Sir Lancelot and the Holy Grail

Certainly romance (especially the liaison between Lancelot and Guinivere) and much jousting takes place after the quest begins, but the point has shifted from the physical to the spiritual, from the heroic to the mystical. The quest of Lancelot for the Holy Grail, after all, does not begin until the eleventh book of the Malory saga, after ten seemingly endless accounts of romance and jousts. As Scudder writes:

Weariness has descended on that adventurous life which seemed so inexhaustible. Toward the end of Book X, every reader is in revolt. He cannot stand one more tournament or one more lover. There is nothing new under the sun (Scudder 263).

There may be nothing new under the sun, that is, on earth, but there is something new in another world, namely, the world of the spirit, and, specifically, the Holy Grail, or the cup used by Jesus and the disciples at the Last Supper.

Prophetically, Lancelot sets off in pursuit of the Grail--which he will see and have indirect encounters with again and again, but never acquire--immediately after it is explained that the empty seat at the Round Table will only be occupied by one

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shall deliver us from a serpent that is here in a tomb." Lancelot slays the serpent, "a horrible and fiendly dragon" with his sword "unto the pleasure of God" (Malory 490). Immediately thereafter, Lancelot actually sees the Grail at a dinner given by Elaine's father, King Pelles. Tellingly, Lancelot, who will never win the Grail because of his imperfections and faults, seems frightened of the Grail: "O Jesu, . . . what may this mean?" (Malory 491). Lancelot reacts as a man would who is suddenly made aware, at least on an intuitional or mystical level, of his great sins and shortcomings in the presence of an artifact imbued with the holiness of the cup of Jesus' Last Supper. From this dinner Lancelot is seduced by Dame Brisen, "one of the greatest enchantresses that was at that time in the world living," who maneuvers him into sleeping with Elaine, believing she is his beloved Guinivere (Malory 492). Lancelot is shown here to be most vulnerable morally, and/or most rebellious spiritually, immediately after seeing the Grail, as if the presence of the Grail brought out in him his weakness, which in turn he fed with surrender to temptation. At the same time, because Galahad was the child born of this tryst with Elaine, the epis
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Approximate Word count = 1901
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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