The Quest of the Holy Grail Book

I loved this so much. The Quest of the Grail was by a significant margin my favourite bit of Malory; and this book is the expanded version which Malory condensed, so I was bound to love it.

A dreamlike knightly romance that doubles as a spiritual guidebook for the noble classes, this book would have been both deeply convicting and encouragingly aspirational to its audience, in its day. Convicting, because it paints a grim picture of the wrath, lust, and bloodthirstiness that characterised the noble classes; aspirational, because it tried to show them a way to serve God and do good in their occupation. The real medieval Arthurian literature makes no sense if we insist on seeing the heroes as the Victorians did, unfailingly chivalrous gentlemen in shining armour. That was only the aspirational half of the picture; all the drama and pathos of the stories comes from the fact that in so many ways, neither the real thing nor the romantic heroes could measure up.

There is definitely some weirdness going on here with the fixation on virginity and the low view of women (though Matarasso points out with some justification that in practice the author gives women a higher place in the story than his more disparaging comments would warrant). But overall, I couldn't get over what an incredible challenge this book must have posed to the whole idea of medieval knighthood. This story dares to paint a picture for the knightly class of a new kind of knighthood, one in which righteousness is worth more than honour, serving God is more important than one's own glory and physical power is no longer the measure of knightliness. True, some things go unchallenged - the rank snobbery that always characterised medievalism, for one thing; if you look closely you'll realise that all the hermits and recluses are actually retired nobles with households full of servants and chaplains, which means that none of our heroes is ever given spiritual instruction by a social inferior. But most of the time, after spending my last few years immersed in the history of the twelfth and thirteenth century, reading this felt like being on the receiving end of a flamethrower. I can only dimly imagine how this book must have affected its target audience; I imagine it must have been equal parts enchanting and agonising.