Magical Artifice and Artificial History in the 'Roman de Perceforest'
type: CreativeWork
description: The 'Roman de Perceforest' contains fascinating and original portrayals of magical artifice, which have intrigued scholars of Old French for many decades. It is also a peculiarly overt project of 'artificial' history, filling in a lacuna of Arthurian genealogy: King Perceforest's dynasty in pagan Britain. Under the umbrella of 'artifice', this thesis seeks to understand and explore the author's sense of his own artifice - that of writing a fictional history - through the text's portrayals of magical artifice, and artifice in other forms. Magic was a polemical topic in the late middle ages, and the matter of fiction appears similarly thought-provoking!
abstract: The 'Roman de Perceforest' contains fascinating and original portrayals of magical artifice, which have intrigued scholars of Old French for many decades. It is also a peculiarly overt project of 'artificial' history, filling in a lacuna of Arthurian genealogy: King Perceforest's dynasty in pagan Britain. Under the umbrella of 'artifice', this thesis seeks to understand and explore the author's sense of his own artifice - that of writing a fictional history - through the text's portrayals of magical artifice, and artifice in other forms. Magic was a polemical topic in the late middle ages, and the matter of fiction appears similarly thought-provoking!
author: Atkin, Timothy
language: eng
keywords: Perceforest, Magic, Fiction, Old French, artifice
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/15abfb21-c177-4a90-a090-3e22cf7823f5/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2021-05-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:30Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.72060