Gawain Perceval Gawain and Perceval

Gawain Perceval

Gawain and Perceval in the Scope of the Arthurian Legend

The Arthurian legend is compelling as a way to peer into a world that is deeply mythologized but couched in a true history of England and Europe. The age of feudalism, knighthood and the crusades is captures with remarkable variety across the countless depictions and incarnations which have appeared over centuries of retelling. However, a common thread which connects all variations on the Arthurian legend is its sweeping set of narratives, which string together with the very famous tales of Excalibur and the love triangle with Sir Lancelot and Guinevere the sagas of generations and scores of nobility. Quite often, it is in the departures which follow many of these characters that the Arthurian legend reveals its most colorful and mystifying of elements. So do we find that in such characters as Sir Gawain and Sir Perceval, knights of the round table of distinctly different persona, the legend lives out many of its peripheral interests.

What makes these figures particularly interesting to consider is that neither of them enters too deeply into the primary narratives which concern the childhood, life and death of the great King Arthur and his closest consorts. As they exist on the relative fringe or literary consideration but with great esteem from King Arthur nonetheless, each generates his own personal story within the context of the legend which bears its own peculiarities and insights. In many ways, Gawain is the archetypal adventurer, with depictions frequently following Gawain with expectation of numerous acts of heroism, chivalrous simplicity and skilled aggression. To our way of thinking, his is a character which is frequently discredited by his own obtuse moral perspective, but which is also constant in his sense of duty and honor in knighthood. To the point, it is as if Gawain is a knight surrounded by more profound individuals and serving singularly the black and white duties of his position as he viewed it. Thus, "Gawain's miscellaneous adventures with the Bed of Marvels and the Perilous Ford and at the castle of the rock of Champguin, where he unexpectedly finds himself sitting next to both Arthur's mother and his own, are recounted in luxuriant detail, without achieving any clear direction." (Pearsall, 37) The absence of clear direction of which is spoken here seems to emanate from the larger listlessness of the era of Arthurian questing absent the Holy Grail.

And where the Holy Grail is concerned, Perceval does seem to actually register a larger part in the central narrative. Based on Arthur's ambition toward the Grail and his own righteous sense of purity, Perceval is a one-dimensional embodiment of this diversion. In spite of his key role in locating the Holy Grail, a proclaimedly important mission in all variations of the Arthurian legend, Perceval is actually treated with rather little attention. As Pearsall indicates, in discussion on a French retelling by Chretien De Troyes, "Perceval's quest receives only 200 lines: he loses faith, meets some penitents on Good Friday who expound to him succinctly the meaning of Christ's sacrifice and goes to a hermit from whom he hears the explanation of the grail and from whom he himself receives communion." (Pearsall, 37) This may be perceived as a statement that Perceval had given his identity largely over to a quest that, once completed, had exhausted his purpose to either his world or the broader legend. One may also take the liberty of interpreting this to mean that the preoccupation of the Holy Grail was precisely that. Perhaps the diminishing relevance of Perceval with the passage of the grail story may be seen as a critical response to the religious aggression that is part and parcel to the crusades.

Indeed, Perceval is almost a device used to push forward the story of the grail and its affiliated critical observations. His behavior on the quest tends to reinforce this estimation of his otherwise minimal personality. To the extent, we are told that "Perceval begins with an almost lunatic single-mindedness in pursuing what he understandings to the ideal of knighthood, pure prowess, but is gradually civilized into a fully understanding of the ideas of chivalry." (Pearsall, 38)