Studies On The Legend Of The Holy Grail

Reproduction of the original: Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail by Alfred Nutt

The legend of the Holy Grail (also known as the Grail Quest, Quest for the Holy Grail) is one of the most enduring in Western European literature and art. This book describes the events that led to the rise of the legend associated with the grail, based on textual material and historical facts. Alfred Nutt describes the literary evolution of the legend of the Holy Grail (Chrestien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Robert de Boron...) and traces its formation from Celtic, Christian, Eastern and alchemical tradition. The Grail legend continues to resonate with a modern audience because it illustrates the underlying motivation of the human condition: the quest to find ultimate meaning and purpose in life. In all this is a very clever book, that is erudite, full of information and intelligence and is certainly worth reading.

The present work is, as its title states, a collection of "Studies." It does not profess to give an exhaustive or orderly account of the Grail romance cycle; it deals with particular aspects of the legend, and makes no pretence of exhausting even these. It may be urged that as this is the case the basis of the work is too broad for the superstructure, and that there was no need to give full summaries of the leading forms of the legend, or to discuss at such length their relation one to another, when it was only intended to follow up one of the many problems which this romance cycle presents. Had there existed any work in English which did in any measure what the writer has here attempted to do, he would only too gladly have given more space and more time to the elaboration of the special subject of these studies. But the only work of the kind is in German, Birch-Hirschfeld's Die Gralsage. Many interested in the Arthurian romances do not know German; and some who profess an interest in them, and who do know German, are not, to judge by their writings, acquainted with Birch-Hirschfeld's work. It seemed worth while, therefore, to present the facts about the cycle with greater fullness than would have been necessary had those facts been generally accessible.

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