Some comments on Perceval: The Story of the Grail (Burton Raffel Translation)

[Lia]

Why else does the Gospel say:

"Hide your good deeds from your left hand"?
The left hand, according to this

Tradition, is pompous pride,

Hypocritical and false.

[…]
Would it be better to act

Like Alexander, indifferent

To charity, closed to goodness?

But no one believes such nonsense!

Whoa, if I’m reading this correctly, he’s calling the Gospel nonsense!

Obviously Arthurian Romances are full of chivalric virtue-signaling. I’m never sure whether to take it literally, or read it as satire to mock pomposity dressed up as high culture.


Edit:

It seems I did misread it. From a different translation

for he is doing it for the worthiest man in Christendom: Count Philip of Flanders, who is of even greater worth than the mightily esteemed Alexander. I shall prove that the count is worth a good deal more than he, for Alexander had amassed within him all the vices and all the evils of which the count is clean and safe.

So he’s dissing Alexander, elevating Philip count of Flanders (makes me think about Homer Simpsons’ neighbor), in the process of alluding to some written source for this tale.