I do not flatter myself that I shall be able to bring the battle to an end, but I intend attacking this question from a different point of view altogether. Whence did they take it from? It is round this question that a literary battle has now been fought for over fifty years. It is chiefly the Quest which plays the most important part in their poems. Nutt that they, or even the original they followed, did not know much of it, the origin and properties of the Grail being only vaguely indicated. Of what kind was this primary source, and how much did it contain? Were both those parts which we find afterwards united, or was only one of them contained in the original? Did Chrestien and Wolfram know the Early history of the Grail or not? I entirely agree with Mr. Besides, Wolfram claims an independent source for his poetical composition, ridiculing Chrestien for not following the original closely.Įverything tends to make us believe that there must have existed a common primary source whence both Chrestien and Wolfram drew their tale. In spite of the likeness, there is also a very great diversity in the treatment of the Grail by both these writers. Next in point of time, and, as I may at once add, first in importance, is the German follower of Chrestien, Wolfram von Eschenbach. The differences begin with the detailed accounts given in the Early history, and still more with the peculiarities of the Grail, of the hero and his achievements, The work is the same, but the contents vary almost in every version.Īt the head of the whole literature stands Chrestien de Troyes, the famous minstrel, who, as far as our present knowledge goes, was the first to sing the praise of the Grail, and of the hero in search of it.
Stripped of all the embellishments which made out of these simple facts the most renowned of mediseval romances, the numerous versions of it are practically one. Nutt rightly distinguishes between an Early history of the Grail and the Quest the former containing the origin and source of the Grail, and the Quest, on the other hand, consisting of the description of the adventures the expected hero had to undergo until he finally reached his goal. Nutt, who, in his admirable Studies on the Grail, has endeavoured to disentangle the skein of this complicated problem, and to make some order in the mass of versions, texts, and alterations in which this legend has been preserved.
These have been subdivided into groups, according to the affinity in which the incidents narrated therein stand to one another, and also in how far one tale is developed more than the other: a work which has been successfully carried out by Mr. This romance now exists in various forms, more or less akin to one another. Just as difficult as was the ancient quest in romance, is the modern quest after the origin and sources of this remarkable and weird tale. No one who has ever trodden the enchanted land on which the castle which contained the Holy Grail stood could entirely escape the charm that overhangs it. Many a scholar has tried to solve the problem of its origin, and yet a final solution is still wanting. IN the history of mediæval romances there is none so complicated as that of the romance of the Holy Grail.
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