Holy Grail

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

The beginnings of the Grail in literature

Chrétien de Troyes

The Grail is first featured in Perceval, le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail) by Chrétien de Troyes, who claims he was working from a source book given to him by his patron, Count Philip of Flanders. In this incomplete poem, dated sometime between 1180 and 1191, the object has not yet acquired the implications of holiness it would have in later works. While dining in the magical abode of the Fisher King, Perceval witnesses a wondrous procession in which youths carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another, passing before him at each course of the meal. First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabras. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or "grail".

Related Topics:
Perceval, le Conte du Graal - Chrétien de Troyes - Philip of Flanders - 1180 - 1191 - Perceval

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Chrétien refers to his object not as "The Grail" but as un graal, showing the word was used, in its earliest literary context, as a common noun. For Chrétien the grail was a wide, somewhat deep dish or bowl, interesting because it contained not a pike, salmon or lamprey, as the audience may have expected for such a container, but a single Mass wafer which provided sustenance for the Fisher King?s crippled father.

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Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much, remains silent through all of this, and wakes up the next morning alone. He later learns that if he had asked the appropriate questions about what he saw, he would have healed his maimed host, much to his honor.

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Robert de Boron

Though Chrétien?s account is the earliest and most influential of all Grail texts, it was in the work of Robert de Boron that the Grail truly became the ?Holy Grail? and assumed the form most familiar to modern readers. In his verse romance Joseph d?Arimathie, composed between 1191 and 1202, Robert tells the story of Joseph of Arimathea acquiring the chalice of the Last Supper to collect Christ?s blood upon His removal from the cross. Joseph is thrown in prison where Christ visits him and explains the mysteries of the blessed cup. Upon his release Joseph gathers his in-laws and other followers and travels to the west, and founds a dynasty of Grail keepers that eventually includes Perceval.

Related Topics:
Robert de Boron - 1191 - 1202 - Joseph of Arimathea

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The Grail in other early literature

After this point, Grail literature divides into two classes. The first concerns King Arthur?s knights visiting the Grail castle or questing after the object; the second concerns the Grail?s history in the time of Joseph of Arimathea.

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The nine most important works from the first group are:

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• The Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes.
• Four continuations of Chrétien?s poem, by authors of differing vision and talent, designed to bring the story to a close.
• The German Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, which adapted at least the holiness of Robert?s Grail into the framework of Chrétien?s story.
• The Didot Perceval, named after the manuscript?s former owner, and purportedly a prosification of Robert de Boron?s sequal to Joseph d?Arimathie.
• The Welsh romance Peredur (generally included in the Mabinogion), based on Chrétien?s poem but including very striking differences from it.
• Perlesvaus, called the "least canonical" Grail romance because of its very different character.
• The German Diu Crone (The Crown), in which Gawain, rather than Perceval, achieves the Grail.
• The Lancelot section of the vast Vulgate Cycle, which introduces the new Grail hero, Galahad.
• The Queste del Saint Graal, another part of the Vulgate Cycle, concerning the adventures of Galahad and his achievement of the Grail.

Of the second class there are:

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• Robert de Boron?s Joseph d?Arimathie,
• The Estoire del Saint Graal, the first part of the Vulgate Cycle (but written after Lancelot and the Queste), based on Robert?s tale but expanding it greatly with many new details.

Though all these works have their roots in Chrétien, several contain pieces of tradition not found in Chrétien which are possibly derived from earlier sources.

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