The Holy Grail and the Historian's Quest for the Truth

Catalog description

Dan Brown's wildly successful novel The Da Vinci Code has recently given a feminist twist to an enduringly popular medieval legend also captured in big-screen antics of Monty Python and Indiana Jones: the quest for the Holy Grail. Beginning with Brown's novel and other modern representations of the search for the Grail then turning back to texts from the Middle Ages, this seminar will unravel the truth - or truths - behind the legend. One central question will be how historians can use legends to understand the cultures they study. Instructor permission required. P