tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-339341627655003640.post7244174092748379656..comments2024-02-28T12:16:32.546+01:00Comments on Helena Schrader's Historical Fiction: The Templars and the Holy GrailHelena P. Schraderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06535398166485310212noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-339341627655003640.post-32308939197397913112017-12-30T18:16:37.979+01:002017-12-30T18:16:37.979+01:00I'm not entirely sure I can agree with your ju...I'm not entirely sure I can agree with your judgment that mediæval people didn't think of the Grail as a thing. Part of the problem is, of course, that "mediæval" covers far too long a period to generalize, so the way people thought of the Grail (if they thought of it at all) in the 12th century would certainly have been very different from the way they thought of it in the 15th.<br /><br />Wolfram certainly seems to think of it as a sort of shape-shifting vision representing "sælde" and some hint of that lasts down possibly even to Wagner; even considered as an object, the Grail is associated with an aura of heavenly bliss.<br /><br />On the other hand, the tremendous popularity of allegory in the middle ages, certainly in the 14th and 15th centuries, did tend toward a sort of reification of concepts, of the sort that turned a "bead" from a prayer into a small rounded globule. By Malory's time, I THINK most people did think of the Grail as a definite object, though exactly WHAT that object was was still not entirely fixed. I'm fairly sure more thought of it as a dish rather than as a cup, and that it held the Paschal lamb rather than the wine, though there still also lurks the older conception that it was a vessel used to catch Christ's blood as it was shed from the Cross.<br /><br />Of course, one must completely repudiate the grotesque, ham-fisted distortions of both history and legend made by modern purveyors of "historical" sensation fiction. They fail as history, as legend, and even as good story-telling; though they are, alas! generally all-too-successful as propaganda.Tannhaeuserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01186495472990554465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-339341627655003640.post-67749980342259807062017-12-30T15:46:25.695+01:002017-12-30T15:46:25.695+01:00As enlightening as always, thanks!As enlightening as always, thanks!Mystic Scholarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07593826779432906953noreply@blogger.com