PAULA LEVERAGE 
PAULA LEVERAGE
The character of Perceval as a knight of the Grail quest appears for the first time in the twelfth century in Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte del Graal, and thereafter in various incarnations throughout history to the films of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.1
Le Conte del Graal is the last of five romances attributed to Chrétien de Troyes. It was written in the 1180s for Chrétien’s patron, Philippe d’Alsace, Count of Flanders, and at 9,234 verses, it is unfinished.2 In France the story was taken up by four authors who wrote what are commonly referred to as the Continuations.3
Perceval across the literary and filmic representations of his character is variously described as a “bumbling hero” (Wise 52), “naïve, charming and slightly absurd” (Lacy, Ashe, and Mancoff 344), “socially inept” (McCullough 48), and a “country bumpkin” (Eckhardt 205). Chrétien’s romance itself has been called “a story of the blunders of a teenage knight” (Wise 48). In Monty Python’s Holy Grail Perceval has devolved into Piglet, played by the actress Avril Stewart.4 This modern and critical reception of the character of Perceval as a less than perfect knightly model is already evident in the selection of material from Chrétien’s romance, which is reworked in later medieval narratives, and in the choice of scenes illustrated in the manuscript tradition of the romance (Busby, “The Illustrated Manuscripts” 359-60). Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann has shown that it is material relating to Perceval’s “niceté” (naïveté) that is reworked, while Keith Busby observes that almost all of the miniatures in the illustrated Perceval manuscripts depict scenes that belong to the canon of reworked material (360).5 Given the apparent bias in the reception of the character of Perceval, which is ostensibly stable by 1250 (ibid. 360), it is not surprising that, generally speaking, the characterization of the Perceval of Chrétien’s romance is simplified and loses interest within the tradition, until his position as the principal knight of the Grail Quest is finally usurped by Galahad.6
Putting aside centuries of insistence on Perceval’s niceté, and returning to the first literary incarnation of the character, I re-examine here Chrétien de Troyes’s presentation of the character, which, I argue, has been misrepresented to the extent of distorting modern critical discourse about the romance as a whole. My principal interest is in the representation of Perceval’s mind in Chrétien de Troyes’s twelfth-century romance Le Conte del Graal, which is not simply naïve, comic, bumbling, or effeminate, but appears to be struggling with a very specific cognitive deficit. At least one modern interpretation of the Perceval character approaches a similar reading. Robert Wilson in his production of Parzival cast the autistic actor, Christopher Knowles, as Parzival.7 In spite of this casting decision, critical insistence on a naïve, foolish Perceval continued to trump any possible suggestion of cognitive difference in the character, as is clear from John Rockwell’s review in the New York Times (May 8, 1988), which suggests that this casting decision was made “to portray a Parsifal closer to the ideal of a pure fool than any seen or heard before in opera or play.”
Chrétien de Troyes, however, is known for his fine psychological portrayals of his characters and their relations, and to that extent we could compare him today to novelists such as David Lodge and Ian McEwan, who consciously explore the workings of their characters’ minds.8 Regardless of how he, or his contemporaries, might have labeled Perceval’s behavior, in Le Conte del Graal Chrétien de Troyes appears to be exploring what we now call Theory of Mind (ToM). Recognizing Perceval’s apparently deficient ToM has important consequences for reading Le Conte del Graal and understanding the Grail / Perceval tradition as a whole, as well as for literary ToM studies, specifically in the following three areas of enquiry: a) the influence of the reception of Chrétien’s romance on the subsequent tradition; b) the relationship between Perceval and the other characters of the romance; c) transhistorical analysis of cognition and how it is represented.
Starting with the question of the reception of Chrétien’s romance, it is clear, as we have seen above, that subsequent literary and filmic treatments of Chrétien’s character have extrapolated from the atypical behavior of Perceval to present him as a country bumpkin, a naïf, or an effeminate character. In many works, most notably Mallory’s late fifteenth-century Morte d’Arthur, under the influence of the Vulgate Cycle, Perceval becomes a secondary character to Galahad, whose purity replaces, or is an extension of, the naïveté of Perceval. Under the considerable influence of works such as the Morte, it is easy to read back into Chrétien’s romance characterizations, which mask the original depiction of character. By reading Chrétien’s text and recognizing ToM in action, it is possible to return to a characterization of Perceval that is not filtered through the common clichés so readily associated with him. Secondly, by considering ToM in connection with Perceval, it becomes clear that the romance also explores the ToM of other characters, who are not usually discussed in criticism of the romance. Thus ToM emerges as a central interest of the romance and demystifies some of the problematics of its textual interpretation. Thirdly, in the context of much current discussion about ToM in literature, theorists have raised the issue of the importance of looking at the fictional mind in a historical perspective, and this single example of a twelfth-century fictional mind begins to extend the discussion of ToM and literature beyond the nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, which have been its focus in recent books.9
ToM is mind reading, or the attribution of mental states and intentions to others that affords us the possibility of adapting our behavior in response, and it has been argued that this evolved ability supports characteristically human activities, such as the use of irony and sarcasm, as well as more basic communicative functions (Baron-Cohen, Mindblindness 132).10 While some researchers would go so far as to suggest that ToM is what makes us human (O’Connell 5), others have argued that TOM activity can be observed in non-human animals. However, it is difficult to ascertain in non-linguistic situations to what extent observed actions in animals are driven by mind reading rather than stimuli.11 Two groups of individuals notably lack function in mind reading to varying degrees: most notably autistic individuals, and young children who do not begin to develop ToM until around the age of four or five.12 Simon Baron-Cohen describes autism as “mindblindness,” which emphasizes quite graphically the relationship between ToM and autism (“Autism: A Specific Cognitive Disorder of Mindblindness”). Sanjida O’Connell lists three core deficits in autistic people: 1) they cannot communicate; 2) they cannot imagine (and so show no pretend play); 3) they are unable to deal with people socially (Mindreading 12). These three deficits must, of course, be assessed on a relative scale, since there are varying degrees of autism. Asperger’s syndrome, for example, is often termed “high functioning autism.”
Several scenes in Chrétien’s Le Conte du Graal suggest that Perceval is deficient in reading minds, and perhaps autistic. Naturally, Chrétien de Troyes would not have thought of Perceval either in terms of autism or ToM, since these are modern terms. The term “autism” was coined independently in 1943 and 1944 by Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger, respectively (O’Connell 11), while the term “Theory of Mind” dates from David Premack and Guy Woodruff’s 1978 study of chimpanzees, which investigated whether these animals could attribute states of mind to others and then use this information to predict the others’ actions. However, in the past, individuals known as idiot savants, noble savages, or holy or “blessed’’ fools were probably autistic (O’Connell 9-11). The so-called Wild Boy of Aveyron is one such “noble savage” from the late eighteenth century who was discovered at the age of twelve in a forest in France. He could not talk and displayed behavioral characteristics that Uta Frith has identified as being characteristic of autism. Frith further points out that autistic people are relatively well equipped to survive in the wild, since they can better tolerate extremes of temperature, pain, hunger, and discomfort (Autism and Asperger Syndrome 95). While these are examples of historical individuals, it is plausible that Perceval is modeled on an autistic individual known to Chrétien de Troyes. However, this hypothesis is not necessary in order to recognize that Chrétien is exploring ToM in his romance.
Le Conte de Graal assigns three kinds of explanations to Perceval’s atypical behavior: a) physical; b) social; and c) racial. The first is reflected through the characters who meet Perceval and who describe him in terms that imply that he is cognitively challenged. For example, he is described at various junctures as “sos” (mindless) (v. 200); “fols” (mad) (v. 688); “niches” (simple) (v. 689); “muiaus” (mute) (v. 1863).
The social explanation, which derives from the circumstances of Perceval’s upbringing, is very prominent in scholarly analyses of the romance and it is frequently associated with psychoanalytical readings of Perceval’s relationship with his mother.13 He has been raised in isolation by his mother after the death of his father and two brothers in combat. Devastated by this loss, his mother has raised Perceval in the country, far from any contact with knightly culture in the hope that she can prevent him from becoming a knight. Thus when he leaves his mother’s home, he is ignorant of the world beyond the one he knows. The author remarks that at the time of this traumatic family event, Perceval is two years old and still nursing. In his mother’s account to him of the loss of his father and brothers in childhood, she states:
Et vos, qui petis estiiez,
.II. molt biax freres aviiez;
Petis estïez, alaitans,
Peu aviiez plus de .ii. ans. (vv. 455-8)
[And you, who were little,
You had two very handsome brothers;
You were little and still at the breast,
You were barely older than two years.]
Chrétien seems to be highlighting the tragedy of such a young child losing his father and siblings to heighten the pathos of the passage. A psychoanalytic reading might point to the traumatic impact on Perceval of this loss, and the consequences for his subsequent development. In the context of reading Perceval through an approach that focuses on ToM, it is relevant to observe that autism is often recognized in children of around the age of two through behavioral patterns.14 Secondly, the age difference between Perceval and his brothers suggests that he was born to older parents, and studies have recently associated a higher risk of autism with advanced parental age (Croen, Fireman, and Grether 338-39).15
The third explanation within the romance of Perceval’s atypical behavior relies on a racial explanation, which is tantamount to saying that he is odd because he is Welsh. This explanation surfaces in a conversation between two knights after they have encountered Perceval near his home at the beginning of the romance. The knight who has engaged Perceval in conversation gives the following assessment of Perceval:
“Il ne set pas totes les lois,”
Fait li sire, “se Diex m’amant,
C’a rien nule que li demant
Ne me respont il onques a droit,
Ains demande de quanqu’il voit
Coment a non e c’on en fait.”(vv. 236-41)
[“He doesn’t know the rules of conduct,”
Said the lord, “for the love of God,
Because he does not ever reply to anything
I ask him properly, but
He asks the name of everything he sees
And what it’s used for.”]
To this, his knight companion offers the following explanation:
“Sire, sachiez tot entresait
Que Galois sont tot par nature
Plus fol que bestes en pasture;
Cist est ausi come une beste.” (vv. 236-45)
[“Lord, know straight up front
That the Welsh are all, by nature,
More stupid than a beast in pasture;
This one is just like a beast.”]
These three explanations (stupidity or naïveté, education, and race) spill over into scholarship on the Conte del Graal, with the exception of the racial explanation, which is re-interpreted as cultural difference. While all of these perspectives on Perceval’s character and behavior have some validity, they do not, either individually, or accumulatively, account fully for Perceval’s actions across the romance. This has resulted in readings that explain awkwardly individual scenes in relation to the work as a whole, which might be more straightforwardly interpreted by recognizing Perceval’s difficulties with ToM. Before returning to this point, it is important to establish which scenes suggest that Perceval’s ToM is deficient. Two scenes especially illustrate Perceval’s difficulties in understanding: the scene in which Perceval encounters knights for the very first time (vv. 69-342), and the narration of his experience with the damsel in tent (vv. 635-781). The first scene also includes a brief perspective on the ToM of the knights, as one of their group attributes a state of mind to Perceval, in stark contrast to Perceval, who is apparently incapable of such mind reading.
After the prologue, the romance opens with a description of Perceval riding across his mother’s land. He hears the discordant sound of knights in the forest and thinks that these must be the devils his mother had told him about. Then he sees the knights emerging from the forest with their armor shining in the sun and jumps to the immediate conclusion that these are angels, since his mother has told him that angels are the most beautiful creatures of all. He falls to his knees in prayer, whereupon the principal knight of the group, attributing an emotional state to Perceval, advises the others to stay back because a boy has fallen to the ground in fear (“A terre est de paor cheüs” v. 161), and he may die of fear if they approach. The knights approach him since they want to ask him if he has seen five knights and three maidens pass this way. The oddity of the conversation that then ensues between him and one of the knights exemplifies Perceval’s social awkwardness and complete lack of communicative skills, which lead the knights to attribute his foolishness to his identity as a Welshman, as we have seen above. Perceval pays no heed to the conversation. He does not answer the knight’s questions, and instead, referring to the knight’s equipment repeatedly asks him questions of the type: “Ce que est et de coi vos sert?” “What’s that? What’s it for?” (v. 214).
This inability to engage in conversation resurfaces when his mother, realizing that her son now has knowledge of the knightly culture from which she has successfully shielded him, decides to tell him about his knightly heritage and how his brothers and father were knights and were killed in combat.16 She also describes her emotional state then and now. However, Perceval is detached, he does not attribute emotion to his mother (i.e., he does not read her mind), and he does not respond appropriately in the context of the conversation. He simply interrupts and demands food:
Li vallés entent molt petit
A che que sa mere li dist.
“A mangier, fait il,” me donez (vv. 489-91)
[The young man is hardly listening at all
To what his mother is saying to him.
“Give me something to eat,” he says]
This indifference, or inability to attribute a mental state to his mother, is re-emphasized in the scene in which Perceval leaves his home and mother in search of knighthood:
Quant li vallés fu eslongiez
Le get d’une pierre menue,
Si se regarde et voit cheüe
Sa mere al pié del pont arriere,
Et jut pasmee en tel maniere
Com s’ele fust cheüe morte. (vv. 620-5)
[When the young man was at a stone’s
throw distance
he looked and saw his mother back there
at the foot of the bridge
and she was lying in a faint in such a way
that it was as if she had fallen down dead.]
The use of the phrases “en tel maniere” (v. 624 “in such a way”) and “com s’ele” (v. 625 “it was as if”) preserve a necessary ambiguity that is exploited at the end of the narrative when we learn that Perceval’s mother had not just fainted, but had died precisely at this moment and that he is subsequently considered to be guilty of her death because of the emotional pain his departure had caused her to suffer. However, even in circumstances in which his mother is not dead, the total lack of empathy is disturbing. The subsequent verses describe how Perceval whips his horse with a switch and speeds away.
Before he leaves in search of Arthur’s court, Perceval’s mother gives him advice about how to treat women, how to deal with men he meets, and how to pray. She is clearly concerned about her son, and indicates an awareness of his difficulties in social situations:
Ce que vos ne feïstes onques,
Ne autrui nel veïstes faire,
Coment en sarez a chief traire? (vv. 518-20)
[How will you know how to accomplish
That which you have never done,
Nor seen anyone else do?]
Perceval’s mother’s concern highlights the basic principles of what is known as a simulation ToM, which holds that ordinary people discern the mental states of others by trying to replicate or emulate them. This is in distinction to theory theory, which proposes that people construct or are endowed with a naïve psychological theory that guides their assignment of mental states, or the rationality theory, which suggests that people map others’ thoughts by assuming that all follow the same postulate of rationality.17 The mother is ostensibly referring to knightly conduct, and how her son will ever know how to be a knight when he has never been a knight, nor seen anyone act as a knight. However, her question goes to the very heart of Perceval’s problem with ToM. He cannot ever truly fit into the knightly culture because his low level of function in mind reading does not allow him to emulate and replicate the mental states of others by which process he might better understand how to engage with the community to which he aspires. It is thus significant that throughout most of the romance Perceval is wandering alone through the country. He cannot assign a mental state or intention to another because he has difficulty in emulating the mental states of others. Thus to paraphrase his mother, how can he be a knight if he cannot simulate something he has never been and thus understand others by trying on their mental states? Perceval’s inability to read minds properly is illustrated in the following scene in which he tries to put into practice what he has misunderstood his mother to mean.
When Perceval comes upon a woman in a tent (vv. 635-781), he tries to follow the advice his mother has given him before his departure on how to treat women (vv. 532-56). The advice and Perceval’s literal application of the advice is repeatedly underlined throughout the scene by Perceval’s references to his mother: for example, “Si com ma mere le m’aprist” “Just as my mother taught me (v. 683); “que ma mere le m’enseigna” “as my mother taught me” (v. 695). The relationship between the mother’s advice and how Perceval applies this advice to real situations illustrates beautifully the role of ToM in communication. As Simon Baron-Cohen, basing his statement on the theorists Grice, Sperber, Wilson, and Austin, explains:
. . . the key thing we do as we search for the meaning of the words is imagine what the speaker’s communicative intention might be. That is, we ask ourselves “What does he mean?” Here the word “mean” essentially boils down to “intend me to understand.”(Mindblindness 27)
Perceval takes his mother’s advice extremely literally, to the point of terrifying a young woman whom he kisses and from whose finger he forcibly takes a ring. While a rape does not occur, the use of phrases such as “volsist ele ou non” “whether she wanted or not” (v. 708) or the phrase “a force” “by force” (v. 718, v. 720) suggests a violent scene in which the woman is stretched out beneath Perceval and kissed forcibly.18 Then while the woman is crying and wringing her hands (vv. 756-64), he makes a hearty meal of the food and wine in the tent.
Clearly Perceval has not read his mother’s mind properly, and has not discerned what she intended him to understand, but he has followed her advice to the letter and kissed the woman he encountered, without going further, and he has taken her ring as a token. Perceval’s literalness is a hallmark of autism, and it results from an inability to represent the minds of others, or in other words, from a deficient ToM. Temple Grandin, who is probably the most famous person with Asperger’s syndrome, has described in her autobiography how she used to believe that other people were telepathic because they magically understood the meaning behind words and the intentions of others (Thinking in Pictures). Not only has Perceval not understood his mother’s intention in the advice she gives him, but he is completely oblivious to the mental state of the woman he finds and assaults in the tent.
These scenes suggest persuasively that Perceval’s skills in ToM resemble those of an autistic individual, but beyond problems with ToM, there are of course other indicators of autistic spectrum disorder, which should also be considered. Analysis of Perceval’s ToM in the scenes reviewed thus far has already yielded several of the diagnostic criteria for autism: a) he is unaware of others’ feelings; b) he appears not to hear at times; c) he repeats words or phrases verbatim but does not understand how to use them; d) he cannot easily start a conversation or keep one going; and e) he is unusually sensitive to light, sound, and touch (the thunderous sound of the knights’ arrival and the sun reflecting on their armor have such an impact on the young boy that he believes them to be heavenly).19 Other signs of autism in Perceval, which will emerge from subsequent analysis of scenes in which ToM is important, include: a) a propensity to retreat into a world of one’s own; and b) constant movement (in the sense that he never stays in one place for long).
One of the less frequently cited characteristics of autistic spectrum disorder is a difference in visual processing, which is often manifest in a superior grasp of engineering, mathematical, or geometric problems:
Increasing evidence show an atypical visual processing style in autism. This includes the processing of details in priority, in opposition to controls for whom the global context is most salient. This particular processing style in autism has been named weak central coherence (eg. Frith 1989) and it has been suggested that this capacity to focus on local elements may bring about superior performance in various domains, notably in visual tasks. (Rondan and Deruelle 197)
Autistic individuals will engage in local rather than global processing of facial profiles (Rondan and Deruelle 198). In other words, rather than analyzing a whole impression of a face, it is more likely that they will perform a feature by feature analysis. Perceval demonstrates this tendency toward weak central coherence in response to questions about where he has been and where he is going. Instead of giving a general, functional description, Perceval focuses somewhat obsessively on details.
In the first example, Blanchefleur has just asked Perceval from whence he has traveled that day. Perceval’s reply is striking in its emphasis on the architectural structure of the castle where he has stayed, and its lack of generalization either in terms of location, name, or description that would help Blanchefleur identify it:
Chiez un preudome a un chastel
Ou j’oi hostel et bon et bel;
S’i a cinc tors fors et ellites,
Une grant et quatre petites;
Si sai tote l’oevre assomer,
Mais le chastel ne sai nomer;
Et si sai bien que li preudom
Gornemans de Gorhaut a non. (vv. 1884-92)
[Lady, he says, I stayed
With a nobleman in a castle
Where I received great hospitality;
It has five strong, tall towers,
One big one and four small ones;
And I can reckon the whole edifice,
But I can’t name the castle;
And I know that the nobleman’s
Name is Gornemant of Gorhaut.]
In the second example, Perceval is again trying to describe the location of a castle, but this time with the explicit intention of giving directions to a knight whom he has defeated in combat and whom he is dispatching as a prisoner. Once again the description is more local than global, focusing on detail to such an extent that the narrator comments that a mason could not have described the castle more effectively:
Et lors li dist cil que il aille
A un chastel, chiez un preudome;
Del preudome le non li nome.
En tot le monde n’a maçon
Qui mix devisast la façon
Del chastel qu’il li devisa;
L’eve et le pont molt li prisa,
Et les torneles et la tour
Et les murs fors qui sont entor,
Tant que cil ot tres bien et set
Que en liu ou on plus le het
Ke velt envoier en prison. (vv. 2292-2303)
[And then he told him that he should go to
A castle, the home of a nobleman
And he gave him the name of the nobleman.
There is not a mason anywhere in the world
Who could have outlined better the aspect of the castle
He described to him.
He praised the water and the bridge
And the small towers, and the tower
And the strong surrounding walls,
To such an extent that that man heard and knew very well
That he wanted to send him as a prisoner
To the place where he was most hated.]
This geometrically oriented perspective is rendered exceptionally well by the set of Eric Rohmer’s film, which eschews realism for stark shapes and contrasts. While Rohmer is not as explicit as Robert Wilson in making an explicit association with autism, his sets and framing render eerily perspectives of a weak central coherence.
I return now to the issue I raised previously about how the three explanations (physical, social, and racial) for Perceval’s odd behavior, given by the text, and adopted to a greater or lesser degree in criticism, do not offer a satisfactory global reading of the romance. The logic of the social explanation demands that we recognize a development in Perceval, and this is precisely what we find in criticism. For example, the romance has been described as “the story of his education” in which the naïve youngster of the enfances or childhood episodes of the romance matures (The Arthurian Handbook 344). It is generally accepted that Perceval develops during the course of the romance and that he makes progress in knighthood, love, and religion, in this order.20 Penny Simons who sees Perceval as “naturally curious and disposed to ask questions” (9) attributes his problems to his education:
Part, at least, of Perceval’s difficulty arises from the fact that his education has been sadly deficient. A deficient education will produce a deficient human being as skills do not come naturally, no matter how great natural aptitudes. (8)
We can argue for a degree of development in Perceval. He does leave behind his rustic life in isolation with his mother and is more or less successfully initiated into knightly culture. To some extent this perception is the consequence of the social explanation of Perceval’s behavior. In other words, he has to be seen to develop, once he leaves the social isolation that is seemingly responsible for his behavior, and enters society. However, by the middle of the extant romance, he is still exhibiting strange behavior, illustrated clearly in three of the most famous, and frequently analyzed scenes of the romance, which I discuss here in the following order: a) Perceval’s contemplation of the three drops of blood on the snow (vv. 4162-236); b) Perceval’s encounter with the pilgrims on Good Friday (vv. 6217-314); and c) Perceval’s failure to ask the relevant, necessary questions about the Grail procession in the castle of the Fisher King (vv. 3191-311).
In the episode known as the scene of the three drops of blood on the snow, Perceval suddenly becomes obsessively withdrawn. One morning as Perceval is out riding in a snow-covered landscape, he sees a falcon attack one of a flock of wild geese. From the wounded goose’s neck three drops of blood fall to the snow and spread out, and upon seeing this, Perceval is reminded of the white and rose complexion of his beloved, Blanchefleur. This causes him to fall into a trance, which the text describes using the Old French verb “s’oblier” (v. 4202), which is translated as “to be carried away” or “to become distracted” but which literally means “to forget oneself.” He spends all morning gazing at the drops of blood, and the squires who find him run to tell the king that there is a knight outside dozing on his horse. When Sagremor rides up to Perceval and demands that he come to the king, we are told that Perceval does not move, and appears not to hear him. Perceval does not return to awareness until Sagremor, after challenging him, is charging toward him tilting his lance. Perceval’s reverie over the three drops of blood on the snow is usually interpreted as symbolic of his initiation into the world of love, and of chivalry motivated by love (e.g., Poirion 155; Henri Rey-Flaud 23), but when it is considered in the context of the scenes discussed above, it appears to belong to an emerging pattern of behavior.21 While the progression interpretation would suggest that Perceval’s behavior improves as the romance proceeds, and he learns more about the world and knightly culture, in fact his behavior in the scene of the three drops of blood on the snow is markedly more troublesome. In earlier scenes, he is isolated because he is unable to engage in meaningful social exchanges, since he has difficulties in discerning the mental states and intentions of others. Here Perceval is completely withdrawn and absorbed with his own thoughts. This is where the social explanation of his atypical behavior in the opening scenes fails, since in spite of his acculturation, his behavior remains atypical, while an interpretation based on cognitive deficit remains valid for both the earlier and later scenes.
A second example of atypical behavior toward the end of the romance involves Perceval’s encounter with a group of pilgrims on Good Friday (vv. 6217-314). Once again the narrator emphasizes a mental decline, and once again Perceval is withdrawn and indifferent. He has lost his memory, he has been wandering for five years, and he doesn’t know which day it is. This scene is often juxtaposed to the scene in which Perceval first encounters the knights and believes them to be angels, and underscores a consistency in cognitive deficiency that is first evident in the parallel opening scenes of Le Conte del Graal. If Perceval has acquired knowledge between these scenes, it is clear that in the later scenes he is still exhibiting behavior suggestive of a cognitive deficiency.
The most famous scene of Chrétien’s romance, and the one that inaugurates the tradition of the Grail quest in literary tradition, is also one of the most informative in an analysis of the behavioral characteristics of a possibly autistic Perceval. In addition to demonstrating further that Perceval’s naïveté of the opening scenes is significantly more complex than a temporary lack of savoir-faire in the knightly culture, reading this passage in view of the scenes discussed above that suggest cognitive deficiency in Perceval casts new light on an obscure and enigmatic episode of the romance.
At the Grail Castle of the Fisher King, Perceval first glimpses the bleeding lance and grail that pass before him repeatedly in procession. The central issue in this part of the narrative is that Perceval fails to ask the key question about the grail procession, which he must ask if the Fisher King is to be healed. There is a considerable body of scholarship on this issue of the unasked question.22 Ann McCullough has recently argued that the foregrounding of the question in a ceremonial context brings to mind the ritual questions which are part of the Passover seder: for example, “Why is this night different from other nights?” These questions are posed by the youngest present at the seder, and thus McCullough draws a comparison between the purportedly naïve Perceval and children present at a seder (51-2). Another frequently cited explanation, and one that appears to be supported by the text is that Perceval does not ask the question because he remembers advice given to him by a patron named Gornemant earlier in the text that he should not talk too much (McCullough 53-4). Yet another explanation within the romance itself, and cited often in criticism, is that Perceval’s failure to ask the question is a punishment imposed upon him in retribution for his mother’s death (McCullough 55). This explanation is given both by the Demoiselle Hideuse whom Perceval meets shortly after the Grail episode, and the hermit who hears Perceval’s confession after he meets the pilgrims on Good Friday (vv. 6392-8). Explaining his failure to ask the questions, the Demoiselle Hideuse says:
Por lo pechié, ce saiches tu,
De ta mere t’est avenue,
Qui est morte de doel de toi. (vv. 3593-5)
[Know that this happened to you
Because of the sin committed against your mother,
Who died sorrowing for you.]
Jean Frappier’s insightful observation that Perceval notices the brightness of the Grail as it passes before him, but yet fails to ask the question that would reflect consciousness of the Fisher King’s suffering anticipates Perceval’s deficient capabilities in mind reading before the concept of ToM had been named and recognized (Le Roman breton 54-5).
The correlation between Gornemant’s advice and Perceval’s silence, and between his mother’s death and his silence, is not as straightforward as the criticism on the romance, or the romance itself, may suggest. In light of the evidence presented here, relating to Perceval’s difficulties with ToM and his autistic characteristics, it is possible that Perceval does not ask the question simply because he is heeding advice, but rather because he is taking the advice too literally, in the same way in which he took his mother’s advice about how to treat women too literally. He is not struck silent in retribution for his mother’s death, but rather the lack of ability to read his mother’s gestures and her mental state is the same cognitive deficiency that prevents him from engaging in the social exchange of question and answer, which is so dependent on ToM. Williams, Donley, and Keller have conducted research into question-asking in autistic children, and specifically how to teach autistic children to ask questions about hidden objects. They state:
Most children with autism fail to engage in typical social interactions. For example, often they are not skilled in asking questions (Charlop & Milstein, 1989). According to Charlop and Milstein, asking questions must often be explicitly taught. Researchers have demonstrated recently that behavioral techniques are effective in teaching children with autism to ask questions. For example, Taylor and Harris (1995) taught young children to ask “What’s that?” when presented novel pictures in a classroom, and then when encountering new objects on a walk in the school building. Similarly, Koegel, Camarata, Valdez-Menchaca, and Koegel (1998) taught children to ask “What’s that?” in training and nontraining settings with novel items as reinforcers. (627)
In light of this study Perceval’s failure to ask the question essential to the Fisher King can be understood as yet another instance of a general cognitive deficiency that is so marked in the protagonist throughout the romance.
While we may not be prepared to go as far as identifying an autistic individual in Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the analysis of these episodes of the romance, well known by both medieval and modern audiences, suggest an interest on the part of the author in what we now call ToM. One of the advantages of considering Perceval as autistic is that this description is relevant to many scenes that in the past have been interpreted separately, using in each case quite different models to explain Perceval’s behavior. In approaching Chrétien de Troyes’s story of Perceval from the perspective of ToM, we highlight the importance in this romance of communication between the characters, and, more significantly, the failure of that communication.
1 The tradition is rich and too complex to adduce here completely. I refer throughout this article to various versions of the Perceval legend where it is relevant to do so. For an overview of medieval texts relating to the Grail legend, see the comparative table in Mahoney’s The Grail: A Casebook (101), and the narrative comparison in the introduction of this volume (1-78); for an overview of texts relating specifically to Perceval, see the essays in Groos and Lacy’s Perceval = Parzival: A Casebook; for a more general, but comprehensive, tabulated chronology of Arthurian literature throughout the centuries, see The Arthurian Handbook (eds. Lacy, Ashe, and Mancoff), xviii-xxxv. Examples of modern films that feature the character of Perceval are as follows: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (dirs. Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975); Perceval le Gallois (dir. Eric Rohmer, 1978); Excalibur (dir. John Boorman, 1981); The Natural (dir. Barry Levinson, 1984), an adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s novel of the same name, which models a gifted baseball player who plays for the New York Knights (managed by Pop Fisher) on Perceval; and a new film by Christophe Mavroudis, Perceval, which is based, like Rohmer’s film, on the text of Chrétien’s romance, is currently in production. I refer throughout to William Roach’s edition of Chrétien’s romance. Translations from the Old French are my own.
2 The date of the romance has been the subject of much discussion. While the romance was dated to 1177-81 and 1182-83 by Lejeune and Fourrier, respectively, during the 1950s, more recently Luttrell (30-32) and Diverres (97) have proposed the later dates of 1189-90 and 1188-91, associating the romance with the Third Crusade. In his 1990 edition, Charles Méla dates the poem to 1181-85.
3 There are four Continuations of which the Second, signed “Gauchier de Donaing” (c. 1200), the Third by Manessier (c. 1230), and the Fourth by Gerbert de Montreuil (c. 1230) continue the story of Perceval, while the First (c. 1200) follows the story of Gauvain (Lacy, Ashe, and Mancoff,76-7).
4 Piglet accompanies Galahad to Castle Anthrax where in a clever comic take on Perceval’s failure to ask the question that will save the Fisher King, Piglet declares “There’s no grail here” to Galahad’s “I have seen it! I have seen it!”
5 “An zweiter Stelle stehen Motive aus dem Perceval: hier jedoch scheint es, als sei nur den Anfangsteil, nämlich Percevals niceté, sein Abschied von der Mutter, die Begegnung mit den Rittern und sein erster Besuch am Artushof, als bleibende Eerinnerung in das literarische Bewusstsein des Publikums arthurischer Versromane eingegangen” (161).
6 Although Galahad is foreshadowed in the Perlesvaus (1200-10), he is not named until the Queste del Saint Graal (1215-35) of the Vulgate Cycle. Thereafter he becomes the prominent knight of the Grail quest, significantly in Sir Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century Le Morte d’Arthur. Galahad is the only knight to succeed in the quest for the Holy Grail.
7 I am grateful to Fritz Breithaupt (Indiana University) who told me about Wilson’s casting of an autistic actor in the role of Perceval during the course of the Theory of Mind and Literature Conference at Purdue (November 2007). It is intriguing to ask if Eric Rohmer’s version of Chrétien’s romance also suggests autistic tendencies in the principal character. I return to this below in my discussion of weak central coherence.
8 Much of this reputation rests on the author’s nuanced, extended interior monologues, which, for some, earn him the merit of being designated as the first French novelist. Robert Anacker, for example, dubs him “The First French Psychological Novelist.” Jody Enders has analyzed memory and the psychology of the interior monologue in another of Chrétien’s romances entitled Cligés. Robert A. Johnson, a Jungian analyst in private practice, has published a popular book which interprets Perceval and his search for the Grail as the story of a developmental masculine psychology. Barbara Nelson Sargent-Baur takes a more cognitive approach in her article on vision and cognition in the Conte del Graal.
9 For example, the books of Alan Richardson, Alan Palmer, and Lisa Zunshine.
10 Alvin I. Goldman uses the term “mentalizing” as an alternative to mind reading, ostensibly since it points to the process of representing others’ mental states in our own minds: “Mentalizing may be the root of our elaborate social nature. Would there be language and discourse without mentalizing? Would the exquisitely coordinated enterprises of cultural life, the structures of love, politics, and games, be what they are without participants’ attending to the mental states of others? Would there be a human sense of morality without an understanding of what others experience, of what their lives are or might be like?” (Goldman 3).
11 For conflicting conclusions about the ToM of primates, see B. Hare, J. Call, and M. Tomasello, “Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics know and do not know?” and D. J. Povinelli, K. E. Nelson, and S. T. Boysen, “Inferences about guessing and knowing by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes),” Journal of Comparative Psychology 104 (1990): 203-10.
12 The development of ToM manifests itself at around the same time as pretend play, which requires the ability to model the epistemic states of others and distinguish these from one own’s epistemic state (Baron-Cohen, Mindblindness56).
13 Ann McCullough states: “Perceval’s complete lack of social skills is a result of the strange education his mother gave him.” (48). See also Claude Luttrell’s “The Upbringing of Perceval Heroes.”
14 While current research is trying to develop screening tools to detect autism in children younger than two, since improved outcomes are associated with early intervention (cf. the research of Rebecca Landa of the Kennedy Krieger Institute), in a survey reported in Neurology in 2000, most parents recognized a problem by the time their child was eighteen months old and sought medical assistance by the age of 2, although the average age of official diagnosis was 6 years (Filipek, Accardo, Ashwal et al. 469).
15 Boys could enter service as a squire at a young age, but most would not be dubbed until adolescence.
16 “Del doel del fil morut li pere.” “The father died of grief for his sons” (v. 481), but he has already sustained a serious injury from combat.
17 Cf. P. Carruthers and P. Smith, Theories of Theory of Mind. On simulation theory especially, see Gallese and Goldman.
18 Evelyn Birge Vitz, “Rereading Rape” (19). She argues that Chrétien is falsely accused of setting up scenes of rape to provide opportunities for knights to rescue damsels, and notes that there are no scenes of rape in any of his romances (6).
19 The authoritative source for the signs and symptoms of autism is the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, Washington DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., 1995. The signs and symptoms of autism are also widely published in generally available pediatric pamphlets, articles in the popular press, and Internet sites.
20 Alexandre Micha, “Le Perceval de Chrétien de Troyes (roman éducatif)”; Jean Frappier writes of “les apprentissages de Perceval….L’initiation à la chevalerie est au savoir-vivre est suivie d’une initiation aux délices sentimentales de l’amour courtois, puis d’une initiation plus difficile et plus lente à la vie spirituelle” (Chrétien de Troyes et le mythe du Graal 68).
21 A notable exception is Peggy McCracken’s reading of the scene through its corollary in the Perlesvaus. Following Poirion’s insight that the scene should be read in conjunction with the scene in which Perceval encounters the lady in the tent, which we have discussed above, McCracken suggests reading the scene as symbolic of “a myth of social order that is grounded on the sacrifice of women” (168).
22 For example: Carolyn Whitson, “Why Does the Lance Bleed? Whom Does the Grail Serve? Unasked Questions from a Working-Class Education”; Anna-Marie Ferguson, “Percivale and the Grail: Always Ask the Foolish Question”; Michel Stanesco, “Le Secret du Graal et la voie interrogative”; T. J. Cherian, “To Ask or Not to Ask the Question: East-West Encounters in the Perceval Legend”; Anton Janko, “Parzivals Fragen”; Harry F. Williams, “The Unasked Questions in the Conte del Graal.”
I would like to thank my colleagues Howard Mancing, Rich Schweickert, and Jen William for reading an earlier draft of this paper and offering perceptive commentary and suggestions.
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