The Grail, the Quest and the World of Arthur (review)

The focus of this collection of papers, given at a conference in 2007, is on the Arthurian quest rather than the grail. In an introductory chapter Norris Lacy briefly, and with humour, follows the development of the grail from the Middle Ages into its representation in twenty-first-cenrury popular culture. He assumes little knowledge of the texts, and English translations of all quotations are included throughout the volume. In the second chapter Martine Meuwese surveys the pictorial presence of the grail in medieval Arthurian manuscripts. This exploration of the 'shape-changing' in manuscript representations of the grail is not new, but it is thorough and well presented, with fifty colour plates. Antonio Furtado's chapter on the Crusaders' grail is self-avowedly speculative as he examines the presumed relationship between Philip of Flanders's expedition to the Holy Land and Chrétien de Troyes's central theme. Will Hasty gives a thought-provoking analysis of 'Grail Questing' and what he calls 'Chivalric Colonization' in Parzival, in which he reads the text in the light of Bernard of Clairvaux's Liber ad milites Templi. Richard Trachsler, in an examination of Rigaut de Barbezieux, asks why there is so little reference to the grail in Occitan literature, and he provides an appendix with a number of texts and corresponding English translations. Marianne Kalinke explores the acculturation of Tristan motifs when incorporated into the Icelandic Sagas in a study that is not only interesting in itself, but is of even wider interest in its exploration of the appropriation of the French literary tradition beyond the French language. Caroline Eckhardt's study of the English tradition and David Johnson's analysis of questing in the Middle Dutch Lancelot compilation both consider the texts in their manuscript context; the Dutch compilation is examined as a critique of Arthurian values. Philip Boardman addresses the link that critics make between 'grail' and 'quest', which does not correspond to the treatment of the two themes in Middle English; this leads logically into P. J. C. Field's discussion of Malory. James Carley then moves on to the world of print in the treatment of Glastonbury and the grail by sixteenth-century antiquaries. In the final study Richard Barber gives a useful overview of current scholarship and possible future directions of grail scholarship. There is a short bibliography, an appendix surveying the grail on film, and, inside the back cover, a fold-out table of the grail scenes in the different cultures examined in the volume. The whole collection is carefully organized, beginning with the grail but moving on to contexts where it is the modern critic, rather, who is on a quest, seeking the grail in linguistic cultures where it does not have a major presence. On occasion, some cross-referencing between essays would have enhanced the volume's cohesion, notably when Furtado, like Meuwese, discusses the 'Genoa grail' but makes no reference to the illustration at Figure 50. Overall, though, this is a wide-ranging collection that takes us beyond the narrow confines of French and Middle English literature.