Prophecy and the quest for the Holy Grail
Subtitle: critiquing knowledge in the Vulgate cycle
By: Kathryn Karczewska.
Series: Studies in the humanities -- 37
Publisher: P. Lang; Lang AG International Academic Publishers, Peter
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 279
Subjects: Lancelot (Prose cycle); Lancelot (Legendary character) -- Romances -- History and criticism.; Arthurian romances -- History and criticism.; Grail -- Legends -- History and criticism.; Prophecy in literature.; Prophecy -- Christianity.
Description: This study reconsiders the Vulgate Cycle, and the functional interrelation of prophecy and epistemological critique in thirteenth-century Grail literature: no mere prediction, prophecy marks a critical strategy by which the nature and limits of knowledge are put into systematic question.

By examining the critical function of such language, the study demonstrates the political significance of the Vulgate Cycle for the thirteenth-century Church: in tracing the various means by which authority is disclosed in this literature, it elaborates the genealogical structure of prophetic knowledge, and the overly subversive logic by which such insight is made specific to the clergy.

By reformulating the nature of prophecy in the cycle, and suggesting the political stakes of such language, it lays the groundwork for future analysis of medieval Grail literature and its cultural legacies.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-267) and index.