The Holy Grail: imagination and belief

The Holy Grail: imagination and belief

"Barber traces the history of the stories surrounding the Holy Grail, beginning with Chretien de Troyes, who in the twelfth century first imagined the famous scene in which a mysterious golden vessel adorned with jewels was paraded before the eyes of an untested youth. The author died before he could complete his tale, and the unsolved mystery of the Grail has haunted us ever since. By a long series of imaginative transformations, the grail has moved from the sphere of romance to religion, and in twentieth-century popular culture has become an emblem of mysticism and man's highest aspirations, intimately linked with the central ritual of the Christian faith."--Jacket.

Richard Barber

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press

2004

Imagining the grail : Chrétien de Troyes -- Completing the grail : Chrétien continued -- Sanctifying the grail hero : Robert de Boron -- The old law and the new law : The high book of the grail -- Creating the grail hero : the Lancelot-grail -- Visions of angels, versions of men : Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival -- The grail -- The setting of the grail -- Obscure histories, dubious relics -- The eucharist and the grail -- The Holy Grail -- The secrets of the grail -- The grail outside the romances -- 'There is a thing that's called the grâl' -- The adventures of the grail : the later German romances -- The adventures of the grail : the last flowering -- The scholars and the grail -- The revival of the grail -- The grail as mirror -- The grail today -- The question answered?

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