The history of the Grail legend begins with a romance composed by Chretien de Troyes in the last decades of the twelfth century, Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal. Whereas Chretien's earlier romances explored the secular tensions generated by chivalric and courtly life, the Conte du Graal has appeared to most scholars to resolve such tensions by offering a spiritualized ideal of a new kind of chivalry governed by a universal vision of its redemptive mission in the world. Focusing on this version of the legend, the author proposes instead a social interpretation of Chretien's romance as a story...
The history of the Grail legend begins with a romance composed by Chretien de Troyes in the last decades of the twelfth century, Perceval ou Le Conte ...
The thirteenth century was the golden age of French verse hagiography, and more than half of the two hundred extant French saints' lives date from this period. Among the saints exalted are thirteen female martyrs and hermits of early Christianity. In The Lady as Saint, Brigitte Cazelles offers the first English translation of these lives and provides extensive commentary on the portrayal of female spirituality and perfection in the literary context of twelfth- and thirteenth-century France.
In her analysis, Cazelles poses two key questions. First, why this preference for heroines of a...
The thirteenth century was the golden age of French verse hagiography, and more than half of the two hundred extant French saints' lives date from thi...
