The Grail Legend in Modern Literature
This study shows how modern (including postmodern) adaptations of the Grail legend correspond to trends in the scholarly community and how the legend has been appropriated by competing world-views. There are three parallel trends in Grail scholarship and modern adaptations of the legend: controversy over Christian or pagan origins, secularization by way of humanism, and esoteric mysticism. These three trends reflect movements in popular culture. Relativism and multiculturalism influence...
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The Grail legends have in modern times been appropriated by a number of different scholarly schools of thought; their approaches are analysed here.
Introduction : popular culture and Grail scholarship11The medieval texts15Chretien de Troyes's Perceval15The Welsh Peredur16Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival17Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie18The French Vulgate Cycle Estoire del Saint Graal19The Didot Perceval20The continuations of Chretien's Perceval20Perlesvaus20The French Vulgate Cycle Queste del Saint Graal21Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur222Christian vs. Pagan : origins and culture wars28The Celtic Pagan origin theories36The Christian origin theories42The mystery cult fertility ritual theories44The influence of the Celtic Pagan and mystery cult fertility ritual origin theories on modern British and American Arthurian fiction47The Christian Grail in modern British and American Arthurian fiction65The origin controversy and cultural conflict in modern British and American Grail fiction68Modern syncretism and the Grail74Battle for the Grail : whose legend is it anyway?793Humanism and the Grail legend : from skepticism to metaphor82Tennyson, White and following writers' humanist views of the Grail84Skepticism regarding the Grail visions96Psychologizing the Grail99Mythologizing the Grail and making it metaphor103Grail quest as metaphor in twentieth-century British and American Arthuriana1074Esoteric mysticism : actualization of a Grail redefined117The power of Glastonbury and the reality of the Grail118Esoteric knowledge and the mystery cult of the Grail122Secret societies and conspiracies136Alternative spirituality, self-realization and a grail for the new age142
