The High Book of the Grail (Perlesvaus) is one of the most fascinating of medieval Arthurian romances, standing apart from the main tradition represented by the great romance cycles on which Malory based his work. Written in the first half ofthe thirteenth century, it represents a totally different view of the legend of the Holy Grail from that found in Wolfram von Eschenbach or the French Quest of the Holy Grail, though all derive from Chretien's Perceval; the unknown author adds a much greater religious emphasis, and a desire to glorify crusading chivalry for the secular adventures of...

Perceforest is one of the largest and certainly the most extraordinary of the late Arthurian romances, and is almost completely unknown except 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...