Christopher Davis's Blog
April 8, 2013
Scholar Review
"How the Grail Became Holy" has recently been read and reviewed by a former professor at William & Mary who taught a course on the subject of the Holy Grail. I feel both humbled by his scholarly praise, and validated that my work has passed its first true test of academic scrutiny.
" 5.0 out of 5 stars A WONDERFUL AND EXCITING NEW APPROACH, April 2, 2013
By
EREMON - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: How the Grail Became Holy: A Quest to Discover the Origin of the Holy Grail Legend (Paperback)
This is a new and excellent addition to Grail literature - and a different and refreshing approach. The author is well-grounded in Grail Lore (and there's a lot of it) and does two things very well. He narrows the scope of this work, which keeps it from being over burdensome, and looks at things from an angle that is quite different from the norm. I taught European History, Language and Culture at William and Mary for 33 years and included a course on the Holy Grail for several of those years, deriving it from my other courses on Parzifal, Middle High German, Romanticism and other related topics.
First of all, the scope is described in the title. His intention - and he fully succeeds - is to look at the ancient sources of the Grail - Celtic, Sarmatian and more - and show us the process whereby it became the "Holy" Grail of Medieval European poetry and later of English Romantics such as Tennyson. Secondly, he leads us slowly, carefully and precisely to his thesis: better than any other theory he gives strong evidence that the Holy Grail we see portrayed in so many settings has, by Medieval times, taken on the characteristics of Jesus Christ Himself.
To do this, he compares most versions of the Grail and deduces five significant characteristics: 1) It produces an endless supply of food and/or drink; 2) It heals or regenerates those who use it; 3) It emits a brilliant light; 4) It takes away people's speech; 5) It chooses only those who are worthy. Most - but not all - of these five show up best in its ancient Celtic origins. The other main sources are: Sarmatian theory, Ritual theory, Eucharist theory and Crusade theory. Most - but again not all - show up best in Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzifal". By the way, we know that knight as Percival and his role in most legends is less important than that of Galahad. Yet he is of incomparably more importance than Galahad.
I don't want to outline any more of this book; it's more fun for you to read it yourself, which I strongly recommend. It's 134 pages in my edition, with double-spaced type, so it's not going to take you months to work your way through it - even though, as a Grail scholar myself, I took about a month to go through it and check my own sources. So if you've heard of King Arthur - and who hasn't? - you'll already have some background yourself. But please remember that Arthur plays almost no role in this book; it's the Holy Grail we're looking into here. "
" 5.0 out of 5 stars A WONDERFUL AND EXCITING NEW APPROACH, April 2, 2013
By
EREMON - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: How the Grail Became Holy: A Quest to Discover the Origin of the Holy Grail Legend (Paperback)
This is a new and excellent addition to Grail literature - and a different and refreshing approach. The author is well-grounded in Grail Lore (and there's a lot of it) and does two things very well. He narrows the scope of this work, which keeps it from being over burdensome, and looks at things from an angle that is quite different from the norm. I taught European History, Language and Culture at William and Mary for 33 years and included a course on the Holy Grail for several of those years, deriving it from my other courses on Parzifal, Middle High German, Romanticism and other related topics.
First of all, the scope is described in the title. His intention - and he fully succeeds - is to look at the ancient sources of the Grail - Celtic, Sarmatian and more - and show us the process whereby it became the "Holy" Grail of Medieval European poetry and later of English Romantics such as Tennyson. Secondly, he leads us slowly, carefully and precisely to his thesis: better than any other theory he gives strong evidence that the Holy Grail we see portrayed in so many settings has, by Medieval times, taken on the characteristics of Jesus Christ Himself.
To do this, he compares most versions of the Grail and deduces five significant characteristics: 1) It produces an endless supply of food and/or drink; 2) It heals or regenerates those who use it; 3) It emits a brilliant light; 4) It takes away people's speech; 5) It chooses only those who are worthy. Most - but not all - of these five show up best in its ancient Celtic origins. The other main sources are: Sarmatian theory, Ritual theory, Eucharist theory and Crusade theory. Most - but again not all - show up best in Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzifal". By the way, we know that knight as Percival and his role in most legends is less important than that of Galahad. Yet he is of incomparably more importance than Galahad.
I don't want to outline any more of this book; it's more fun for you to read it yourself, which I strongly recommend. It's 134 pages in my edition, with double-spaced type, so it's not going to take you months to work your way through it - even though, as a Grail scholar myself, I took about a month to go through it and check my own sources. So if you've heard of King Arthur - and who hasn't? - you'll already have some background yourself. But please remember that Arthur plays almost no role in this book; it's the Holy Grail we're looking into here. "
February 20, 2013
Why I Wrote This
It recently dawned on me that I have spent a great deal of time telling people what I wrote about, but rarely have I addressed why I wrote "How the Grail Became Holy". Well, as I imagine is the case for most who enjoy learning about history, it began with a question; what is the story behind the Holy Grail legend? Sure, I had heard of it before. I'm not sure there are many in the western hemisphere who haven't heard of it, but beyond the adventures of Indiana Jones, or perhaps the misadventures of Monty Python, I could not have told you much about it. So, with grad school only a month behind me, and all of a sudden faced with a level of free time I had not known for the previous two years, my curiosity lead me to learn more about the story of the Cup of Christ.
As I said, it all began with a question about the origin of this legend. However, I quickly went from having a question to having a problem. Despite the endless amount of literature on the subject, I was not getting an answer. To be fair, it was not that these books did not provide answers to my question. The problem was that the answers given were either nonsensical fiction disguised as history (I'm sure you can guess which book in particular comes to mind), or were authentically historical in their interpretations, but were written in highly academic language for an audience that was already intimately familiar with the legends of King Arthur and the Grail.
At that point, I began to consider using this problem as a means to utilize my place in what I like to call "Historian Limbo". "Historian Limbo", as I define it anyway, is a place where those with a MA in History, but not a Ph.D., reside condemned to wander with all the reading and research skills of a professional historian, but never able to be counted among professional historians. Frustrating as this has been, in addressing this particular problem, I found an advantage to having Mudblood status in the field of history. What if someone with historical training could sort through the nonsense, and translate the academic jargon into something that anyone (literary scholar or just generally interested) could read? Better yet, what if that person was me? After all, the sheer volume of movies and books on the Holy Grail show that there is a popular interest in the subject. And let me just say that I'm not trying to come down on academics on this. I just felt that most of the good books on the history of the Grail were written for other scholars of the literature. This is fine, and admittedly necessary, but I felt that this severely limited who all could learn about the history of the Grail. So, believing that people (historian or not) have a real interest in this legend, I set out to translate "academic" into English with the belief that it is my responsibility to explain the history of the legend. Not to argue my point with the expectation that the audience already knows what I'm talking about.
In all honesty, my original purpose for this book was not so ambitious as to propose a new theory. My plan was only to give people a background in the history of the legend, and explain some of the most prominent theories as to the origin of the legend. I felt that, in spite of all of the books on the Grail out there, this was lacking in the existing literature. But, like many endeavors, the original goal changed as the project went on. I discovered that the earliest depictions of the Grail in legend were as vastly different as the scholarly theories about what inspired the legend in the first place. I did not begin knowing that I would devise my own test criteria to sort out which theory holds the most water, nor did I dare imagine that I would have a eureka moment in which I came up with an entirely new theory. Nevertheless, six years later, that is what I have done.
So, that long story about how this book came to be brings us back to the original question of why I wrote this book. Why would I spend six years writing one more book on a subject that has already produced countless other books? Because, whether you believe my theory on the origin of the Holy Grail or not, I believe that people are interested in this legend and that they deserve to be able to learn about it without having to be experts in Arthurian literature. As I said before, it is the author's responsibility, not the reader's, to explain the subject. As far as learning about the history of the Grail, as well as the theories surrounding its history, I wanted to give you, the reader, one book that would fill you in on the subject. My hope is that I have added something to the understanding of this legend as well as give the audience everything it needs to read as much as they want on the subject. If I have done my job correctly, you will afterward be able to read as many of those "untranslated" academic books as you want and decide whether or not my theory convinced you. Whether or not my origin theory is correct or even believed, as long as you learned something, I have accomplished what I set out to do.
As I said, it all began with a question about the origin of this legend. However, I quickly went from having a question to having a problem. Despite the endless amount of literature on the subject, I was not getting an answer. To be fair, it was not that these books did not provide answers to my question. The problem was that the answers given were either nonsensical fiction disguised as history (I'm sure you can guess which book in particular comes to mind), or were authentically historical in their interpretations, but were written in highly academic language for an audience that was already intimately familiar with the legends of King Arthur and the Grail.
At that point, I began to consider using this problem as a means to utilize my place in what I like to call "Historian Limbo". "Historian Limbo", as I define it anyway, is a place where those with a MA in History, but not a Ph.D., reside condemned to wander with all the reading and research skills of a professional historian, but never able to be counted among professional historians. Frustrating as this has been, in addressing this particular problem, I found an advantage to having Mudblood status in the field of history. What if someone with historical training could sort through the nonsense, and translate the academic jargon into something that anyone (literary scholar or just generally interested) could read? Better yet, what if that person was me? After all, the sheer volume of movies and books on the Holy Grail show that there is a popular interest in the subject. And let me just say that I'm not trying to come down on academics on this. I just felt that most of the good books on the history of the Grail were written for other scholars of the literature. This is fine, and admittedly necessary, but I felt that this severely limited who all could learn about the history of the Grail. So, believing that people (historian or not) have a real interest in this legend, I set out to translate "academic" into English with the belief that it is my responsibility to explain the history of the legend. Not to argue my point with the expectation that the audience already knows what I'm talking about.
In all honesty, my original purpose for this book was not so ambitious as to propose a new theory. My plan was only to give people a background in the history of the legend, and explain some of the most prominent theories as to the origin of the legend. I felt that, in spite of all of the books on the Grail out there, this was lacking in the existing literature. But, like many endeavors, the original goal changed as the project went on. I discovered that the earliest depictions of the Grail in legend were as vastly different as the scholarly theories about what inspired the legend in the first place. I did not begin knowing that I would devise my own test criteria to sort out which theory holds the most water, nor did I dare imagine that I would have a eureka moment in which I came up with an entirely new theory. Nevertheless, six years later, that is what I have done.
So, that long story about how this book came to be brings us back to the original question of why I wrote this book. Why would I spend six years writing one more book on a subject that has already produced countless other books? Because, whether you believe my theory on the origin of the Holy Grail or not, I believe that people are interested in this legend and that they deserve to be able to learn about it without having to be experts in Arthurian literature. As I said before, it is the author's responsibility, not the reader's, to explain the subject. As far as learning about the history of the Grail, as well as the theories surrounding its history, I wanted to give you, the reader, one book that would fill you in on the subject. My hope is that I have added something to the understanding of this legend as well as give the audience everything it needs to read as much as they want on the subject. If I have done my job correctly, you will afterward be able to read as many of those "untranslated" academic books as you want and decide whether or not my theory convinced you. Whether or not my origin theory is correct or even believed, as long as you learned something, I have accomplished what I set out to do.
November 27, 2012
First Reviewer Comments
Feeling pretty good today. For my first ever blog post I can say that I now have my first reviewer comment post on Amazon for "How the Grail Became Holy", and the feedback was very flattering. The reviewer comments have reassured me that the book successfully conveyed what I had hoped it would. I can only hope that, as more people (fingers crossed) read it, the feedback will continue to be as positive.How the Grail Became Holy: A Quest to Discover the Origin of the Holy Grail Legend
