesa. Et son anel an son doi pris, Ne plus ni ot ne plus ni fis; Et si mangi, ce vos afi, Des trois pastez un et demi Et 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 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

253 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 Gauvains later claim that he was justified in abusing Greoreas). If we acknowledge these pertinent features of Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Percevals path and not be led astray by the Orguilleus trip to Arthurs court. Perceval, having refused the formerly arrogant knights offer of hospitality, spends the night in the wilderness and rises the next morning to continue his 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

By the reckoning of Martn de Riqur in Perceval y Gauvain en Li Contes del Graal, the snow falls two days after Pentecost.

136

upon which to sprinkle three drops of red blood.

137

254 Percevals 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 gentes Que la nois avoit esbloes: Vees les a et oes, Queles san aloient bruiant Por un faucon qui vint volant Aprs eles de grant randon, Tant quil trova a bandon Une fors de rote sevree, Si la si ferue et hurtee Que contre terre labati ... (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 )

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 Percevals reaction to the sight of those blood-drops as a sign of his increasingly refined sensibility and his growth as a courtly knight, for
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)

255 he sees in them the emblem of his beloved Blancheflors maidenly complexion. Chrtien encourages us to fall into this superficial courtly reading of the scene by sandwiching it in between two interludes at Arthurs court. In the first interlude, Arthur declares that he will not rest until he has met this mysterious but highlyaccomplished knight who has sent so many defeated foes into the kings 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 readers) 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 reverie. Only the refined and sensitive Gauvain will be able to break that reverie and coax Perceval to approach Arthurs 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 Gauvains sensitive appraisal of the scene. But we must recall that, for Perceval, the only thing that intervenes between his dismissal of the nowpenitent Arrogant Knight and the falcons attack upon the helpless goose is a nights sleep. The day before he woke in the snow-covered countryside, Perceval had met and dealt with two different maidens,

256 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 falcons 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 includes, he might have been reminded of something even closer to home: il an trova a bandon Une fors de rote sevree, Si la si ferue et hurtee Que contre terre labati; Mes trop fu main, si san parti, Quil ne si voit ler 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 its 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

257 ni fet, / Des quil 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 womans 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 so because il ne si volt ler 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 Knights 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 ler 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 nan savoit nule rien, / Nil ni pansoit ne po ne bien).139

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 abuse of their female victims. As we discussed in Chapter 4, there is everything in Percevals character and demeanor to suggest that he would have raped the pucele if he had not been so ignorant of sexual matters.
139

138

258 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 Blancheflors beauty and not her suffering. 140 The scene is truly emblematic, but not for the reasons that Perceval (and many critics) assume. While critics frequently expound upon Percevals 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 Chrtien de Troyes , 109 emphasis added)

We may recall that Perceval never would have taken any notice of Blancheflors suffering if she had not shrewdly visited his bed scantily clad and tempted him with personal gain.

140

259 The parallels with the death of Percevals 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 falcons attack on the goose and Percevals 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

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 Percevals 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

260 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 cousins 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 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 Percevals responsibility for, and obliviscence of, the suffering of women throughout his adventures.141

Returning to Charity, Returning to God

Et cele nuit a mangier ot Ice quau saint ermite plot, Mais il ni ot se herbes non A la Pasque comenez Fu Percevax mout dignemant. (6469-73)142

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 Percevals 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 Arthurs court (158).

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.

142

261 ur examination of two of Percevals 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 Percevals 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 the needs of others. Both of these sins are sins against ones 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.

262 Humility and Penitence The sin that remains is Percevals having forgotten God. Is it possible that, once again, considering the sin and its implications in Percevals 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 in La Pnitence 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 rcit prcdent, ainsi que le ton nettement religieux qui distingue la scne entire, suggrent au lecteur que quelque chose dessentiel du roman lui a chapp, quil a mal lu, ou lu superficiellement, lhistoire prcdente. (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 (3436: qui toz les segrez voit / Et set totes les repostailles / Qui sont es cuers et es antrailles), that humility, however attained, leads Perceval

263 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 characteristic of courtly chivalry and which also governed all of Percevals 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)

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.

143

264 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. 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 Percevals humility first manifests itself (as penitential tears) in response to the penitent knights explanation of the meaning of Good Friday: Cil qui de toz pechiez fu mondes Vit les pechiez don toz li mondes Ert anlez et antechiez,

265 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 ]

Christs 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) 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 Gods 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

266 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 Percevals 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 process analogous to Percevals own, which gradually reveals the deeper meaning of the story. As Maddux points out, it seems that Chrtien a prfr quelles [les implications thologiques] se dgagent progressivement, mesure que le lecteur arrive pntrer le sens du rcit, un peu de la faon dont nous ne saisissons la signification religieuse de nos expriences quotidiennes qu force de les mditer. Il semble mme que lauteur ait voulu que le lecteur partage, en quelque sorte, lexprience dillumination connue par Perceval. (La Pnitence de Perceval 60) In this way, the exercise of the readers 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, Chrtien 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

267 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

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 Percevals adventures? How can recognizing the tension between Percevals 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 Mnard points out in Problmes et Mystres du Conte du Graal: Un essai d'interprtation, la multiplicit des suppositions suggre leur

fragilit (61). To arrive at an adequate understanding of the Grail episode, Mnard suggests a better means of approach:

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).

144

268 Sans imposer au texte des significations sotriques ou des symboles cachs, dont il na cure, sans dissimuler les nigmes et les obscurits impossibles dmler, tout en restant au ras du texte et en s'efforant de rendre compte des pierres d'attente habilement disposes tout au long de l'oeuvre par un habile architecte, il est possible de percevoir le mouvement profond qui anime le rcit et l'oriente vers un dnouement attendu. (61) Mnards 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 themes embedded in the fabric of the romance is invaluable in uncovering the poems 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 Mla calls the destructive panic within the text (Perceval 255). In the following chapter, we will return to Grail

269 Castle to discover, in calm retrospection, what may be learned there in light of the themes uncovered by our study of Percevals 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 vergoigne Celui qui a ma anvoi Li vaslez cele part avale Et dit que bien avoi la Cil qui lavoit anvoi 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 Chrtien 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

Percevals change in attitude as he follows the Fishermans 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.

145

271 this adventure can be properly appreciated. Perhaps in doing so we may find, as Perceval found when he was looking for the fishermans 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 antree A tot le graal quele tint, Une si granz clartez i vint Quausi perdirent les chandoiles Lor clart come les estoiles Quant li solauz lieve ou la lune. (3190-95)146

uch reorientation seems to have been intended by Chrtien. Except for those few critics who would deny that the hermit

episode forms an integral part of Chrtiens plan for the romance, interpreters generally have agreed that the hermits revelations about the nature of Percevals 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
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.

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 Chrtien, we must assume that Chrtiens treatment of the mysterious procession was profane rather than religious, spiritualized only by later Continuators and adaptors of the legend of the grail.

147

272 Historically, however, agreement on the hermeneutical importance of the hermits revelations has not guaranteed critical consensus on how or to what extent those revelations illuminate the mysterious occurrences at the Fisher Kings 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 hermits 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 Chrtien, Troyes, and the Grail , reads it as an entirely orthodox allegory of Catholic doctrine. To arrive at such detailed allegorical exegeses, about however, which requires considerable justifiably

interpretive

contortion,

Jean

Frappier

complained when he asserted that Sister Amelia est conduite a dformer, a distordre incroyablement le texte du Conte pour le faire concider avec sa conception dune lgende arthurienne entirement christianis ( Le Conte du Graal est-il une allgorie judo-

273 chrtienne? 212). Because the use of detailed religious allegory seems so greatly at odds with Chrtiens 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 Chrtien wrote.148 For instance, in her provocative study, The Unholy Grail: A Social Reading of Chrtien 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 hermits assertions she justifies her denial of any spiritual or moral meaning in the romance. In Aesthetic Distance in Chrtien 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 hermits 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 meaning of the romance is, in fact, intimately connected to the theme of Charity,

One allegorical interpretation that seems most interesting with respect to our own reading is Lopold Grills Chateau du Graal: Clairvaux, in which he finds striking resemblances between Chrtiens depiction of Grail Castle and St. Bernards 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 o lme est considre comme lhabitation de Verbe-Epoux et, de ce fait, le lieu o surabonde la grce (126).

148

274 which Chrtien 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 hermits 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 hermits testimony and denying all religious relevance to the events at Grail Castle. We should proceed like Maurice Delbouille (Ralit du chteau du Roi-Pcheur), who resists the temptation to find secret symbolism there, and Philippe Mnard (Problmes et Mystres 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 Chrtien intended his reader to discern in the mysterious objects and events at the Fisher Kings home can be gleaned from the text, without recourse to external allegory or symbolism, but aided by the necessary light shed by the hermits 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 Chrtiens romance seche et faut, leading to the kind of superficial reading that Chrtien subtly warns against in the prologue. Such

275 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 Percevals 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 hermits correction and reinterpretation of his frustrating experience in the hall of the Fisher King. We have already seen that the hermits words have implications not only for Percevals exercise of chivalry but also for the readers act of interpretation. Let us, then, be among that minority of readers who allow the hermits 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 Chrtiens fragment barely hints at (Pickens 1985, 280). It is possible even likely that Chrtien deliberately crafted the romance, and particularly the Grail episode, in such a way that only a retrospective interpretation, in light of the hermits revelations, can reveal the full meaning. Peter Haidu says, "The specifically

276 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 hermits 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 poets depiction of the mervoilles of the bleeding lance and luminous grail is heightened by the narrators repeated comments on Percevals ill-judged reticence to ask about the spectacle before him and his intention to ask the servants about it later. Although the narrators remarks function, on one level, to draw attention to Percevals foolish misinterpretation of 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 maidens interpretation of those events, offered when Perceval meets her in the woods outside the
It 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.
149

277 castle; instead, her account only raises further questions in the readers mind (if not in Percevals). The repeated and somewhat contradictory interpretations offered later by the Hideous Damsel and, finally, by the Hermit only deepen the readers 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 readers mind and send him searching for clues to the meaning of this baffling episode.

Grail Castle: A Hall of Mirrors?

Atant se partirent li moinne Et les nonains et tuit li autre, Et cil san vet, lance sor fautre, Toz armez si com il le vint. Et tote jor sa voie tint Quil nancontra rien terenne, Ne cresten ne crestenne Qui li sest voie anseignier (2938-45)150 Au chief de[s] cinc anz li avint Que il par un desert aloint Cheminant, si com il soloit, De totes ses armes armez, Sa trois chevaliers ancontrez, Et avoiec dames jus qua dis, Lor chis an lor chaperons mis, Et saloient trestuit a pi Et an langues et deschauci. (6204-6215)151

278

efore returning to the castle of the Fisher King to revisit Percevals experience there, we should first marshal the clues

already provided by our analysis of the romance up to this point. Aside from the hermits revelations, which, in the new information they provide, perhaps raise as many questions as they answer, we should also consider the ways in which Chrtien creates and reveals meaning in the romance. We have seen that the poet uses analogous episodes to test the readers memory, as if daring us to recognize recurrent
150 Percevals 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

Percevals approach to the hermits 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.

151

279 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 Percevals 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 esthtique de lanalogie 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)

280 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 readers 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 Kings home, apart even from the light thrown on those events by the hermits 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 Chrtien 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 Lacys analysis, the two termini of that narrative, the episodes that occur in the gaste forest of his mothers house and the deserted woodland of the hermits chapel, form the frame within which Chrtien depicts Percevals personal maturation. Within this outer frame, Lacy

281 identifies a secondary frame created by Percevals two visits to Arthurs court, within which the poet depicts the young Welshmans 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). Lacys scheme limits itself to the Perceval narrative, leaving unexplored the relationship Chrtien 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 Gauvains adventures, occupies the same position within the Gauvain narrative that the Grail Castle episode occupies in Percevals story: Force nous est de constater que lermitage se trouve serti dans le mme contexte thmatique que lpisode du chteau du Graal, occupant ainsi dans la partie Gauvain une place privilgie: celle-l mme quoccupait lpisode central du Graal dans la partie Perceval . (Saly 25) We can glean two important points from Salys findings, with respect to our consideration of the Grail episode. The first, mentioned in an

282 earlier chapter, is that the hermit episode serves as the structural center of the romance as a whole, a hinge which joins the two heronarratives 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 Percevals approach to Gornemants castle and his subsequent approach to the Fishermans castle, which revealed that the readers sympathy was subtly manipulated in such a way that, on the earlier approach, the reader 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

283 This impression of

polish and accomplishment is part of what makes Percevals 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 mans 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 Gornemants (which the narrator pointedly refuses to describe)154, Perceval is urged to stay on and the following morning he is ritually vested by his host in the trappings of chivalry, yet after Percevals meal with the Rich Fisherman (recounted in

A. D. Crow suggests that Chrtien deliberately describes the approach to Grail Castle in a way that is reminiscent of Percevals approach to Gornemants home because he wishes to evoke the earlier episode in the readers mind (Some Observations on the Style of the Grail Castle Episode in Chrtiens Perceval 67-68) certainly, Gornemants advice is very much on Percevals mind as he greets the rich fisherman in his luxurious hall. 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. At Gornemants, the narrator says, Ill give no further news about the meal, how large and how many the courses, but they had sufficient to eat and drink. Ill 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 twice to talk about it.
154 153

152

exquisite detail with much commentary by the narrator)

155

284 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 bums 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 Percevals visit to Blancheflors home at Biaurepere. We have already seen how the Blancheflor episodes position immediately after Percevals sojourn with

Gornemant modified our view of both episodes by contrasting Gornemants 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 days ride away. This 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

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.

155

285 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 Gornemants castle, where he arrived full of chatty conversation, still quoting and following his mothers advice, and where he was met by the elegantly dressed lord of the manor, who strolled out to greet him, when Perceval arrives at Blancheflors 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 manors mistress, mindful of Gornemants 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 evenings meal with Gornemant, who 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 Gornemants invitation to stay on for as long as a month to perfect his skills as a

286 knight (something Perceval didnt realize he needed), he gladly remains at Blancheflors 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 Percevals earlier visit with Gornemant, then, modifies the readers 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

Gornemants 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 Percevals experience with Blancheflor are echoed in his behavior at the Fisher Kings 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 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

287 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 Percevals meeting his germainne cosine, the two episodes thus providing the immediate frame for Percevals 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 nights entertainment, meets a lovely young woman suffering terrible grief and loss caused by chivalrys 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 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 cousins suffering

288 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 fishermans home. Viewed as a mirrored pair, these episodes not only depict a precipitous reversal of Percevals 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 chivalrys destructive power the immediate context within which the Grail episode must be read. Royal Receptions: Arthur Fisher King The cousins identification of Percevals 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 told Perceval why Arthur was both happy and sad and by Arthur himself, who explained that his moody distraction at Percevals greeting was caused by the Red Knights insult to his wife. (Additionally, Percevals conversation with the Red Knight revealed that Arthurs kingdom was under immediate threat.) As he would later

289 do at Biaurepere, Perceval saved Arthurs realm (inadvertently) in the pursuit of his own self-interest, not out of concern for his hosts real troubles. This similarity suggests that Perceval might, also

inadvertently, have rescued the Fisher Kings 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 Kings hall, the awkward thoughtlessness with which Perceval entered King Arthurs castle has been replaced with a self-conscious courtesy. Nonetheless, we might remember that, in Arthurs 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 Knights 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. In this, the Fisher King episode resembles Percevals 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 cousins accusation that Perceval has prolonged the suffering of the Fisher King and his realm

290 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 Arthurs court. Thus, Percevals second visit to Arthurs 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 heros 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 Percevals 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. Journeys 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.

291 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 Percevals cousin, like the Fisher King, is a close relation on his mothers 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, Percevals departure from his mothers manor in the gaste forest and his reception at his uncles hermitage in a deserted woodland. Let us begin by examining the structural similarities between the Grail Castle and Hermitage episodes, which are generally parallel 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.

292 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 hermits 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 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

293 of the bridge as he turned to ride away. Percevals 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 fishermans 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 moinne Et les nonains et tuit li autre, Et cil san vet, lance sor fautre, Toz armez si com il le vint. Et tote jor sa voie tint Quil nancontra rien terrenne, Ne cresten ne crestenne Qui li sest voie anseignier, Et il ne fine de prer Damedeu le soverain Pere Que il li doint trover sa mere Plainne de vie et de sant Se il li vient a volent. Et tant dura ceste proiere Que li vint sor une riviere En lavalee dune angarde. Leve roide et parfonde esgarde, Si ne sose 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

294 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 accompanied Percevals departure from Biaurepere: Au chief de[s] cinq anz li avint Qu il par un desert aloit Cheminant, si com il soloit, De totes ses armes armez, Sa trois chevaliers ancontrez, Et avoec dames jus qua dis, Lor chis an lor chaperons mis, Et saloient trestuit a pi Et an langues et deschauci. De celui qui armez estoit Et la lance et lescu tenoit Se 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 )

that

295 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 crestens et crestennes 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 mothers 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 hermits chapel, where his burden of guilt and anxiety will finally be relieved. Suffering Kinfolk: Mother Fisher King If, however, the end of his journey is the hermits 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 Blancheflors 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 Percevals encounter with the penitents, which introduces the

hermitage episode, repeats and inverts his chance meeting with

296 knights near his mothers manor, each unexpected encounter radically reorienting Percevals personal trajectory. Now we should examine the central events of each episode i.e., Percevals 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 mothers (ignored by Perceval), who wept for her sons welfare; in the later episode, the tears are Percevals own, a sign of his contrition for his sins. In each, Perceval eats a meal and remains more three days: at his mothers home, he interrupts her account of his family history, his fathers 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 uncles explanation of their ties of kinship and, divested of his gaudy knights 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 mothers unconscious form, for the one betokens his penitence for the other and

297 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 Percevals personal growth. It remains only to be seen whether Percevals 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 Percevals abandonment of his mothers home and his visit to the home of the Fisher King, in order to demonstrate their analogous relationship. Once again, our analysis is assisted by the hermits 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, Percevals thoughtless behavior is caused by his obsession with the outward marks of knighthood. Each host refers to Percevals destiny as a knight and

298 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 hosts 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 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 Percevals 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 Percevals (and the readers) memory, an image that will motivate Percevals 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

299 prolonging the Fisher Kings 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 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 Kings realm when he refused to inquire about them. In this way, we see that first Percevals 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 Percevals consistently callous attitude. On the one hand, this discovery should not surprise us, for we saw in Chapter 5 that Percevals 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,

Thus, curiously, because they replace the mother as the object of Percevals quest, the lance and grail seem, in some way, to correspond to the lost mother.

156

300 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 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 mothers 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 mothers 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.

301 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 Percevals 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 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 Chrtien 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 Kings crippling wound and Percevals negligent attitude toward it both echo Percevals attitude toward his own family, ignoring both the account of his fathers wound and the suffering endured by his mother, who was so often hurt by chivalrys 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

302 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. 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 narrators 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 Percevals 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

303 the home of the Fisher King, and regard the grail itself, and all its jewel-encrusted ornamentation, as a distraction that distracts

Percevals attention and our own. At this point, it might be helpful to schematize the findings of our study of the Grail Castle episode and its analogues.

W F

F K : F is h e r K in g ( G r a il e p is o d e )

FK
AF FF
F F : F a m ily F r a m e ( M o th e r /H e r m it) A F : A r t h u r F r a m e ( C a r d u e l/ C a r lio n ) W F : W o m e n F r a m e ( B la n c h e flo r /C o u s in )

In this diagram, the sequence of events is indicated by the arrow, with Percevals 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

304 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 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 trancha Qant le fer qui ainz nestancha De sainnier devant toi ves, Ne la reison nan anues, Et quant del graal ne ses, Cui lan an sert, fol san es. (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

The hermits revelation about the nature of Percevals 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.

157

305 more. Having taken the precaution of carefully considering the thematic horizons within which the events at the Fisher Kings home 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 Chrtiens 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 Kings 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 Fishermans Kingdom, but more profound and piercing questions that seek to discern how, as his hermit uncle explained, Percevals sin against his mother silenced him. Looked at from this new perspective, the events at the Fisher Kings castle may reveal a very different view of the nature of Percevals failure there.

306 Unasked Questions As he first enters the great hall of the Fishermans 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 maintenant Et dist: Amis, ne vos soit grief Se ancontre vos ne me lief, Que je nan sui pas aesiez. (3071-75)
(When the lord saw him coming, he greeted him at once and said, Friend, dont 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, () quil ne me grieve point/ Se Dex joie et sant me doint (3076-78). On first consideration, this reply might have seemed simply a polite way of deflecting further attention from his hosts embarrassing infirmity Good Lord, sir, say no more about it, Im 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, Im 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 his

We should, perhaps, recall what the Hermit told Perceval that he was saved from imprisonment and death only by virtue of his mothers intercessory prayer.

158

307 hosts remarks are meant not so much as an apology as a discreet explanation, one which might even invite a polite inquiry into the prodoms 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 Percevals selfcentered 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 nen lesseroie rien Por nul home de tot le mont. Ensi la parole lor ront, Que plus aparler ne lan osent (2580-85)

(My lords, say no more about it and youll 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.)

308

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 anothers 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: Teisiez, mere! Ne vi

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).

159

309 ge ore / Les plus beles choses qui sont / Qui par la gaste forest vont? (372-74: Be quiet, mother! Havent 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 Percevals 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 cive Quan que li rois le dit et conte, Ne de son duel ne de la honte La rene ne li chaut il. Feites moi chevalier, fet il, Sire rois, car aler man voel. (948-53)

(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 queens shame. Make me a knight, my lord king, he says, For I wish to be away.)

310

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 ostex Certes nert pas anquenuit tex Com a prodome covandroit. Se je vos disoie orandroit Tot nostre covine et nostre estre, Vos cuidereiez, puet cel estre, Que de malvesti le desse Por ce qualer vos an fesse. (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, Emmanule Baumgartner accepts this explanation as

311 sufficient, and points out that in the end Perceval is not indifferent and eventually does act to alleviate Blancheflors suffering (78); however, our earlier scrutiny of Percevals 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 hosts troubles. His habit of hushing anothers 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 mothers 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 hosts wellbeing. For instance, after failing to follow up on Blancheflors remarks by asking the reason for the citys devastation, Perceval restrained himself from speaking because he remembered the

312 gentlemans reprimand, a foolish behavior that the narrator allows to pass without censure, in much the same way that he fails to remark on Percevals inept response to the rich Fisherman. Compare this to his silence in the face of the marvelous lance and grail, which draws the narrators repeated censure, par ce que jai o retraire / Quausi bien se puet an trop taire / Con trop parler, a la foiee (3216-18: because Ive 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 Percevals 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 doesnt bother me at all, as God gives me happiness and health. Twice he invokes Gods 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 mothers prayer for him, which has protected him from ending up crippled like his host, or worse. Her Charity has counteracted his own unCharity.160

Percevals mother is one of the few characters to invoke Gods name in a pious manner. On the other hand, Gods name is often sprinkled into the conversation of courtly characters as thoughtlessly as Perceval does here.

160

313 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 Fishermans 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 Emmanule Baumgartner suggests, considering the grandeur of the vast hall and Percevals desire to please his host by behaving well, should he not be excused for failing to inquire after his hosts health? Mais quel moment, au cours d'un repas trop fastueux, dans l'blouissante apparition du graal et de sa radieuse porteuse, dans la conversation mondaine du Roi Pcheur, dans l'indiffrence de l'assistance la merveille de la lance qui saigne, au droulement du cortge, l'infirmit du roi, Perceval a-t-il pu vraiment dceler les traces dune souffrance? Par quoi aurait-il pu se sentir appel, tre mu 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 Fishermans greeting suggests that in this, as in other instances, selfish preoccupation silences Perceval when he ought to make charitable inquiries, and a similar selfconsciousness keeps him from asking about the marvelous objects he sees passing by at dinner with the Fisher King.

314 Perhaps we begin to have a clearer notion of what Percevals hermit-uncle meant when he said that sin cut off [Percevals] tongue. As Fanni Bogdanow notes, Bernardian spiritual theology regarded illjudged 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 nest pas moins coupable que celui qui scandalise les autre par des paroles mauvaises. Qui nglige dadministrer son prochain les paroles qui lui ont t confies pour le bien des mes parait trop avare et trop jaloux Que le Seigneur place donc une garde notre bouche afin que nous sachions quand et comment nous devons parler et pour que nous ne pchions ni en parlant ni en gardant silence. (Vitis mystica, quoted in Bodganow 264) We may, then, reasonably regard Percevals failure to express interest in his hosts 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. Percevals 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 restrains him from asking natural questions. Sin has cut off his tongue. Why does the lance bleed?: Chivalrys Dangerous Glamor A charitable inquiry into his hosts 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

315 embodies both, as we know from the information provided by Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Kings 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 post an quatre cenz homes / Asseoir anviron le feu, / Sast chascuns aeisi 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 Kings 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

316 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 Percevals 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 Percevals 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 Chrtien 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 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 hosts health, remains not only ignorant of the cause, nature, and extent of his hosts 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 Hermits chapel, that he has been protected from danger by his mothers dying prayer.) Yet, if Perceval is to remain ignorant of

317 the significance of all that he encounters during his sojourn with the Fisher King, it would seem that Chrtien 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 Kings 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 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 Hermits 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 narrators remarks, by repeatedly drawing attention to Percevals reticence to ask about the mysterious objects that pass by without explanation, connect their separate passings into a single event.

318 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 Percevals 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 vindrent Qui chandeliers an lor mains tindrent . Un graal entre ses deux mains Une dameisele tenoit Qui avoec les vaslez venoit . Apres celi an revint une Qui tint un tailleor dargent. . Tot ausi passa con la lance: Par devant le lit passerent Et dune chanbre an autre entrerent. (3179-80, 3186-88, 3196-97, 320608)
(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 Percevals 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

319 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 host 161, and the 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
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).
161

320 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 lavoit forgiee et tempree.). The sword is a gift from the hosts 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 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
In any event, since the hosts hall is empty of knights (although there is an abundance of squires vaslets to server him), Perceval is the only available recipient.
162

321 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 fez ja, / Quele vos trara 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 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 antiers Avoeques moi ceanz remaignes Et quan penitence praignes Tel vande come la moie. Et Percevax le li otroie, Et li hermites li consoille Une orison dedanz loroille, Si li ferma tant quil la sot, Et an cele orison si ot Asez des nons Nostre Seignor, Car il i furent li greignor Que nomer ne doit boche dome Se por peor de mort nes nome. Qant lorison li ot aprise, Desfandi li quan nule guise Ne la dest 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.)

322

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 Perceval, although hampered by his sin, has been protected by his mothers 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 Chrtien de Troyes, Norris Lacy

323 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) The swords 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 chivalrys 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

324 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 lances 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 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 chivalrys terrible destructive power, is destined to destroy Arthurs kingdom of Logres and to be delivered to Arthurs enemy, ironically, by Arthurs own champion, Gauvain: [Mes sire Gauvains randra] La lance don la pointe lerme Del 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.)

325 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 Chrtiens Perceval 70). A connection between the lance and Perceval is suggested stylistically, however, in the way its entrance is described: Que quil parloient dun et del, Uns vaslez dune chanbre vint Qui une blanche lance tint Anpoigniee par le milieu, Si passa entre le feu Et ces qui el lit se seoient, Et tuit cil de leanz veoient La lance blanche et le fer blanc, Sissoit une got de sanc Del fer de la lance an somet Et jus qua la main au vaslet Coloit cele gote vermoille. Li vaslez vit cele mervoille Qui 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 )

326 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 qua la main au vaslet / Coloit cele gote vermoille). The close juxtaposition 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 narrators attention but should not evade the readers. This similarity is further underlined by the bright red (vermoille) blood that stains the vaslezs hand, if we recall that the youth who had arrived that evening removed his red ( vermoille) armor before entering the rich fishermans hall. A fairly explicit identification

between the color of Percevals armor and the blood that he spills as a knight was established in the episode that immediately preceded Percevals departure from Blancheflor, when the narrator described Clamadeus arrival at Arthurs court to turn himself over as a prisoner,

327 as he had agreed to do in exchange for Percevals sparing his life. While Clamadeu was still some distance away, his vassal Anguingueron (who arrived before him) recognized him from afar: Clamadeu voient qui venoit Trestot arm si com il dut, Et Anguinguerrons le conut Son seignor taint de sanc vermoil Vit, et si nel mesconut pas, Enois dit tot eneslepas: Seignor, seignor, veez mervoilles! Li vaslez as armes vermoilles Anvoie a, si man creez, Cel chevalier que vos veez: Il la conquis, jan sui toz cerz Por ce quil est de sanc coverz. Je conuis bien le sanc de ci Et li mesmes autresi, Quil est mes sire et je ses hom. Clamadex des Illes a non, Et je cuidoie que il fust Tex chevaliers que il nest Meillor an lempire 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 Percevals 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

328 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. The mention of sanc vermoil in line 2731 is the first explicit linking of the vermillion color of Percevals 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 readers 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 readers 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 Kings castle: Perceval, a lance, red blood on a white

329 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 kind of sanblance a reality that is, according to the extant fragment, of all-encompassing significance in Percevals 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 Blancheflors 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
As Emmanule 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.
163

330 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 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 Chrtien has placed the two events so close

One might speculate that Chrtien 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 Chrtien 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.

164

331 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 numerous other instances, e.g., intercutting Percevals wilderness adventures with scenes of Arthurs 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 Percevals, and the readers, attention is attracted the grail,

332 upon whose entrance the hall is filled with such brilliant light that the large candelabra dim by comparison: Quant ele fu leanz antree A tot le graal quele tint, Une si granz clartez i vint Quausi perdirent les chandoiles Lor clart come les estoiles Quant 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 esmer estoit; Pierres preceuses avoit El graal de maintes menieres, Des plus riches et des plus chieres Qi an mer ne an terre soient: Totes autres pierres passoient Cele 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

333 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 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 hermits 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 croi Que il est filz a celui roi Qui del graal servir se fait. Mes ne cuidiez pas que il ait Luz ne lamproies ne saumon; Dune seule oiste li sainz hon, Que lan an ce[l] graal aporte, Sa vie sostient et conforte, Tant sainte chose est li graax Et il est si espiritax Qua sa vie plus ne covient Que loiste 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 dont 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.)

334 In retrospect, we might notice that, in the Hermits 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 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 Chrtiens 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 grails 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 Chrtiens 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 Chrtiens romance, even for the first time, without thinking of Chrtiens serving dish as the Holy Grail of

335 the later literary tradition. Jean Frappier acknowledges this at the beginning of his essay, Le Conte du Graal est-il une allgorie judochrtienne?: Le Graal ne cesse pas de solliciter les imaginations. Qui sen tonnerait? Ce mot nimb de merveilleux et de sacr rappelle et rsume en deux syllabes clatante et fluides, bien dignes de la posie pure, un mythe prestigieux, lun des plus beaux dans le trsor lgendaire de lhumanit, lun des plus complexes et des plus ambigus aussi. (179) Yet if we take pains to shake off the spell of the grails fabled tradition, the Hermits words remind us that, for Chrtiens 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 Roachs edition of the romance). Greimass Dictionnaire de lancien franais 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 Jsus but pendant la Cne et ou Joseph dArimathie recueillit le sang de ses blessures.165 The Hermits words, however, do
Greimas offers his definitions based on their use in surviving texts, of which Chrtiens Conte du graal is the earliest. And since Chrtien does not describe the
165

336 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 Chrtiens 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 genuinely magical or marvelous object. Although our analysis has suggested the symbolic significance of the blood that flows from its tip,
size and shape of the vessel, apparently assuming that his readers 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. Paul Imbs, in L'Element religieux dans le Conte du Graal de Chrtien de Troyes, argues that the term grail, as used by Chrtien, 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 Imbss 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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337 there is no available explanation for the mechanism or direct cause by which the blood is produced. On the other hand, we have demythologized 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 grails transit through the hall is narrated, however, is designed to fix our attention on Percevals reticence to ask about it rather than the vessel itself, its purpose or its contents.167 Twice the grails passing is mentioned, and each time Percevals 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: De la hanche de cerf au poivre Uns vaslez devant ax trancha Qui a lui traite la hanche a A tot le tailleor dargent,
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 grails purpose or destination.
167

338 Et les morsiax lor met devant Sor un gastel qui fu antiers. Et li graax andemantiers Par devant ax retrespassa, Et li vaslez ne demanda Del 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 grails return to emphasize Percevals obstinate taciturnity: Mes plus se test quil ne covient, Qua chascun mes don lan servoit, Par devant lui trespasser voit Le 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 (and,
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 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.
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339 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 Percevals gaffe in 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

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'interprtation du vers 3301 du Conte du Graal: Le graal trestot descovert 240-45; Mario Roques, Note additionnelle l'article de J. Frappier sur l'interprtation 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 la forme du graal chez Chrtien de Troyes 82-92; Vol. 74 (1954) W. A. Nitze, Encore une fois descovert 224-7. 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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340 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 grails jewels, among the richest and costliest on earth or in the sea, would have looked right at home sitting upon the Fishermans 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 that failure for which the Hideous Damsel so publicly upbraids him. For the reader who revisits the scene in mind of the Hermits information about the grail and its recipient, however, it will be evident that the

3243-45: Mes que diroie de la nape? / Legaz ne chardonax ne pape / Ne manja onques sor si blanche.

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341 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 Percevals behavior than in the function of the grail; in retrospect, however, we can see that the grails 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 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 cuens Ne empereres doie avoir Fu li prodom serviz le soir Et 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.)

342

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 Percevals 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 Percevals own mother, and father of his wealthy 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 liberality

171

343 , and the way of Charity,

which hides its good works, embodied by Count Philip of Flanders, at whose urging Chrtien 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. Bernards 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 Gods heavenly kingdom. In Bogdanows analysis, [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)
The lavishness both of the meal and of the narrators description of it are notable. See Crow for an analysis of the stylistic ornamentation with which Chrtien describes both the quality and the quantity of the table setting and the meal itself.
171

344 Percevals 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 fere Com il covient a riche roi. Dameisele, fet il, par foi, Voirs est ce qu dire vos oi, Quhersoir de ce grant mervoille oi Maintentant que devant lui ving. An sus de lui un po me ting, Et il me dist que je venisse Lez lui seoir, si nel tenisse A orguel quil ne se levoit Ancontre moi, car il navoit Laaisement ne le pooir, Et je malai 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 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 Percevals diffidence was not the Fishermans 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.

345 Thus we see that Percevals 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 Kings 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 selfconsciousness that is concerned not with what one is but with how one is perceived by others. Ironically, Percevals 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 Kings hall, but his eagerness to be 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; Percevals slumbers that night will not be broken by his hosts imprecations. And unlike

346 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 Chrtien might have chosen to complete his romance, we can be sure that the resolution of the Fisher Kings problem would not have been a magical solution. As Rupert Pickens (1985) acknowledges, Chrtiens 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 kingdoms defense, but it would not have healed the Fisher Kings wound (one of the predicted outcomes of asking the right questions).

347 How, then, would asking the questions have led to answers to the Fisher Kings 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 lances 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 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

348 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 Percevals family connection with the mysterious recipient of the grails spiritual food and with his host as well. However, it would also have required the Fisher King to acknowledge his father and his fathers 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 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.

349 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 Hermits 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 Kings injury resembles that suffered by Percevals father before his death, when we look at the episode more closely we notice that he also resembles Percevals mother, as a 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 Percevals 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 Hermits 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

350 effect, Perceval himself re-enacting his sin against his mother when he ignores the Fisher Kings distress and instead self-consciously pursues the dictates of courtly chivalry. The same self-consciousness that causes him to ignore his hosts debility while marveling at his rich attire and accommodation also inhibits Percevals 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. 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 Hermits 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

351 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. 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 Hermits terse explanation of Percevals experiences at Grail Castle provides the key to understanding this enigmatic episode, by reorienting our attention: while the narrator in the episode misdirects the readers attention to superficial and vain concerns, the Hermits 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 Percevals

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 Chrtiens final romance with two questions concerning memory (Percevals memory

and the readers), 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 Chrtiens final, enigmatic romance.

Percevals Memory
The first question had to do with Percevals 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 glittering

353 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. Chrtien does not let us dismiss this as mere youthful enthusiasm, but subtly implies that Percevals embrace of knighthood was accompanied by a concomitant abandonment of his concern for others (especially his mother) and for God. Ironically, however, the abandonment of his

354 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 Percevals 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 Blancheflors 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 Percevals personality that had been most innocently charming, such as his natural curiosity: the nave inquisitiveness that prompted him to interrogate the first knights he met gradually gives way, under Gornemants 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 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

355 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, Percevals personal faults and those of chivalry itself are similar. Viewing them both through the lens of contemporary moral understanding, as provided by the great twelfthcentury 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 Chrtien 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. Percevals 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 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

356 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 Percevals 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 Percevals return to the path of Charity and prepares him to amend his sins of forgetfulness, by causing him to remember God (memoria Dei) and, 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,

357 V.18). So, although Chrtien 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 Readers Memory

When we recognize the way Percevals personal transformation reflects contemporary teaching on spiritual conversion, we can see that the question of Percevals memory is not an extraneous one, but is intimately connected to central theme of the romance. Of course, Chrtien 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 readers enjoyment of the romance? Our analysis has demonstrated that this episode is the key to provoking reflection in the reader, in part by showing the fruits of Percevals 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, Chrtien creates what Donald Maddox calls a virtually

358 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 selfconscious reader/thinker in the Western Tradition. From Augustines day to Chrtiens 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 selfexamination, repentance and conversion. And, despite the obvious differences between the form and purpose of Augustines Confessions and Chrtiens Conte del Graal, the latter shows the clear influence of Augustines work.

359 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 mothers 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 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 Percevals personal quest began when he flung

Perceval, of course, is unaware of the his mothers 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.

172

360 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 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,

361 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 Chrtiens deliberately enigmatic method of exposition: [L]e lecteur est mystifi parce que les informations dont il a besoin pour se former une opinion sur ce qui est racont ne lui seront fournies que bien plus tard - ou pas du tout ( Chrtien de Troyes: Romancier Discutable 49). The Hermit episode, then, is the source of the 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 Chrtiens 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

362 illuminates the true nature of Percevals 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 Percevals 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 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 Chrtiens 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:

363 This, of course, is the great theme of the Confessions: the search which is a return to God. For Augustine had been suckled on Christs 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 Augustines 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, Percevals perfected knighthood would have restored the Fisher Kings realm, making it a type of paradise regained. Reading dynamic It would seem, then, that Chrtien modeled his romance on Augustines Confessions in a number of ways: not only is the basic plot of the Perceval narrative similar to that of Augustines 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), Chrtien 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

364 engages the reader in the implications of the story that has been told. In Book X of the Confessions, Augustine explicitly engages the readers 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 mens 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) 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 Augustines sins but on Gods goodness in helping him to overcome them. There is also the suggestion that this charitable reader will identify his own state with the sinful Augustines 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, Chrtien 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 (618384), we readers find ourselves in an situation analogous to Percevals, searching our own memory to find the forgotten theme of Charity, and

365 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 Grail episode, by turning back in memory, being mindful of the Hermits 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

366

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 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 Chrtien seems actively to have discouraged, given his manipulation of the readers 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 poems 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 Percevals frustrated quest to return to Grail Castle, Gauvains 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

367 the prologue and the Hermit episode as religious red herrings, insisting that Chrtien 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 the two most important clues to what Chrtien 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 Chrtien, 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 romances 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-Baurs La Destre et la senestre: Etude sur le Conte du graal de Chrtien 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

For examples of the former, see Tony Hunt and Brigitte Cazelles; for the latter, Holmes & Klenke, Olschki, and Jacques Ribard.

173

368 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, 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 Chrtien 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 Chrtien and his readers. On the other hand, it also seems quite likely that Chrtien 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

369 the tale at face value, and to identify themselves with Percevals plight in order to see how they themselves were implicated in the meaning of the story. Nykrog suggests that the critique of secular chivalry implicit in the Conte del Graal (and virtually all of Chrtiens 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 dune discussion sur une fiction qui ne les regarde pas (47). My own reading does not insist on this social dimension (although I believe that Nykrogs 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 poets patron Philip, is to prove rich soil for the seed of Chrtiens romance, he must remember Charity.

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Index
Alanus de Insulis.....................38 Alexander the Great...18, 27, 34, 36, 38, 39, 77, 78, 86, 105, 123, 134, 138, 196, 217, 218, 343 Anguingueron......105, 119, 121, 122, 126, 131, 256, 307, 327 Aristotle..................................51 Armstrong, Grace..........254, 257 Auerbach, Erich...........56, 57, 58 Augustine of Hippo, Saint 13, 18, 20, 21, 31, 38, 57, 70, 81, 83, 156, 158, 167, 202, 352, 359, 360, 362, 363, 364 Confessions.. . .21, 31, 70, 156, 202, 352, 358, 359, 360, 362, 363, 365, 370 De Trinitate..........20, 137, 158 influence on literature. 21, 358 Baumgartner, Emmanule...310, 313, 329 Benton, John F.............23, 24, 25 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint....21, 81, 82, 83, 86, 137, 138, 154, 155, 156, 157, 192, 261, 264, 267, 273, 343, 345, 355, 356 The Steps of Humility and Pride. .81, 82, 157, 263, 265, 356 The Steps of Humility and Pride ..............................265 Bible.....12, 18, 25, 57, 358, 361, 362 allusions in text 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 references and allusions in text...................................12 blood....198, 220, 254, 257, 258, 260, 319, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 333, 336, 347 Bloomfield, Morton W..............50 Bogdanow, Fanni. . .22, 137, 138, 154, 155, 156, 158, 168, 314, 316, 343 Carruthers, Mary J.......19, 20, 81 Cassian, John...........................81 Cazelles, Brigitte.....10, 273, 367 characters................................... Arthur.......11, 70, 80, 84, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 111, 121, 122, 124, 125, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 143, 151, 159, 160, 164, 171, 185, 187, 192, 201, 220, 222, 233, 248, 251, 288, 289, 291, 303, 309, 315, 346, 354

Blancheflor....47, 95, 105, 130, 187, 235, 236, 256, 258, 259, 263, 285, 286, 287, 290, 301, 307, 310, 311, 329, 345, 354

121, 255, 284, 295, 326,

Clamadeu. 105, 122, 126, 131, 235, 307, 326, 327, 354 damsel of the tent. .80, 93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 113, 131, 200, 244, 246, 247, 248, 250, 252 Fisher King. .49, 53, 164, 176, 182, 200, 210, 213, 270, 271, 274, 278, 280, 282, 287, 288, 289, 292, 297, 298, 302, 303, 305, 309, 311, 312, 315, 316, 317, 322, 328, 330, 342, 344, 345, 349, 350, 363 71, 72, 74, 187, 198, 214, 244, 275, 277, 283, 286, 290, 291, 300, 301, 306, 308, 313, 314, 319, 321, 333, 340, 346, 348,

385 Gornemant..44, 47, 49, 53, 75, 77, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 119, 121, 126, 127, 129, 130, 162, 163, 164, 187, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 206, 216, 229, 246, 249, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 298, 345, 354 Grail King...................333, 346 Greoreas...233, 237, 238, 253, 347 Guinevere....17, 103, 104, 125 Hermit.......15, 28, 71, 75, 213, 219, 221, 223, 240, 261, 266, 268, 277, 290, 292, 306, 317, 322, 334, 335, 340, 341, 342, 348, 350, 351, 357, 360, 365, 366, 367 Hideous Damsel177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184, 198, 210, 214, 277, 299, 304, 305, 339, 355 206, 238, 275, 316, 337, 349, 363, 180, 192, 289, 340,

Gauvain....2, 3, 15, 28, 40, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 66, 75, 85, 132, 151, 177, 178, 180, 211, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 236, 237, 238, 253, 255, 262, 263, 264, 281, 324, 347, 364, 366, 377 germainne cosine.....165, 201, 236, 242, 259, 287, 290, 299, 315, 339, 340

Keu. . .106, 111, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 131, 185, 220 la Orguilleuse....219, 234, 235, 237, 263 li Orguilleus.......102, 109, 110, 114, 120, 122, 244, 245, 251, 252, 253, 255, 257 Perceval's mother................91

Percevals mother...16, 42, 47, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 80, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 99, 102, 104, 106, 112, 136, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 167, 169, 174, 175, 176, 178, 182, 184, 186, 187, 189, 193, 196, 200, 201, 202, 208, 210, 213, 214, 216, 218, 219, 223, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 249, 250, 256, 258, 259, 261, 280, 285, 291, 292, 293, 295, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 303, 305, 306, 308, 311, 312, 316, 322, 342, 349, 353, 355, 359 Red Knight 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 109, 114, 119, 129, 132, 288, 328 Hideous Damsel................177 Charity.....12, 17, 18, 19, 27, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 60, 74, 75, 77, 78, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 108, 114, 127, 134, 135, 136, 138, 155, 196, 204, 205, 216, 217, 218, 219, 240, 242, 260, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 273, 295, 297, 312, 343, 347, 350, 351, 354, 356, 357, 364, 366, 367, 369

386 chivalry....11, 40, 107, 116, 127, 128, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 144, 146, 148, 149, 152, 159, 186, 187, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 202, 203, 204, 216, 218, 220, 221, 223, 227, 231, 234, 236, 237, 238, 239, 242, 258, 261, 263, 265, 267, 275, 279, 283, 287, 290, 291, 295, 298, 299, 300, 301, 303, 304, 311, 314, 316, 322, 323, 325, 329, 345, 347, 349, 350, 351, 353, 354, 355, 362, 365, 366, 369 Christ.......18, 19, 37, 56, 59, 68, 188, 190, 191, 196, 207, 265, 295, 363 Comfort, William W.................11 Cosman, Madeleine Pelman. 163, 240 Courcelle, Pierre..............21, 137 Crow, A. D.............283, 325, 343 curiositas.....80, 81, 82, 83, 108, 131, 133, 134, 156, 157, 204, 265, 267, 289, 314, 340, 344, 345, 350, 354, 355 Delbouille, Maurice.........49, 274 Dembowski, Peter F................49 Duggan, Joseph J.....................11 Earl, James W....58, 70, 360, 362 Erec et Enide....16, 31, 139, 143, 179, 208 errantry.....51, 66, 75, 80, 83, 84

see curiositas...64, 80, 81, 83, 253, 294, 296, 299 Fein, David A...........................32 Flori, Jean................................11 forest.....79, 83, 87, 93, 94, 101, 102, 103, 143, 149, 152, 155, 186, 187, 188, 189, 201, 203, 205, 279, 280, 291, 297, 308, 363 forgetfulness....16, 81, 204, 215, 354, 356 Frappier, Jean...3, 225, 272, 335, 338, 339 Freeman, Michelle A................11 Friedman, Lionel...................208 Frye, Northrop...............361, 362 Gilson, Etienne........................82 God....18, 21, 37, 38, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 70, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 84, 86, 87, 89, 94, 102, 112, 114, 123, 130, 135, 141, 147, 148, 154, 155, 156, 157, 171, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 203, 204, 207, 209, 214, 215, 216, 219, 221, 228, 236, 242, 249, 262, 264, 265, 267, 293, 295, 312, 321, 322, 343, 350, 353, 354, 355, 356, 359, 360, 362, 363, 364, 379 Gouttebroze, Jean-Guy.....26, 38, 279

387 grail....4, 6, 7, 12, 28, 67, 72, 73, 74, 83, 132, 171, 172, 174, 177, 180, 183, 185, 198, 199, 200, 205, 209, 210, 213, 243, 244, 268, 270, 271, 273, 274, 276, 280, 289, 290, 292, 294, 297, 298, 299, 302, 304, 312, 314, 317, 318, 319, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 345, 346, 348, 349, 350, 351 grail procession4, 9, 41, 72, 176, 194, 201, 210, 215, 244, 271, 279, 294, 302, 305, 317, 319, 321, 329, 330, 337, 338, 350, 354 Gray, Douglas.........................21 Green, D. H.............................57 Greimas, A. J. 102, 217, 308, 335 Haidu, Peter.....42, 50, 240, 245, 273, 274, 275, 276, 341 Hindman, Sandra....................11 Hofer, Stefan...........................59 Holmes, Urban T.....6, 9, 24, 367 humility....38, 87, 138, 155, 189, 190, 195, 196, 209, 212, 216, 226, 227, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 345, 347, 348, 356 Hunt, Tony. .12, 24, 33, 143, 367 hypocrisy.....27, 38, 77, 86, 127, 131, 218, 314, 343, 355

identity 17, 27, 73, 74, 120, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 147, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 162, 163, 165, 169, 170, 176, 182, 185, 186, 189, 190, 197, 202, 210, 226, 228, 243, 245, 257, 303, 348, 353 Imbs, Paul.............................336 irony.42, 43, 152, 171, 172, 248, 258 Javelet, Robert........................21 Klenke, M. Amelia......9, 24, 241, 272, 367 Kline, Ruth............................217 knights & knighthood.11, 19, 25, 26, 27, 34, 42, 48, 51, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116, 119, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 134, 136, 145, 147, 149, 150, 152, 155, 156, 157, 158, 170, 171, 178, 179, 181, 189, 190, 192, 207, 220, 222, 227, 230, 232, 234, 237, 245, 249, 255, 256, 257, 258, 260, 264, 279, 288, 294, 296, 301, 308, 311, 315, 320, 329, 339, 346, 347, 353, 354, 355 Lacy, Norris J.. 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 258, 259, 280, 281, 290, 297, 322, 382

388 lance, bleeding 4, 67, 74, 83, 91, 106, 107, 119, 132, 160, 171, 172, 177, 180, 183, 185, 198, 199, 200, 205, 209, 210, 213, 238, 243, 244, 274, 276, 278, 289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 299, 312, 313, 314, 317, 318, 319, 323, 324, 325, 326, 328, 329, 330, 333, 336, 339, 340, 345, 346, 347, 349, 350 Lancelot..........................16, 151 Le Goff, Jacques......................20 Le Rider, Paule..........................8 Leclercq, Jean........................267 Lot-Borodine, M.....................241 Luttrell, Claude.....................316 Maddox, Donald.......11, 14, 110, 138, 181, 234, 353, 357 Maddux, John S......15, 212, 262, 266 Meister, Peter..........................12 Mla, Charles.......140, 144, 152, 154, 268 memory. . .14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 31, 43, 54, 62, 65, 81, 95, 144, 145, 150, 167, 171, 186, 199, 202, 210, 222, 245, 260, 266, 270, 275, 278, 292, 298, 328, 329, 347, 352, 354, 357, 358, 364, 366 memoria Dei. .21, 27, 353, 356 memoria sui..21, 27, 137, 158, 202, 353, 356

Mnard, Philippe. .168, 173, 267, 268, 274 mercy.....69, 112, 113, 114, 119, 120, 121, 126, 198, 199, 215, 217, 263, 265 Micha, Alexandre..................339 Miner, Earl...............................58 Mourant, John A....................202 mystery....4, 210, 276, 279, 305, 347 names. .144, 145, 150, 153, 169, 172, 228, 322 narrative....5, 15, 18, 23, 27, 28, 32, 41, 49, 50, 52, 54, 57, 59, 60, 63, 65, 69, 110, 122, 142, 170, 211, 212, 219, 220, 221, 222, 225, 231, 237, 238, 240, 246, 254, 257, 259, 267, 275, 276, 280, 281, 282, 291, 297, 347, 357, 359, 363, 364, 368, 369 narrator....32, 33, 38, 41, 48, 49, 62, 64, 65, 66, 75, 77, 78, 89, 93, 95, 97, 112, 117, 132, 153, 159, 166, 167, 168, 180, 181, 183, 205, 206, 207, 208, 211, 221, 225, 233, 245, 253, 254, 256, 275, 276, 280, 282, 283, 298, 302, 310, 312, 317, 320, 324, 326, 332, 337, 338, 339, 341, 342, 343, 350, 351, 364 Newhauser, Richard................81 Nitze, W. A............................339 Nykrog, Per......8, 10, 11, 26, 77, 115, 361, 368

389 Olschki, Leonardo.....9, 272, 367 Owen, D. D. R.. . .34, 59, 60, 217, 271 parables..............36, 37, 40, 351 penitence. 43, 73, 207, 209, 212, 215, 216, 220, 252, 262, 296, 321, 357, 365 Philip of Flanders. 18, 27, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 77, 78, 85, 86, 105, 123, 134, 138, 196, 217, 218, 343, 369 Pickens, Rupert T.....4, 5, 27, 30, 38, 45, 66, 75, 144, 222, 275, 279, 280, 305, 329, 334, 336, 346 point of view...........................50 pride 81, 82, 135, 156, 157, 229, 230, 239, 261, 263, 345, 348, 355 prologue.....4, 12, 17, 18, 24, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 42, 77, 83, 85, 86, 105, 123, 134, 135, 138, 196, 204, 217, 218, 266, 273, 274, 280, 316, 342, 355, 363, 365, 366, 367 Putter, Ad..........................25, 26 questions, unasked. .71, 72, 146, 165, 175, 176, 177, 180, 181, 183, 210, 211, 213, 229, 249, 305, 314, 338, 346, 350, 354

readers & reading 11, 15, 16, 18, 22, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75, 78, 84, 85, 89, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 104, 105, 116, 132, 136, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 151, 152, 153, 154, 169, 171, 180, 182, 183, 186, 189, 194, 196, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 215, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 227, 228, 229, 233, 237, 242, 244, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 255, 259, 262, 266, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 280, 282, 283, 286, 298, 315, 317, 320, 323, 326, 328, 330, 331, 333, 334, 340, 349, 351, 352, 357, 358, 360, 363, 364, 366, 369 Red Knight............................288 Red Knight, Perceval as.......107, 108, 110, 119, 122, 125, 126, 128, 129, 132, 177, 178, 220, 224, 226, 255, 281, 308, 309, 328 red, significance of.......104, 106, 107, 122, 171, 323, 326, 327, 328, 329 Ribard, Jacques.....................367 Riquer, Martn de........2, 3, 9, 59 Robertson, D. W., Jr.....12, 13, 18 Roques, Mario...............148, 339 Rutledge.......................239, 240 Ryding, William W......52, 54, 55, 179

390 Saccone, Antonio............40, 131 Saly, Antoinette.......53, 60, 222, 281, 368 Sargent-Baur, Barbara N..12, 30, 34, 44, 45, 169, 367 Saunders, Corinne J.......101, 186 Seaman, Gerald......................23 self-interest......86, 99, 111, 117, 119, 121, 127, 289 self-knowledge...22, 82, 87, 137, 138, 140, 154, 155, 156, 157, 163, 183, 190, 263, 345, 358 sin 71, 74, 81, 82, 113, 122, 174, 184, 197, 200, 210, 214, 239, 240, 249, 250, 261, 262, 265, 267, 271, 301, 305, 314, 322, 349, 351, 355 157, 213, 253, 292, 350,

snow, blood on.41, 69, 220, 253, 254, 255, 258, 259, 260, 328, 329 specular encounters....138, 139, 140, 141, 150, 163, 164, 173, 174, 179, 180, 181, 182, 185, 197, 353, 358 speech, abusive.......78, 90, 104, 110, 122, 123, 126, 130, 134, 236, 308, 314, 362 Staines, David...............217, 336 Stock, Brian...........................358

structure, episodic.....11, 18, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 163, 178, 189, 193, 197, 219, 222, 223, 250, 261, 278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 287, 290, 291, 292, 295, 297, 298, 300, 301, 302, 303, 310, 351, 360, 362, 363, 368 suffering...68, 97, 164, 182, 200, 208, 210, 213, 216, 233, 237, 239, 242, 244, 248, 249, 250, 253, 258, 260, 261, 286, 287, 289, 291, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 303, 309, 310, 315, 347, 349, 350, 351, 355 sword...119, 194, 245, 283, 300, 320, 321, 322, 323, 325, 326, 330, 346 symbolism.....9, 24, 55, 274, 317 Topsfield, L. T.22, 137, 146, 180, 181

391 typology....56, 57, 361, 362, 363 Uitti, Karl D..............................11 vainglory. .18, 27, 34, 38, 77, 83, 87, 121, 123, 153, 189, 196, 205, 224, 231, 238, 266, 354, 366 Vinaver, Eugene..........52, 55, 57 voluntas propria.......86, 95, 114, 127, 134, 136, 263, 309 women. 75, 82, 94, 96, 112, 115, 126, 161, 188, 196, 203, 216, 218, 222, 225, 234, 235, 236, 238, 245, 251, 253, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 279, 284, 286, 287, 290, 294, 301, 325, 329, 348 Yvain....4, 16, 41, 143, 179, 181, 186, 208, 330