This study will examine the significance and impact of Sir Lancelot's experiences in his quest for the Holy Grail in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. The study will argue that the quest for the Holy Grail is most significant because it is a turning point not only for Lancelot, but for the entire focus and meaning of the tales of the Round Table.
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 who is not yet born but who will eventually "win the Sangreal" (Malory 489), or the Holy Grail. The one who will eventually occupy that seat is Sir Galahad, the pure son of the wayward Lancelot.
In any case, immediately after the feast at which this prophecy was announced by a hermit, "Sir Lancelot rode on his adventure" (Malory 490). The adventure is by all means grounded in the physical world, but the significance is spiritual, just as the significa...