Holy Grails

Catalog description

The Quest for the Holy Grail has captured the modern imagination, inspiring bestselling fiction, scholarly and conspiratorial study, and no fewer than fourteen feature films since the silent era. In this course, students will discover the ways in which our twentieth- and twenty-first-century fascination with the Grail is only the most recent incarnation of a long obsession in popular Western culture that reaches back in time to the late twelfth century. We will study the flourishing of the Grail legend in twelfth- and thirteenth-century courtly society. We’ll explore how the Grail stories reflected European hopes and fears about a rapidly changing wider world. And we will think broadly about other “Grails” as well: quests for the unknown, the unseen, and the unconquered; fascination with conspiracy; fear of cultural and religious difference; and above all, the hope that human beings invest in symbols, not just of the divine, but also of transcendent love, compassion, and sacrifice.