 | This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. (January 2024) |
| Perceforest | |
|---|---|
| Full title | Le Roman de Perceforest |
| Author(s) | Anonymous |
| Language | Old French (verse), Middle French (prose) |
| Date | Around 1340 |
| First printed edition | La Tres Elegante Delicieux Melliflue et Tres Plaisante Hystoire du Tres Noble Roy Perceforest (1528) |
| Sources | Historia Regum Britanniae, Vulgate Cycle, others |
Perceforest or Le Roman de Perceforest is an anonymous prose chivalric romance, written in French probably around 1340 with lyrical interludes of poetry, that describes a fictional origin of Great Britain and provides an original genesis of the Arthurian world. The lengthy (over one million words long) work in eight volumes takes its inspiration from the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Orosius and Bede, the Lancelot-Grail cycle, the Alexander Romance genre, Roman historians, medieval travellers, and oral tradition.[1] Perceforest forms a late addition to the collection of narratives with loose connections both to the Arthurian Romance and the feats of Alexander the Great.
- ^ Nigel Bryant (translator), Perceforest: The Prehistory of King Arthur's Britain, Cambridge and Rochester: D.S. Brewer (Arthurian studies, 77), 2011, xxiii.