April 15, 1999
French poet and historian Markale, who has written more than 40 books on pre-Christian societies, associates the grail of Arthurian myth with the cauldron of old Welsh tales. Unfortunately, this particular theory has been explored much more thoroughly by R.S. Loomis in The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol (1963), and it is a theory that has since been discounted by most reputable Arthurian scholars. Markales work is more interesting in its survey of the grail portions of Arthurian mythology, looking at the grail as it appears in the works of influential Arthurian authors such as Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and others. But this work should not be considered the final word on the history of the grail. For public and academic libraries.John J. Doherty, Northern Arizona Univ. Lib., Flagstaff
April 15, 1999
The Matter of Britain, as the Arthurian legends are called, holds as much power for the contemporary reader as it did for medieval lords and ladies. In this book, French scholar Markale looks at the various extant written forms of one of the key constituents of the Matter of Britain, the story of the Holy Grail. His specific project is to separate the legend's various elements and determine which parts are pagan in origin and which are Christian overlays on an ancient template. In Markale's hands this is no mere academic exercise, for he believes that the more ancient story, which deals with the healing of a wounded king whose land suffers because of that wound, has great relevance today. The later and mostly sex-denying Christian interpolations are part of the wounding of today's analogs to the Grail knights, Markale argues. Once again, this great sequence of tales proves itself meaningful to another changing age. ((Reviewed April 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)