AbstractDeparting from the observation that the Middle English romance of Sir Perceval of Galles quotes from Genesis at two crucial moments, this study provides a coherent reading of the text, explaining some of its idiosyncrasies and triangulating it with the versions of Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. What distinguishes the Middle English version from the continental texts are its purposeful absences, i. e. that which the author chooses to abbreviate or leave out altogether. The result is the story of a prelapsarian creature who stumbles through an Edenic landscape where time and mortality have been suspended and individual culpability does not exist. Sir Perceval’s non-existent biblical knowledge, blocked by his mother and ultimately brought to its end by a literal fall from his horse, leaves him invincible, ungendered and immortal. It also serves to explain his unapologetic violence as well as his complete lack of sexual desire. This bold experiment cannot last – Sir Perceval does eventually discover knighthood, masculinity and mortality. Unfortunately, these three are inseparably linked: being a knight, being a man and being dead are one and the same thing in Sir Perceval’s universe.
INSULAR SOURCES AND ANALOGUES OF THE OTHERWORLD IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH SIR ORFEO