Perceforest is one of the largest and certainly the most extraordinary
of the late Arthurian romances, and is almost completely unknown except
to a handful of scholars. But it is a work of exceptional richness and
importance, and has been justly described as "an encyclopaedia of
14th-century chivalry" and "a mine of folkloric motifs". Its contents
are drawn not only from earlier Arthurian material, but also from
romances about Alexander the Great, from Roman histories and from
medieval travel writing - not to mention oral tradition, including as it
does the first and unexpurgated version of the story of the Sleeping
Beauty. Out of this, the author creates a remarkable prehistory of King
Arthur's Britain, describing how Alexander the Great gives the island to
Perceforest, who has to purge the island of magic-wielding knights
descended from Darnant the Enchanter, despite their supernatural powers.
Perceforest then founds the knightly order of the "Franc Palais", an
ideal of chivalric civilisation which prefigures the Round Table of
Arthur and indeed that of Edward III; but that civilisation is, as the
author shows, all too fragile. The action all takes place in a pagan
world of many gods, but the temple of the Sovereign God, discovered by
Perceforest, prefigures the Christian world and the coming of the Grail
and Arthur.
Nigel Bryant has recently adapted this immense romance into English;
even in his version, which gives a complete account of the whole work
but links extensive sections of full translation with compressed
accounts of other passages, it runs to nearly half amillion words.
A Perceforest Reader is an ideal introduction to the remarkable world
portrayed in this late flowering of the Arthurian imagination.
