The Formation of the Knight: Structure of the Perceval-Grail Romance

We can for once present the story that will be the model for countless variations on the theme. As far as we are concerned, we could divide this novel into three phases or fundamental elements:

• First, a formation phase of the knight who must be admitted to King Arthur's court;
• Then a phase relating properly to the first manifestation of the Grail completely independent from Perceval;
• Finally a third phase relating to the Quest for the Grail.

This structure is very important and significant in itself. The Grail is not part of an "ordinary" adventure, nor can the initiate or knight undertake alone or authorize himself for the Quest. It is the Grail itself that, by presenting itself to the Knight in some way, inserts him into its story. This structure closely recalls that of some evangelical parables about the kingdom of God and highlights three phases of spiritual transmutation: a natural phase, a mystical one, and an initiatic one.

THE FORMATION OF THE KNIGHT

Let us analyze the main elements of this phase of the novel.

• ABSENCE OF NAME: The first part of the story is a formation part of the knight. The Knight doesn't even know his own name and as the mother says to Perceval, not knowing one's own name means not knowing one's own identity.

• THE SON OF THE WIDOW: In the very first lines of the Romance, Perceval is presented as Son of the Widow. The Widow is obviously Perceval's Mother, but this term is important because it connects to an evangelical passage—that of the son of the widow who is resurrected by Jesus Christ. In some way this term immediately associates the novel with the theme of resurrection and return to life (which is one of the typical themes of the Grail capable of bringing back to life, also taken up by Von Eschenbach with his reference to the phoenix). Whether the mother is truly a widow is not quite certain, indeed as you know the novel remains unfinished, but there are good reasons to suspect that in reality Perceval's father is alive and is precisely the Wounded King.

• THE MOTHER AND THE DESOLATE FOREST: Perceval is raised unaware of all chivalry and generally isolated from the whole world. Despite being predestined for the enterprises he had to accomplish and extremely gifted for chivalry, the mother trying to protect him raises him together with her in the Desolate Forest. The description that Chrétien de Troyes makes is very bucolic and makes it clear that the desolation of the forest is not associated with the presence or absence of animals nor with greater or lesser vegetation, but that the desolation is deeper, almost a state of mind and that we will discover to be due to the King's wound. The Forest is desolate because it is without knights and the first knights that Perceval will manage to see will ignite his vocation.

• THE JOURNEY AND THE ENCOUNTERS: Now Perceval begins his journey. The journey in general is always a displacement of state of consciousness. In the Grail romances there will be journeys through forests, or through mountains, or even by sea. The passage of the sea is always associated with a radical change of consciousness since the sea expresses an idea of insurmountable separation. The journey leads from one place to another and each place, in the structure of the novels, has its own characteristic. A place may require a strength or virtue to be affirmed to defeat an enemy represented by a knight, may indicate knowledge to be acquired provided by a hermit or a damsel or a state of consciousness to be conquered represented by a castle.

• KING ARTHUR: After having set in motion some causes whose effects will manifest only later, Perceval arrives at King Arthur's. The King represents the dominating and regal power obviously, in this case he is a symbol of the good King and therefore of the Spirit that commands and dominates by right, but whose right...