Holy Grail

"Grail" redirects here. For other uses, see Grail (disambiguation)

Modern interpretations

Casual metaphor

The legend of the Holy Grail is the basis of the use of the term holy grail in modern-day culture. This or that "holy grail" is seen as the distant, all-but-unobtainable ultimate goal for a person, organization, or field to achieve. For instance, cold fusion or anti-gravity devices are sometimes characterized as the "holy grail" of applied physics.

Related Topics:
Cold fusion - Anti-gravity

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Modern retellings

The story of the Grail and of the quest to find it became increasingly popular in the nineteenth century, referred to in literature such as Alfred Tennyson's Arthurian cycle the Idylls of the King. The combination of hushed reverence, chromatic harmonies and sexualised imagery in Richard Wagner's late opera Parsifal gave new significance to the grail theme, for the first time associating the – now periodically blood-producing – grail directly with female sexual fertility. The high seriousness of the subject was also epitomized in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting (illustrated), in which a woman modelled by Jane Morris holds the Grail with one hand, while a adopting a gesture of blessing with the other. Other artists, including George Frederic Watts and William Dyce also portrayed grail subjects.

Related Topics:
Alfred Tennyson - Idylls of the King - Richard Wagner - Parsifal - Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Jane Morris - George Frederic Watts - William Dyce

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The Grail later turned up in movies; it debuted in a silent Parsifal. In The Light of Faith (1922), Lon Chaney attempted to steal it, for the finest of reasons. The Silver Chalice, a novel about the Grail by Thomas B. Costain was made into a 1954 movie (in which Paul Newman débuted), that is considered notably bad by several critics, including Newman himself. Lancelot of the Lake (1974) is Robert Bresson's gritty retelling. In vivid contrast, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) deflated it and all pseudo-Arthurian posturings.

Related Topics:
1922 - The Silver Chalice - Novel - Thomas B. Costain - 1954 - Paul Newman - Notably bad - 1974 - Robert Bresson - Monty Python and the Holy Grail - 1975

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Excalibur attempted to restore a more traditional heroic representation of an Arthurian tale, in which the Grail is revealed as a mystical means to revitalise Arthur himself, and of the barren land to which his depressive sickness is connected. The Fisher King and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade place the quest in modern settings, the one serious yet faintly camp, the other robustly self-parodying. Science fiction has taken the Quest into interstellar space, figuratively in Samuel R. Delany's 1968 novel Nova, and literally in the 1994 episode "Grail" of the television series Babylon 5. In the third (1994) series of the Japanese anime Sailor Moon the characters are searching for an item called the Holy Grail so that a fabled person known only as "The Messiah" can save the world from an oncoming apocalypse known as "The Silence".

Related Topics:
Excalibur - The Fisher King - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Camp - Samuel R. Delany - Nova - 1994 - Grail - Babylon 5 - Japanese - Anime - Sailor Moon - Apocalypse

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For the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who assert that their research ultimately reveals that Jesus may not have died on the cross, but lived to marry Mary Magdalene and father children, whose Merovingian bloodline continues today, the Grail is a mere sideshow. Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code is likewise based on the idea that the real Grail is not a cup but the earthly remains of Mary Magdalene (again cast as Jesus' wife), plus a set of ancient documents telling the "true" story of Jesus, his teachings and descendants. In Brown's novel, it is hinted that the Grail was long buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel just like one tradition claims, but in recent decades its guardians had it relocated to a secret chamber embedded in the floor beneath the Inverted Pyramid in front of the Louvre Museum. Of course, the latter location has never been mentioned in real Grail lore. Yet such was the public interest in even a fictionalized Grail that the museum soon had to rope off the exact location mentioned by Brown, lest visitors inflict any damage in a more or less serious attempt to access the supposed hidden chamber. (See: La Pyramide Inversée.)

Related Topics:
Holy Blood, Holy Grail - Mary Magdalene - Merovingian - Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code - Rosslyn Chapel - Louvre Museum - La Pyramide Inversée

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