Finally, an Essay! (Why did I name this group "essays???")
Source: Arthuriana 24.3 - Perceval’s Unknown Sin: Narrative Theology in Chrétien’s Story of the Grail
TL;DR of Perceval’s tale:
- Perceval’s education as a knight is ordered towards the accomplishment of his mission at the Grail Castle,
- his conversion encounter with the hermit (ll. 6217–6515) provides the missing element in Perceval’s prior training,
- the hermit reveals to Perceval his sin and point the way towards the unwritten dénouement of the work.
- Now that Perceval knows and confesses his sin, he is liberated from it and can proceed to accomplish the task allotted to him.
I am slightly peeved that what I anticipated to be a Calvin-and-Hobbes like silly funny tale turned into some kind of theological allegory. This essay is still interesting to me, because I misread (?) Chrétien as endorsing some of Perceval’s bad behaviors (sexual assault, robbing a ring, murder of the red knight not to defend the King but to rob his armor.) The incredible success of Perceval seems to trivialize his misbehavior; he gets to punish others, he himself was never punished.
This paper interestingly presents the abandonment of his mother at the moment of her death (like Dedalus in Ulysses!) as the “original sin,” and the subsequent bad behavior as failure to live up to the knight code, and that failure itself, and the shame of that, as the punishment for abandoning his mother. It’s really counterintuitive to me, but then again, the Christian idea of “original sin,” or even Cain’s first “murder” (did he even know there is such thing as death?), have always seemed really unfair to me.
So anyway, some points from the paper:
the hermit expresses Chrétien’s own estimation that Perceval’s action is gravely sinful
symbolic reading: it is the mother’s allegorical identity that makes his sin so serious. His mother represents religion or the virtue of faith. (this is NOT the paper’s position, just listing some interpretations/ arguments already in circulation. Personally, I think this allegorical reading is “neat” — Christian theology is SO INHERENTLY WTF INCOMPREHENSIBLE, you can’t help misunderstanding all the dogmatic instructions. Also, his mother gave horrendous advices.)
Every sin weighs on you until you confess the hermit declares that Perceval’s silence at the Grail Castle is caused by his earlier sin against his mother. The weight of past sins can obscure the vision of the good until one can no longer rightly distinguish between good and evil.
Problem: Is Perceval *that* blameworthy?
Perceval cannot be held responsible for his mother’s death since she had given him permission to leave
The “sin" is committed by a youth who does not foresee the consequences of his actions (The Hermit calls it "a sin about which he knows nothing”)
Answer to the said “Problem”: ignorance is not an excuse. Some of the theological arguments presented are almost Socratic — ignorance is necessary condition for most sins, nobody does what is bad if they knew it’s bad.
The point being: The final position of this essay reminds me of Apollo coercing humans to violate Zeus’ laws — so that Zeus can smite them. It’s so ridiculous you want to think it’s a failed plot twist: the whole point of setting young Perceval up for inevitable failure is to bring him to recognize the inadequacy of physical strength without God’s grace; the whole point of weighing him down with sin is to release him from the weight through confession; the whole point of a quest that highlights his ignorance is to prepare him to acquire self-knowledge so that he can reject his godless-inadequate state and turn towards a life of grace, the necessary spiritual component for the Grail Castle task.
Obviously this is just one interpretation from an institution more or less known for theology (Loyola). It's an interesting read for me, since I know very little about Christianity and the plethora of theological positions contemporary to Chrétien. I'm hoping to find more discussions on interpretation of Perceval, as I don't want to just read it as a theological allegory piece either.
Source: Arthuriana 24.3 - Perceval’s Unknown Sin: Narrative Theology in Chrétien’s Story of the Grail
TL;DR of Perceval’s tale:
I am slightly peeved that what I anticipated to be a Calvin-and-Hobbes like silly funny tale turned into some kind of theological allegory. This essay is still interesting to me, because I misread (?) Chrétien as endorsing some of Perceval’s bad behaviors (sexual assault, robbing a ring, murder of the red knight not to defend the King but to rob his armor.) The incredible success of Perceval seems to trivialize his misbehavior; he gets to punish others, he himself was never punished.
This paper interestingly presents the abandonment of his mother at the moment of her death (like Dedalus in Ulysses!) as the “original sin,” and the subsequent bad behavior as failure to live up to the knight code, and that failure itself, and the shame of that, as the punishment for abandoning his mother. It’s really counterintuitive to me, but then again, the Christian idea of “original sin,” or even Cain’s first “murder” (did he even know there is such thing as death?), have always seemed really unfair to me.
So anyway, some points from the paper:
Obviously this is just one interpretation from an institution more or less known for theology (Loyola). It's an interesting read for me, since I know very little about Christianity and the plethora of theological positions contemporary to Chrétien. I'm hoping to find more discussions on interpretation of Perceval, as I don't want to just read it as a theological allegory piece either.