Haunted landscapes: Human encounters with the environment in Perceforest

This essay considers the ways in which the landscape that surrounds the characters of Perceforest works to shape their identities. It brings together a variety of moments at which the characters' inanimate surroundings speak to them of themselves or of someone closely associated with them, by means of a monument or meaningful object set in a significant place. The incongruity of coming upon a fixed and inanimate tableau that conveys a message about human identity renders these encounters « haunting »: the lack of a human presence is felt as jarring. Such moments teach us not only how identity is molded and transformed - a significant question for a romance in which anonymity, name-change and the loss of selfhood are recurring themes - but how the romance characters experience the space through which they move as an alienating and aggressive force, one that controls them even as they seek to dominate it.