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.
Norris J.Lacy
[See also: GRAIL AND GRAIL ROMANCES; PROSE ROMANCE
(ARTHURIAN); VULGATE CYCLE]
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.
PÉROTIN
(Perotinus; fl. late 12th-early 13th c.). Because he composed liturgical vocal polyphony at
Notre-Dame for two, three, and four parts (each part sung by a soloist) and employed the
rhythmic modes, sophisticated devices of repetition and voice exchange, unprecedented
length, and important notational innovations, Pérotin was the most significant musical
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1356