. Dating from the early 13th century, perhaps from its first decade, Perlesvaus is a French Arthurian prose romance that reworks the story of Perceval, with the hero renamed Perlesvaus (explained as perd-les-vaus, or “lose the vales” of Camelot). The work, also known as the Haut livre du Graal, is preserved in three manuscripts (Bodl. Lib., Hatton 82; Brussels, Bibl. Roy. 11145; Chantilly 626) and two fragments, as well as a 14th-century Welsh translation.
Divided into eleven branches, and running to more than 10,000 lines of printed prose in the Nitze-Jenkins edition, Perlesvaus offers a dense and complex narrative that emphasizes in particular the adventures of Gawain, Lancelot, and Perlesvaus. The first two fail in their Grail quests: Gawain sees the Grail but does not ask the question; Lancelot finds and enters the Grail castle, but, owing to his sinful love for the queen, the Grail does not appear; Perlesvaus, in Branch 9, eventually succeeds. His success consists, however, of his liberating the Grail castle; there is this time no Grail procession, and since the Fisher King is now dead the anticipated Grail question is not asked.
The spirit of the work is militantly religious, and the intense action is characterized by liberal bloodshed, often in the interests of Christianity and often to hasten the process by which the New Law supplants the Old. The pervasive symbolism of the romance is generally explicit, as when the author announces that a certain damsel represents Fortune; elsewhere, symbolic meanings may be indicated, effectively but without subtlety, by the names borne by characters, such as Perlesvaus’s mother Yglais (suggesting “Church”; cf. Fr. église), and the Fisher King Messios (“Messiah”).
Colophons in two manuscripts claim that the Perlesvaus had its origin in the “Island of Avalon,” assumed to be Glastonbury; its modern editors describe it as “Glastonbury propaganda,” doubtless related to, if not inspired directly by, the purported 1191 discovery of Arthur’s and Guenevere’s bodies at Glastonbury abbey.
An original and important recasting of the Grail material and a masterpiece of early French prose, the Perlesvaus was soon overshadowed by the great 13th-century Vulgate Cycle. Its continuing appeal is indicated, however, by the fact that it was printed twice during the 16th century (1516 and 1523) as part of an Arthurian trilogy that also included the Vulgate Estoire del saint Graal and the Queste del saint Graal.
Nitze, William A., and T.Atkinson Jenkins, eds. Le haut livre du Graal: Perlesvaus. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932–37, Vol. 1: Texts, Variants, and Glossary, Vol. 2: Commentary and Notes.
Bryant, Nigel, trans. The High Book of the Grail Ipswich: Brewer, 1978.
Kelly, Thomas E. Le haut livre du Graal: Perlesvaus. A Structural Study. Geneva: Droz, 1974.
Nitze, William A. “Perlesvaus.” In Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959, pp. 263–73.
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