The study proceeds from a close reading of the 'blood in the snow' episode in Wolfram von Eschenbach's 'Parzival'. The perception and knowledge-formation processes described in this scene are interpreted against the backdrop of early scholastic theories of perception and epistemology. The second part of the study inquires more generally into the significance of perception and knowledge in Wolfram's work, exploring this issue first in terms of the plot and then from the narrator perspective. This ultimately poses the question of the poetics of the 'Parzival' romance.