Percevel

Percevel, Perceval, Percival, Parsifal, Parzifal, Perchevael. The Grail hero of the Arthurian legends has numerous Celtic antecedents and/or parallels, including the Amadán Mór, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Peredur, and Peronnik. He first appears in Chrétien de Troyes's Conte del Graal or Perceval (c.1182). Details of his life and circumstances are not consistent through various English, French, and German retellings of his story, but he is always a questing innocent, the bumpkin who becomes a hero. Richard Wagner described the character as a ‘simpleton without guile’ in his music drama Parsifal (1882).

Bibliography

See Jessie L. Weston , The Legend of Sir Perceval (2 vols., London, 1906, 1909);
R. B. Pace , ‘Sir Perceval and the Boyish Exploits of Finn’, PMLA, n.s. 25(4) (Dec. 1917), 598–604;
Arthur C. L. Brown , Origin of the Grail Legend (New York, 1935);
Sheila Joyce McHugh , ‘Sir Perceyvelle’: Its Irish Connections (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1946);
D. D. R. Owen , ‘The Development of the Perceval Story’, Romania, 80 (1959), 473–92;
Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, ‘Percival in Wales: The Late Medieval Grail Traditions’, in Alison Adams et al. (eds.), The Changing Face of Arthurian Romance (Woodbridge, UK, 1986), 78–91.