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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 May 2024
The Middle Ages have always been messed up to meet the vital requirements of different periods.
Umberto EcoFRENCH GUARD: Allo! Who is eet?
ARTHUR: It is King Arthur, and these are my Knights of the Round Table. Whose castle is this?
FRENCH GUARD: This is the castle of my master, Guy de Loimbard.
ARTHUR: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
FRENCH GUARD: Well, I’ll ask him, but I don't think he’ll be very keen. Uh, he's already got one, you see.
ARTHUR: What?
GALAHAD: He says they’ve already got one!
ARTHUR: Are you sure he's got one?
FRENCH GUARD: Oh, yes. It's very nice-a.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Grail is an empty signifier.
Martin ShichtmanGrail quests, silly or otherwise, meaningful or not, are almost always homosocial male endeavors. Grail Knights – Lancelot, Bors, Perceval, Gallahad, and others – go out on the quest. Grail Maidens attend the Grail, or reverently carry the Grail, sometimes along with other assorted associated sacred objects, in processions around throne rooms and banquet halls when it makes one of its infrequent, unannounced, or mysterious appearances. The quest itself generally follows a set pattern:
Shrouded in mystery itself, it [the Grail] may also be associated with mysteriousness, with the need to ask questions: the failure to ask questions about it results in devastation and grief. The search for it is exclusive, limited to a few, the elect. Only the pure can find it, and they must suffer hardship and undergo terrible tests of courage and faith to do so. It is frequently surrounded by taboos, by codes that must be broken to find the way, by fearful punishments for presumption or improper action in the search: looking into the Grail is perilous.
The Peacock Network's eight-part mini-series, Mrs. Davis, presents a reworking of the Grail quest that is not unlike what one would expect if one were to combine Monty Python and the Holy Grail, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Showings of Julian of Norwich.
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