St. George's Chapel Windsor in the Fourteenth Century ed. by Nigel Saul (review)

80ARTHURIANA her Christian characters hold 'beliefs that are highly unorthodox by the standards of the Bible, Roman Catholicism and fundamentalist Protestantism, to name a few forms ofChristianity that profess a claim to absolute truth' (77). By the close ofthe chapter, Marino has ceased discussing the treatment ofthe grail in modern lirerature in favor ofrailing against 'relativism.' The thitd chapter finds Marino attributing the humanist tradition in modern grail literature to Alfred Lord Tennyson and T.H. White. Marino makes a good case for the rise of industrialism and world wars profoundly affecting humanist tradition. However, he also commits grave errors. His treatment of T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land,' in particular, shows a generally shallow view of modernism and specific ignorance of canonical ways of reading the poem. For insrance, Marino fails to identify multiple personae in 'The Burial ofthe Dead,' does not historically contextualize the poem, and, in what one might suspect is willful blindness, calls the famous allusion to Ezekiel in lines 20 and following an 'obvious Christ-allusion of the addressee' (109). What makes such a seemingly minor error egregious is that Eliot's ownfootnotes to the poem diteci the reader to the Old Testament. A brilliant exegesis ofDavid Lodge's Small Worldin the context ofhumanism saves the chaptet from ending at a nadir. The final chapter is hampered by its organization around a version of 'esoteric mysticism' that feels based on what many would deem crackpot notions of an historical grail, coupled with its denigrating treatment of 'Aquarian and New Age movements' (117). This chaptet treats too little actual literature in favor of examining pseudo-archaeological and anthropological grail studies of the last century. The last author is Deepak Chopra, the New Age spiritualist hatdly known as a novelist. In the final two pages, Marino ties up loose ends, attributes primarily to Weston all three ofthe literary streams he has followed, and concludes with a short meditation on the grail's durability as a symbol. While the latter point seems obvious, the point on Weston is helpful, because, with the barrage ofother scholarship in this slim volume, it is difficult to reach that conclusion without direction. Ultimately to accomplish its goals, The Grail Legend in Modern Literature would benefit by less religious editorializing and longer discussions of actual literature as well as a more detailed treatment of the critical theory to the conclusion Marino does in two pages. ANDREW E. MATHIS Villanova University Nigel Saul, ed., St. George's Chapel Windsorin theFourteenth Century. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005. Pp. xvii, 241. isbn: 1-84383-117-1. $90. In 1348, King Edward III ofEngland rededicated the chapel at Windsor Castle to St. George, founded a college ofpriests there, and made the chapel the headquarters ofhis prestigious confraternal Order ofthe Garter. Windsor thenceforth became the gtandest of England's royal residences and a focal point of English court life. The twelve essays in the present volume grew'out of a conference held at Windsot in 2002 and fall roughly into three groups: discussing the political and cultural place ofSt. George's in fourteenth-century England, the people involved with it, and the REVIEWS8l archaeology ofits fabric. Readers ofArthuriana are likely to prefer the fitst ofthese groups on account of its Arthurian and chivalric themes, but all the papets are ofa high quality and offer original insights into rhe early history ofSt. Geotge's. Contributions by W.M. Ormrod and Juliet Vale discuss the genesis of the Gartet, which did not come from nothing. In 1344, after a weeklong tournament at Windsor, Edward III swore a solemn oath that he would found a Round Table 'of the same mannet and standing as that which the Lord Arthur, formerly King of England, had relinquished.' Edward ordered a great hall and a round table to be built to accommodate the 300 member-knights who were to meet at Pentecost every year thereaftet. This project never came to fruition, but its telationship with the Garter has long intetested historians, who have perceived the shade of the chivalric King Arthur hanging over a society devoted to the chivalric St. George. Although Ormrod proposes that the specific form of the Garter occurred to Edward...