Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Markale Jean
Title : The Grail
Year : 1982

Link download : Markale_Jean_-_The_Grail.zip

It was between 1180 and 1190 that the Grail made its appearance in European literature, thanks to the Champagne novelist Chrétien de Troyes. Chrétien had long been the loyal writer for Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter Marie de Champagne and, from what is known, had a personal relationship with the queen-duchess herself when she held court at Poitiers. This was a court that welcomed French, Occitan, Anglo-Norman, and Breton poets and artists, thus constituting an extraordinary melting pot in which the most diverse cultures and oral traditions were blended.¹ It is very likely that the Celtic legends flooded into French-language literature through Poitiers, where, in passing, they were colored by all the nuances of Occitan humanism, thereby merging into the standards of this refined and well-bred society. No one, before Chrétien de Troyes, had written the name of the Grail. This doesn’t mean to say that the myth of the Grail didn’t exist before him, nor that the word “Grail” was an invention of this writer. But the facts are as follow: from the chronological perspective, which forms a solid system of reference, Chrétien de Troyes seems to be the initiator of the Grail legend. One can get a clear idea of Chrétien’s primary importance through simple consideration of the widespread and enormous fortune his legend has enjoyed. In the end, from the literary standpoint, not a single work dealing with the subject of the Grail can be considered as independent - either wholly or partly - from Perceval or the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes. Yet, although Chrétien de Troyes’s tale seems to be structured on a precise outline, everything is far from clear. The Grail, for those who see it, is quite mysterious. It appears, almost as if by chance, to a wandering hero, a young naïf who doesn’t even know his own name, and who definitely doesn’t come across as a conqueror. He finds himself in a castle belonging to a wounded king who spends his time fishing from a boat in a lake. Invited to remain at the castle as a guest, the young hero becomes engaged in a trivial conversation with his host, when all at once the atmosphere becomes fantastic. ...