Few important literary passages have resisted clarification more persistently than the procession of the Holy Grail in Chretien's Perceval. Let us review his version very briefly.

There is fairly concerted agreement among Romance scholars that the word nuance had as its antecedent a verb nuer constructed on the noun nue ‘cloud,‘ which is derived from the Latin word nubes through the Vulgar Latin form *nuba. Diez (ii-c, 648), Hatzfeld and Darmesteter (s.v. Nue, Nuer), Meyer-Lübke (REW 5974), and Bloch and von Wartburg (s.v. Nue) concur in this etymology, which has been most recently summarized by Dauzat. The path of derivation which Dauzat describes is essentially as follows : 1) an archaic verb nuer, conveying the meaning of the modern verb nuancer, and now used only as a technical term, was derived, through the suggestion of the varied tints of clouds, from the noun nue (attested in the twelfth century [Littré, s.v. Nue]); 2) the verb nuer is attested in the year 1352 in the expression or nué, according to Bloch and von Wartburg, and appears in the works of d'Aubigné in the sixteenth century; 3) from the verb nuer is derived the noun nuance, which is attested in 1611 in Cotgrave; 4) the verbal form nuancer appears in the works of d'Aubigné as nuancé in the sixteenth century, and is attested in the 1701 edition of the dictionary of Furetière; and 5) the verb nuancer superseded the archaic verb nuer.

Old english eorlscipe, commonly considered to mean “nobility, rank; heroic deed(s),” appears to have a specialized meaning in Beowulf, particularly in combination with œfnan. It is usually translated “heroic deeds,” but this essay argues that eorlscipe never has this meaning in Beowulf. It has a highly technical and official (governmental) meaning.

In the more highly developed religions there are five elements, which, though they often occur together, are quite distinct and should not be confused: orthodoxy, or correct belief; piety, or emotional response to the deity or the doctrines or the ritual or any two or all three; mysticism, or the sense of God's immediate presence; asceticism, or denial of the animal appetites; and ethics, or good human relations. It is essential to keep the distinctions in mind when dealing with the work of Catholic writers, most especially that of Joyce, for Joyce's exasperated awareness of them was one of the impelling motives of his work. For Catholics, “sin” is a generic term covering unorthodoxy, impiety, indulgence of the animal appetites, and bad human relations; in the lay mind the distinctions among them are liable to become blurred, with resulting confusion in the conduct of life. One of the purposes of the medieval manuals of the virtues and vices, such as Ayenbite of Inwyt, Piers Plowman, and Handlyng Synne, was to remind laymen of the distinctions and the hierarchy among sins as well as of their generic sinfulness. Ulysses too is, among other things, such a manual; one of its principal themes is Handling Sin, as this is achieved by Dedalus and Bloom, each in his own way; Ulysses accordingly adapts the material of Ayenbite somewhat as it does that of The Odyssey.