(Ebook) A Perceforest Reader: Selected Episodes From "Perceforest: The Prehistory of Arthur's Britain" by Nigel Bryant ISBN 9781843842903, 1843842904 Full
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A Perceforest Reader
Perceforest is one of the largest and certainly the most extraordinary of
the late Arthurian romances, and is almost completely unknown ex-
cept 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 Pal-
ais’, 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 Eng-
lish; 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 a million words.
A Perceforest Reader is an ideal introduction to the remarkable world
portrayed in this late flowering of the Arthurian imagination.
Nigel Bryant has worked as a theatre director and radio drama pro-
ducer for the BBC, and as head of drama at Marlborough College and
Lecturer in Drama at the University of Manchester. This is his fifth
major translation of medieval Arthurian romance.
Also translated by Nigel Bryant
D. S. BREWER
© Nigel Bryant 2011
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products
made from wood grown in sustainable forests
Introduction 1
Troylus in love 39
If ever a chivalric romance asserted the inspirational effects of love
upon a knight, it is Perceforest. All people, the author makes plain,
should be subjects of the lord Love, and if we’re not inspired by our
commitment to that mighty lord, how much, the author asks, are
we ever likely to achieve? This idea is explored wittily – but with
no lack of serious intent – in this passage.
The Fish-Knights 63
The author of Perceforest sends his knights out to confront a
world of awesome marvels. The complexity of the created world,
and the author’s fascination with it, are nowhere expressed as
startlingly as in an adventure encountered by King Perceforest’s
son when he’s stranded on a distant island.
1
Jacques Barchilon, L’histoire de la Belle au bois dormant dans le Perceforest’, Fabula vol.31,
issues 1-2 (1990), pp.17-23. The ‘fourteenth-century’ dating has been much debated:
all the surviving manuscripts of Perceforest were produced after 1450, but there are a
number of reasons to date its original composition to c.1330-40. See Perceforest, tr. Bryant
(D.S.Brewer, 2011), Introduction, especially pp.24-5.
2 a perceforest reader
The Story
A complete synopsis of Perceforest’s narratives would be unreadably
dense. The anonymous author draws on many sources – the Lancelot-
Grail, Alexander romances, Roman histories, medieval travel writing
and oral tradition – as he interweaves and interconnects a vast num-
ber of episodes in a complex and intricately conceived way. To give
a context for the selections in this Sampler, however, here is a broad
outline of the story:
(which may well have been the author’s homeland), involving love,
revenge and magic.
The kings’ children are at the forefront of these adventures; but
then Perceforest’s eldest son becomes infatuated with a Roman girl,
whose treachery enables Julius Caesar to launch an invasion in which
Perceforest and all his forces are annihilated and the kingdom is ut-
terly destroyed.
A third generation of knights and maidens restore the land, and
one of Gadifer’s grandsons, Ourseau, takes revenge on Caesar. Another
of his grandsons, Gallafur, is destined to marry Alexander’s grand-
daughter, ‘the Maiden of the Dragons’, to give Britain a new king and
queen; their union is to begin a line leading to a king who will draw
a sword which Gallafur has embedded in a great stone – King Arthur
himself, who will thus be a descendant of none other than Alexander.
But before that union can take place, Gallafur must first achieve heroic
feats by accomplishing ‘the Adventure of the Red Sword’ and casting
out the enchantments that still beset Britain.
And he cannot enjoy his success for long. The fragility of kingdoms
is seen again as Britain is invaded for a second time: in a reversal of
the Trojan War, the Sicambrians, a people of Trojan blood, attack and
destroy the ‘Greek’ civilisation of Britain.
But Gallafur’s son, rescued by Zephir, survives and learns of the
coming of the ‘New Law’, and sees a holy vessel brought to Britain
to await the knight who is to achieve the Grail quest. The kingdom of
Arthur is soon to come.
How Perceforest earned his name
Newly crowned king of England by Alexander, Betis is warned repeatedly that the forests
of the land are infested by an ‘evil clan’ headed by Darnant the Enchanter. Their most
damning crimes are the offences they commit against women, and they are adept at using
magic as a weapon. Betis is about to commission the building of a new castle on the site
of the land’s first tournament, but…
‘My lord,’ Nicorant replied, ‘I’ll do all you command except fetch tim-
ber from the forest! No workman would dare go there to cut or fell: he’d
be lost in an instant, spirited away by the enchanters who dwell there!’
‘Go and buy the stone, Nicorant,’ said King Betis, ‘and I’ll see to
the forest!’
A little later, Betis fell asleep after dinner in the warmth of the
afternoon; and he dreamed that the dwarf who’d directed him to the
place of his coronation appeared before him and said:
‘Cowardly king! How shameful it is that you don’t go and see the
wonders in the forest!’
The king was so angry at being called a coward that he shook with
rage and awoke. But then he reconsidered: perhaps he was a cowardly
king indeed! He summoned a squire to harness his horse – and quiet-
ly, so that the queen wouldn’t know – and then donned an unmarked
surcoat and hid his shield in a cloth cover, and set off into the forest
without anyone knowing he’d gone.
It was the most beautiful forest he’d ever seen, smooth and clear of
undergrowth, with tall and well-spaced trees. Beneath a huge laurel
he saw a lovely spring, and went there to drink. Suddenly a statue on
a pillar gave a great blast on a horn, and King Betis looked to his right
and saw a knight in full armour galloping towards him on a charger,
crying:
‘Stay where you are, you rogue! You’ve done wrong!’
‘What wrong have I done, sir knight?’
‘You’ve drunk from the spring without leave.’
‘Well truly,’ the king said, ‘that’s hardly a serious crime: water
should be common property!’
6 a perceforest reader
‘Mount and come to prison,’ the knight replied. ‘There you’ll see
how serious it is!’
‘You’d have an easy victory, sir, if I went to prison just because you
told me to!’
‘By my gods!’ cried the knight. ‘You’ll come whether it’s with
good grace or bad!’
And Betis said: ‘It’ll have to be bad: the only way I’m going is by
force.’
‘Mount then,’ said the knight, ‘and defend yourself. Tonight you’ll
be lying in the wrong kind of bed!’
‘Right!’ said the king. ‘We’ll see who’ll come off worse!’
And he leapt straight from the ground into his saddle, checked his
arms were in order and thrust in his spurs.
They clashed, and both delivered fearsome blows with their lances;
but while the knight’s missed its target, the king’s pierced his enemy’s
mailcoat and cut through to the bone. The knight took to flight and
the king spurred after him, chasing as fast as he could. Then the knight
cast a spell: a rushing river a hundred feet wide appeared between him
and the king. But the king, his attention fixed on pursuing the knight,
intent on not losing his trail, never once looked down and didn’t see
the river; he carried on the chase without fear. But his horse saw it and
was about to rear, and the king, heedless of the danger, still intent on
the knight, thrust in his spurs with all his might. His horse leapt from
all four hooves fully fifteen feet as if to dive into the river; but when
it landed on solid earth instead of the expected water it stumbled and
staggered and crashed to the ground, and the king now looked down
and thought he was in a river and was dumbfounded; he beat at his
horse as though to make him swim, and the bewildered horse clam-
bered up and thrashed around as if swimming, and found himself free
of the enchantment and back on level ground. The king now looked
ahead and saw the knight a long way off, and began to yell after him:
‘It’s no use, I tell you! You won’t escape!’
The knight heard this and cast another spell: the king thought two
lions were charging and attacking him from both sides. He drew his
sword and struck one of the lions with all his strength, desperate to
be off after the knight, but the blow slashed down without touching
anything and plunged a full foot into the ground. Feeling no contact
when he should have sliced the lion in half, the king was bewildered;
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