Perlesvaus, also called Li Hauz Livres du Graal (The High Book of the Grail), is an Old French Arthurian romance dating to the first decade of the 13th century.
It purports to be a continuation of Chrétien de Troyes' unfinished Perceval, the Story of the Grail, but it has been called the least canonical Arthurian tale because of its striking differences from other versions.
[10] The strangeness of the text and some personal comments led Roger Sherman Loomis to call the author "deranged";[11] similarly the editor of a French Arthurian anthology including extracts from the work notes an obsession with decapitation.
[12] Loomis also notes an antisemitic air absent from most Arthurian literature of the period, as there are several scenes in which the author symbolically contrasts the people of the "Old Law" with the followers of Christ, usually predicting violent damnation for the unsaved.
Dr Sebastian Evans, a nineteenth century translator of the text, wrote that: "In very truth, however, the story of the Holy Graal here told is ... the most coherent and poetic of all the many versions of the legend..." He argued that the anonymous author should be assigned 'a foremost rank among the masters of mediaeval prose romance.'