Customer Reviews

Perceval: The Story of the Grail (Chretien De Troyes Romances S)

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For anyone who enjoys the legends of King Arthur this book is a must read. The story is a blend of commedy, adventure, and the magnificent all set in a world that is at times magical and bordering the superantural. The story contains the tales of two knights; Perceval and Gawain. While it is true that Chretian never did finish the book the result is more of a cliffhanger than a dissapointment. Burton Raffel does an excellent job translating from the origional french using the definative Pleiade edition as his reference. These masterpieces written by Chretian de Troyes are the inspiration behind the famous Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Mallory. Enjoy.

This unfinnished romance has inspired centuries of literature. Chretien was probably the most popular writer in the 12th century. Despite the age of the book the story is full of issues that concern us today. It is a comming of age story in which a boy becomes a man and learns of his ancestry and potential. It is also a story of spiritual discovery, and the encounter with mystery. The fact that the poem was left unfinnished makes it even more compelling. Chretien claimed that this book was rewritten from a source book given to him by Phillip of Flanders, his patron. Speculation about the nature of this source has run on for centuries. A recent analysis in _King_Arthur_ by Norma Goodrich, makes a good case that the source was real and that these Arthurian stories took place in southern Scotland. So maybe Percival is more than just one of the greatest works of fiction. I love to read direct translations of Celtic mythology, and this is amoung the best available. Easier to read than you might think, but still a challenge. One of my favorite books.

Written by Chretien de Troyes in around 1180 under the patronage of Philip of Flanders, this medieval poem can be considered as the French take on the Arthurian legend. (Remember this was a time when England was ruled by French kings, so I suppose there was a lot of cultural exchange between the two countries). It's a very peculiar work, in that it is very funny, as Perceval, the protagonist of the story, is portrayed as an almost impossible fool who through his candor achieves success as a knight. Merlin doesn't appear here, but King Arthur does (as an aging and ineffective monarch), as well as Gawain and the Fisher King (with a very intriguing subplot dealing with the Holy Grail, reportedly the first mention ever in print of this mythical cup). Summing up, this is highly reccomended (and it's highly readable). Note: French filmmaker Eric Rohmer made in 1978 a very good adaptation of the poem called Perceval le Gallois.

It's sad to think that Chretien de Troyes introduced his most enduring invention in a work he did not live to finish. We never learn what, precisely, the Grail is--though Chretien never actually names it "Holy"--or where it came from. Almost like the Fisher King or the Grail itself, the Grail's inventor gave us a symbol and disappeared.

Perceval is the last of Chretien's five surviving romances. The Grail and the poem's naive central character proved enormously popular in medieval Europe, spawning several continuations of the unfinished story (all summarized at the end of this edition) and many imitators, from Wolfram von Eschenbach to Richard Wagner.

The story is both easy and difficult to summarize--easy because, being unfinished, it is short and fairly straighforward, and difficult because, for the same reasons, it has no ending and the reader has no way of knowing how the plot would finally interconnect and resolve. The title character begins the poem as a young man, living in the forest with his overprotective mother who, for fear of his life, has shielded him from knowledge of chivalry and even his own name. Nevertheless, Perceval shows knightly instinct and when he encounters a group of knights by chance, he determines to travel to King Arthur and become a knight.

This he does in short order, though not after a series of Quixotic adventures caused by his literal interpretation of his mother's bits of parting advice. Upon reaching Arthur's court, the acerbic Sir Kay tells Perceval that Arthur has knighted him and that the red armor of a rebellious knight is his to take. Perceval misses the joke and kills the red knight, then sets off on another series of adventures, vowing not to return to court until he has avenged Sir Kay's slapping of a girl.

The first third or so of Perceval deals exclusively with Perceval's misadventures and growth in courtesy and manliness. He fights overbearing knights and rights wrongdoings--all the trappings of the finest medieval romances. But near the middle of the tale, Sir Gawain suddenly comes to the fore in a subplot that is given as much time as the Perceval-centered plots. Indeed, almost the entire final third of the poem deals with Gawain. Chretien died before he could bring Perceval back into the story from a shadowy hermit's retreat.

But despite the lack of an ending--one can pick up von Eschenbach's Parzival for a much longer and fuller telling of the tale--Perceval remains a great read. The story is by turns touching and hilarious. Perceval's hopelessly naive exploits as a young man carefully segue to his realization, as a more mature man, that he has forgotten God and not only caused suffering for some, but prolonged it. The Gawain plot parallels Perceval's in many ways, and can be seen as the end result of the older knight's youthful adventures.

This translation by Burton Raffel is very good. While, as a non-French-speaker, I cannot speak for his accuracy or literalness, Raffel very deftly captures all the wit and energy of Chretien's narrative without succumbing to contemporary slang or cliche. A brief translator's note at the beginning summarizes Raffel's motivation and goals as translator, and the afterword by Joseph Duggan is a valuable and enjoyable read.

In the end, reading Perceval may be a disappointing experience for some--the absence of an ending, I have to admit, is frustrating--but for me, reading a master poet's story in a masterful translation is always a joy.

Highly recommended.

I'm reading this for a book discussion group - but I have to agree with the reviewers who found it surprisingly entertaining and easy to read. (And those knights were up to no good most of the time in my opinion!)

I thought this book would be hard to read and boring since it was written so long ago, but I was wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it a fascinating story with undertones of all sorts of things. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the real story of the Grail Legend. Read this book instead of relying on other author's interpretations and theories.

What a Classic tale of the Fool coming to age! The story (read: poem) moves along at a quick pace as we follow Perceval through his travails. The story is light and humourous but also is so much deeper at second look. It is too bad Chretin dy Troyes could not have lived to finish this piece.