Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain

This edition brings together two very different Middle English Arthurian romances, fifteenth-century Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain, though they share similar origins. Both are supposedly inferior adaptations of Old French romances by the renowned twelfth-century poet Chrétien de Troyes, and both originate from the north-east Midlands of England. Sir Perceval of Galles follows the title character from his comically naive childhood, through his bumbling encounters with rival knights and love interests, to his gradual maturation into knighthood. In Ywain and Gawain, young Ywain, a knight of king Arthur’s court, is torn between his devotion to his hard-won wife Alundyne and his need to prove himself a worthy warrior, an anxiety spurred by his fraught friendship with Gawain. Mary Braswell recuperates both poems from historical obscurity, arguing against received wisdom for their literary value—Perceval for its deliberate parody of chivalric romance and Ywain and Gawain for its idealization of chivalric values.