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!