Published in Languages and Cultures in Tradition

Throughout history, the myth of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table has been conceived as a model, an ideal of human action. They are the model of perfect conduct that transcends time: we first hear of this myth in Chrétien de Troyes, in the 12th century, in the unfinished work “Perceval ou le Conte du Graal” (c.1182-1190), translated into Spanish by Martín de Riquer as “Perceval o el Cuento del Grial” (1961). In Spanish-American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (1867-1916) published several works in which the medieval is present in poetry and prose, such as in the short story “A las orillas del Rhin”, published in serial form in the magazine “El Porvenir” de Nicaragua on 14 July 1885. In poetry, we have more references to medieval characters, such as “Percival and Lohengrin”. In Troyes’ version, Percival admits his mistakes and returns to complete his quest for the Holy Grail. In Darío, similarly, we have an erratic Percival, characterised as “el loco luminoso” (“the luminous madman”), which leads us to believe that there is a possible intertextual relationship between these works. We ask ourselves: what is the influence of this archetypal character in Darío’s poetry, which, like Troyes, portrays him as a buffoon or a clumsy character according to Mircea Eliade’s reading (1938), and which may have possible connections with the character of “Don Quixote”, the Knight of the Sad Countenance? The aim is to bring the myth closer to the literature of the two authors in question, based on the notion of myth as a human archetype.