Whether it is a cup of plenty or the container of Christ's blood, the Holy Grail has always been a symbol of aspiration and longing. This volume surveys representations of the Holy Grail in literature, art, and film from the Middle Ages to the present day. A substantial introduction tracing the development of the legend is followed by a 200-item bibliography and twenty critical essays, seven of which have been written specially for this volume. The motifs of the Grail, the Quest, the Waste Land, and the Fisher King are explored, as well as the characters of Perceval, Lancelot, Galahad, and Joseph of Arimathea. Specific topics discussed include the origins and symbolism of the legend; the visual treatment of the legend in medieval manuscript illumination and in pre-Raphaelite painting; and the narrative treatment of the legend by medieval writers in French, German, and English, by nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets, and by twentieth-century novelists and film-makers.

Contents:
Introduction. Dhira B. Mahoney. The quest of origins, Glenys Witchard Goetinck. The central symbol of the legend: the Grail as vessel, Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz. Perceval or Le Conte du Graal, Jean Frappier. Punishment in the perlesvaus: the theme of the waste land, A. J. Kennedy. Seeing the Grail: prologomena to a study of the Grail in the Queste and Estoire , Alison Stones. A story of interpretations: the Quest del Saint Graal as metaliterature, Lawrence N. de Looze. Dying to get to Sarras: Perceval's sister and the Grail quest, Janina Traxler. The symbolism of the Grail in Wolfram von Eschenbach, Friedrich Ranke. The truest and holiest tale: Malory's transformation of La Quest del Saint Graal, Dhira B. Mahoney. Chivalric nationalism and the Holy Grail in John Hardyng's chronicle, Felicity Riddy. Scandals of faith and gender in Tennyson's Grail poems, Linda Hughes. Pure hearts and clean hands: the Victorians and the Grail, Debra N. Mancoff. From Logres to Carbonek: the Arthuriad of Charles Williams, Karl Heinz Goller, Walker Percy's Grail, J. Donald Crowley and Sue Mitchell Crowley. The Grail in modern fiction: sacred symbol in a secular age, Raymond H. Thompson. Hollywood's new Weston: the Grail myth in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and John Boorman's Excalibur, Martin Shichtman.

The essays in this collection present a range of new ideas and approaches in Malory studies, looking again (as the title suggests) at several of the most debated critical points. A number of articles focus closely on the implications of the production of the text, ranging from the repercussions of the working habits of the Winchester scribes, as well as of Malory's printers and editors, to a reassessment of Caxton's Preface. There are also nuanced readings of geography and politics in the Morte Darthur and its fifteenth-century contexts, and analyses of text and context in relation to the role of women, character and theme in the Morte, including the important questions of worshyp and mesure, as well as the issues of coherence and genre.