PERCEVAL, the hero of a comparatively small but highly important group of romances, now forming part of the Arthurian cycle. Originally the story of Perceval was of the character of a folktale, and that one of considerable importance and world wide diffusion. He is represented as the son of a widow, "la dame veuve," his father having been slain, in battle or tourney, either immediately before or shortly after his birth. The mother, fear ful lest her son should share his father's fate, flies to the woods, either with one attendant or with a small group of faithful re tainers, and there brings up her son in ignorance of his name and parentage, and all knightly accomplishments. The youth grows up strong, swift-footed, and of great personal beauty, but, natur ally, of very limited intelligence. He spends his days chasing the beasts of the forest.
As the result of a chance meeting with a party of knights he determines to set forth into the world in search of knighthood. He comes to Arthur's court, where he creates a sensation by his personal beauty and uncouth behaviour. He succeeds, by a cast of his javelin, in slaying the Red Knight, a foe of Arthur's who has vainly challenged the knights of the Round Table, and clothing himself in his armour, sets out on a series of adventures which differ in the various versions, but the outcome of which is that he becomes a skilful knight, and regains the heritage of his father.
This, the Perceval story proper, has been recognized by scholars as the variant of a widespread folk-tale theme, designated by J. G. von Hahn as the Aryan Expulsion and Return Formula, which counts among its representatives such heroes as Perseus, Cyrus and Romulus and Remus. This particular variant appears to be of British-Celtic origin, and the most faithful representative of the original tale is now very generally held to be the Inglish Syr Percyvelle of Galles, a poem preserved in the ms. of Lincoln cathedral library. Here the hero is nephew to Arthur on the mother's side, and his father, of the same name, is a valiant knight of the court. A noticeable feature of the story is the un certainty as to the hero's parentage; the mother is always a lady of rank, a queen in her own right, or a sister of kings, but the father's rank varies, he is never a king, more often simply a valiant knight, and never of equal rank with his wife.
The connection of the story with Arthur and his court brought about an important development, the precise steps of which are not yet clear. Perceval became the hero of the Grail Quest, oust ing Gawain, to whom the adventure originally belonged, and the Perceval became merged in the Grail tradition. Of the Perceval Grail romances the oldest, from the point of view of ms. preserva tion, is the Perceval or Conte del Graal of Chretien de Troyes, but as Chretien had already, in a previous poem (Cliges), referred to Perceval as "un vassal de grant renon," and states at the com mencement of the Conte del Graal that he is about to "rimoier" the best tale told in a royal court, it is quite clear that, contrary to the theory of Foerster and Golther, Perceval is no invention of Chretien's, but was already a popular hero. Unfortunately the
Perceval was left unfinished, so we are without a guide (which the conclusion might have afforded) to the precise character of Chretien's source, and the three writers, Wauchier de Denain, Gerbert and Manessier, who eventually carried the story to a conclusion, differ widely from each other, and were clearly familiar with divergent traditions. An interesting problem is that of the relation between Chretien's poem and the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, which was long held to be a translation from the French poem, in spite of the fact that Wolfram himself asserts that his source was the work of a certain Kiot, and that Chretien has told the story wrong. A fragment attached to two of the Chretien mss. relates the birth and parentage of the hero, the death of his father, and flight of the mother (details only alluded to by Chretien) in a manner which corresponds curiously with the German poem, and which, taken in connection with the knowledge, on the part of other writers, of features peculiar to the Parzival, would indicate that Wolfram was right, and that the two works are independent derivations from a common source.
We have also two prose versions of the Perceval story, the older, contained in two mss. only, is attributed to Robert de Borron, and forms the final section of his trilogy, concluding with a version of the death of Arthur, manifestly derived from a rhyming chronicle, akin to but not identical with that of Wace. The sec ond romance, the Perlesvaus, obviously knew, and used, this text, but it is a much longer and more complicated romance, relating the adventures of Gawain, Lancelot and Perceval (Perlesvaus) in quest of the Grail. It probably formed at one time the Quest section of the prose Lancelot, and was later displaced in favour of the Galahad version. In fact two Paris mss. retain its opening adventure as introductory to the Galahad Queste, and in the early printed editions the two are found together. It was in all proba bility composed towards the close of the 12th century by a Welsh monk of Glastonbury, and was apparently designed to exploit the discovery of the tombs of Arthur and Guenevere in that abbey.
The exact position of the Welsh Mabinogi, Peredur, son of Evrawc, is still a matter of debate. It certainly contains incidents which are found in Chretien, but there is also much which is obviously of Welsh and folk-lore origin. The theory that it is a mere translation of the French poem must be rejected, but its exact relation, with that of other Mabinogion to the parallel French versions is uncertain. (See also GRAIL, THE HOLY ; WAG NER, RICHARD.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-For the critical treatment of the subject see J. L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Perceval ( 2 vols., 1906-09) ; R. H. Griffith, Syr Percyvelle of Galles (Chicago, 1911) ; a review of the above by E. Brugger (Zeitschrift fur Franz. Sprache, vol. xliv.) ; and J. D. Bruce, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance (1923, bibl.).