We are told that the effect of asking the question will
be to restore him to youth;[7] as a matter of fact it appears to bring
about his death, as he only lives three days after his restoration.[8]
When we come to Chretien's poem we find ourselves confronted with a
striking alteration in the presentment. There are, not one, but two,
disabled kings; one suffering from the effects of a wound, the other
in extreme old age. Chretien's poem being incomplete we do not know
what he intended to be the result of the achieved Quest, but we may I
think reasonably conclude that the wounded King at least was
healed.[9]
The Parzival of von Eschenbach follows the same tradition, but is
happily complete. Here we find the wounded King was healed, but what
becomes of the aged man (here the grandfather, not as in Chretien the
father, of the Fisher King) we are not told.[10]
The Perlesvaus is, as I have noted above,[13] very unsatisfactory.
The illness of the King is badly motivated, and he dies before the
achievement of the Quest. This romance, while retaining certain
interesting, and undoubtedly primitive features, is, as a whole, too
late, and remaniee a redaction to be of much use in determining the
question of origins.
The same may be said of the Grand Saint Graal and Queste versions,
both of which are too closely connected with the prose Lancelot, and
too obviously intended to develope and complete the donnees of that
romance to be relied upon as evidence for the original form of the
Grail legend.
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