The subject of this book is a literary corpus whose character is a challenge to definition, beginning with the matter of its title. What I refer to throughout as the Conte du Graal cycle is a constellation of texts, found in different combinations in different manuscripts, which tell the story of Perceval from his first encounters with knighthood and the mysteries of the Grail to his eventual succession to the Fisher King's throne and death as a hermit, interspersed with the adventures of other knights, chiefly Gauvain. The first move in this narrative game is Chrétien de Troyes's Conte du Graal, believed to have been written between 1180 and 1195. That romance, left unfinished, provoked a number of writers to continue the tale, their work generally identified today as the First, second, manessier and Gerbert Continuations. The first two Continuations are thought to have appeared by around 1200; the manessier Continuation is dated between 1214 and 1227; and the Gerbert Continuation between 1225 and 1230. Two prologues, the Elucidation and the Bliocadran, also appeared in the early thirteenth century, so that all the constituent parts of the corpus were in existence (in their earliest forms) within fifty years of Chrétien's text.

Apparently popular with contemporary audiences, yet often neglected by modern critics, the Conte du Graal cycle played a role in the development of medieval arthurian narrative which so far has not been fully appreciated. Instead, the vast majority of commentators have preferred to treat the unfinished Conte du Graal in isolation from its sequels, too frequently dismissed as confused or prolix by critics dreaming of the conclusion that Chrétien might have written.