Perceval
Hero of
Arthurian legend. His childlike innocence protected him from worldly temptation. In
Chrétien de Troyes's 12th-century
Le Conte du Graal, Perceval visits the castle of the wounded Fisher King and sees the
Grail, but he fails to ask about it and therefore fails to heal the Fisher King. He subsequently sets out in search of the Grail and grows spiritually. In later Grail legend he was displaced by
Galahad as the hero of the Grail quest but continued to play an important role. His story was told in
Wolfram von Eschenbach's 13th-century
Parzifal, which provided the basis for
Richard Wagner's opera
Parsifal (1882).
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