Content area
Full Text
The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief. By Richard Barber. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01390-5. Pp. xiv + 464. $27.95.
The quest for the Holy Grail continues in Richard Barber's careful and readable account of a literary cum religious mystery that has grown over the centuries. Born in medieval French romance, the Grail has a complicated early literary history as it evolves through the French, Flemish and German imaginations of such writers as Chrétien de Troyes, Robert de Boron, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Heinrich von dem Türlin and a number of anonymous authors. The mysteries of the Grail originate in Chrétien's unfinished, twelfth-century manuscript The Story of the Grail, which was eventually "finished" in the first decades of the thirteenth century by as many as four different continuators-each adding his own nuance to Chrétien's original concept of the Grail, indefinite as it was. Because the story was unfinished at the time of Chrétien's death, Grail history has taken on dimensions that were likely not intended by the Grail's first literary creator. Meanwhile, taking their cue from Chrétien, other medieval writers began imagining their own versions of the Grail in a burst of Grail enthusiasm that lasted from approximately 1180-1240, a narrow but productive window of creation out of which springs the mystery and intrigue that still suffuse today's discussions.
Barber's book is arranged in three parts covering the early literary history of the Grail, the possible physical existence of the Grail as a religious relic, and the evolution of the Grail into a secular symbol in the modern imagination. Barber is both an experienced scholar and a competent language specialist who often translates the original manuscripts himself. The first section of the book dealing with early literary history provides copious quotations from the medieval French and German manuscripts along with well-written summaries of each that give context while they both overcome the complexities of doing scholarship in a number of medieval languages and weave together Barber's arguments. Readers who are not specialists in this area will appreciate both the breadth and depth of Barber's work in a prose style that laypersons and academics alike will find readable.
Barber argues that the Holy Grail is largely a literary creation, spun from the imagination of Chrétien de...