Seeing Is Believing and Achieving: Viewing the Eucharist in Malory's 'Sankgreal'

Misunderstanding, Misperception and Mistakes: The Logic of the Grail in Old French Arthurian Romance and Thomas Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal

“…Dhira B. Mahoney suggests that in the Sankgreal Malory expresses "the thirteenth-century spiritual message in language and thought that is characteristic of the religious temper of fifteenth century England" (Mahoney, 2000). Most recently, Sarah B. Rude argues that although "certainly Malory was not a university-educated theologian, and we, as readers, cannot expect him to provide an "abstract, analytic" explanation of the metaphysical effects associated with the Eucharist", he appreciates and discusses the religious significance of the Grail from the viewpoint of a fifteenth-century Christian gentleman (Rude, 2018). I build upon this later scholarship to suggest not only that Malory retains the religious significance of his source, but that the way in which he chooses to redact the French Grail quest indicates a deliberate interaction with the processes of logic described in each of the earlier Old French Grail narratives.…”