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ARTHURIAN LEGEND.
Term Paper ID:20920
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Continuation of themes of Holy Grail, heroism, romance, morality & spirituality in Malory's 14th Cent. [Le Morte D'Arthur] & Susan Cooper's 1965 juvenile novel [Over Sea, Under Stone].... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Continuation of themes of Holy Grail, heroism, romance, morality & spirituality in Malory's 14th Cent. [Le Morte D'Arthur] & Susan Cooper's 1965 juvenile novel [Over Sea, Under Stone].
Paper Introduction:
The purpose of this research is to examine the continuation of the Arthurian tradition established in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, particularly in the story line dealing with the quest for the Holy Grail, in the post-medieval juvenile novel Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper. The plan of the research will be to set forth the Grail story line in Malory's work, and then to note similarities and differences in Cooper's treatment, with a view toward suggesting the purpose Cooper had in using the Arthurian legend in her book.
To discuss the quest for the Holy Grail in Malory is to discuss the principal feature of moral content in the narrative that legitimates the entire environment of chivalric adventurism. As Malory's tale makes plain, the pull of priorities among affairs of the heart, assorted court intrigues, and the
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Nutt goes even further: "InCeltic tradition, as little as in medieval romance, do we find a record ofrace-struggles such as meets us in the Nibelungenlied . 2 vols. After hearingevensong at the great monastery, King Arthur and his knights had satdown at the Round Table for supper. He acts now as Arthur's foreign minister, now as hisquartermaster, now as his strategic war advisor, now as beggar-in-disguiseto test and tease Arthur, now as soothsayer of Arthur's future, now asintrepid reporter of Arthur's exploits to the chronicler Bloyse. It is the obvious presence of deep knowledge and experience,finally, rather than the play on words that carries the narrative resonanceof Cooper's novel and of the series of novels to come. . Therefore I make this vow: to set off in search of theHoly Grail tomorrow and not to return for at least a year and a daywithout seeing it more clearly, but to accept it as in accordancewith God's will if this is not vouchsafed me" (Baines 364-5).To be sure, spiritual insight of a kind has visited the inhabitants ofCamelot, and the fact that the language of the vision is close to thelanguage of scripture is doubtless no accident. . There had been added, furthermore, through theinfluence of Islam, related symbols, loaded with the mystic lore of Asia;elements, also, from Byzantium and from even farther East. It is made of gold (of course); engravedbeautifully (of course); when it hits against a stone, it dings with theclarity of a sweet bell--all of this an index of its special, rarefied,blessed qualities. Cooper's purpose in using the Arthurian legend in her book appears tobe to uncover or more exactly recover Celtic myth in a modern Celt/Britishmodality. New York: CooperSquare Publishers, 1965.Waite, Arthur Edward. It isMerlin who leads Arthur to the Lady of the Lake and Excalibur, and Merlinwhose prophecies frame the flaws of character that will endanger Camelotand foreshadow such later exploits as the quest for the Grail, as when hestops Arthur from killing King Pellinore in a duel by putting Pellinore tosleep. The plan ofthe research will be to set forth the Grail story line in Malory's work,and then to note similarities and differences in Cooper's treatment, with aview toward suggesting the purpose Cooper had in using the Arthurian legendin her book. In other words, Merlin, ambiguous though he was in Malory, was aforce to be reckoned with in Arthurian romance. According to Waite (32-3), Malory specifically intended to connectMerlin's story to that of the Grail. Bedeis at pains to show the continuity and development of ecclesiastical andspiritual history in Britain, from the time of the first Roman invasions.The cultural line is clear, from Caesar to Jesus to Augustine to Theodoreto Bede, as clear as the line of succession of the popes in Rome. To see why this is important, it is useful to look at thetradition of religious orthodoxy in Christian England as set forth-by Bede. In either case, the result is a focus less on thespiritual details of the Quest than on its adventure and the adventurer. Another aspect, of course, as Campbell's summary of theprovenance of the legend suggests, is the tension implicit in thesacramental nature of the Christian Grail vis-a-vis the threat of Islam,for which the Crusades were undertaken. Yet the focus in the Arthurian romance is more on the quest and theknights involved in it than on the spiritual or institutional significanceof the vessel itself. There is more than a hint of spiritual mystery andauthority associated with the Grail. The quest for the Grail is the basis for divinesanction of Arthur's court, symbolizing the moral obligation and thepotentiality for direct religious experience entailed by the responsibiltyof finding the provenance of the faith shared by the whole of ChristianEurope through the fifteenth century. The enigmatic figure of Great Uncle Merry, who surfaces anddisappears throughout the story, is the critical linchpin of the action.He can be identified with Merlin, King Arthur's tutor, who dominates theopening action of Le Morte d'Arthur and who surfaces and disappearsthroughout the story. It is thequesting legend that is of prime importance in the connection between theArthurian legend of Celtic roots and the evocation by Cooper of that legendin her contemporary book. As Barney says in the first chapter,when Merry fails to appear for dinner: "He's gone on a quest. The children immediately understand that the ancient times of whichMerry speaks refer to King Arthur, which is to say that Cooper's obviousintent is to evoke the moral and spiritual climate of chivalric/grailromance (however simplistic) as the prevailing scheme of action. Waite citeshistorical evidence that, during the period of chivalric romance narrativein general and grail narrative in particular, the secular corruption of theChurch, notably in the papacy of Innocent III, was increasingly well known. Then the Holy Grail entered the hall . The manifest spiritual content of the Grail is well inthe background. "My lords," said Sir Gawain, "by virtue of the Sangrealeach has received the meat and wine of his choice, but none has seen theGrail itself. To discuss the quest for the Holy Grail in Malory is to discuss theprincipal feature of moral content in the narrative that legitimates theentire environment of chivalric adventurism. The edition of Malory(1969) used in this research selects the term and spelling Holy Sangrail.But what is really important about the spelling of names and other terms inthe various commentaries on the subject is the content. . They are admitted to the adventure, but thereis no sexual content to their lives except that which must be inferred tobe an aspect of the adults that surround them. To put it another way, theecclesiastical history of England, even in its pre-Christian, pagan period,is chronicled in terms of the emergence Roman Christianity as thelegitimate heir of Imperial Roman hegemony throughout the known world. Over Sea, Under Stone. The sacramental nature of the Grail is essential to understand as thebasis for the blessedness of Arthur's court in general and the potentialfor blessedness of individual knights in particular. The narrative effect is to produce a picture of chivalrous butsecular Britain on one hand, or a picture of chivalrous spirituality thatis intensely personal. London: Penguin, 199 .Bulfinch, Thomas. In other words, it is thequest of an individuals soul for the experience of grace, not the quest ofa soul whose grace is subject to its alignment with institutional dogma.Indeed, even though Catholic dogma was institutionalized by Aquinas by theend of the thirteenth century, well before the last crusade and the fall ofConstantinople in the mid-145 s, the more decisive anti-institutionalReformation, in line with the secular, humanistic Renaissance, was to beginin earnest in Europe barely 15 years later. The answer, obviously, is th at the Grail Quest was anindividual adventure in experience. . Indeed,Bede implies that his intent is to show such spiritual continuity, in hissummary chronology, which begins, as he notes, with "the sixtieth yearbefore the Incarnation of our Lord" (325). Jane's half-asleep view of the lights as the strange whiteyacht moves through the mist out of the harbor is a direct imagisticquotation from the close of Malory, the movement of Arthur's funeral bargeto Avalon, a symbol of eternity. . New York: Collier/Macmillan, 1965.Graves, Robert. Graves refers to Merlin as Arthur's "sponsor,"a morally ambiguous figure "begotten on a nun by the Devil himself." Yetthe strength and depth of knowledge of Merlin are his main attraction,which is why Graves notes that "according to the Taliesin [medieval Welsh]poems in the Red Book of Hergest, "erudite druids prophesied for Arthur"(Graves xvi-xvii). 2.Nutt, Alfred. By the time chivalric romance hadmade its appearance in the twelfth century, the Grail had beeninstitutionalized as an icon of ultimate Christian experience and haddeveloped a sacramental authority of its own. It was taken by Joseph of Arimathea toEurope where it was lost. . New York: New AmericanLibrary/Mentor, 1962.Bede. London: Penguin, 1969. Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, with EspecialReference to the Hypothesis of Its Celtic Origin. Decisive references to theArthurian legend plant clues about and shore up the mythical analogue. Waite (26)says that the indigenous British antecedents of the Arthurian Legend "pre-existed" the stories of Chretien de Troyes. 1913; London: MSG HaskellHouse, 1973.----------------------- 3 Early on, the exuberantly mysterious Great-Uncle Merry (to whom weshall return), an amateur archeologist, is identified with the chivalriccode, both directly and indirectly. [T]hey were all struck dumb bya dazzling sunbeam, seven times brighter than any they had seen before.The spirit of the Holy Ghost descended upon them, and each wasbeautified. In its place wehave a glorification of the individual hero" (Nutt 23 ). Its heroes were the old champions,Cuchullin and the rest, returned in knightly armor as Gawain, Percival,or Galahad, to engage, as ever, in marvelous adventure. obviously, a significant narrative change that Cooper makes fromMalory is the conceit that the palpable vessel was not borne up butremained carefully hidden. Bulfinchidentifies the terms Grail, Graal, and Sangreal, as "the cup from which theSaviour drank at the Last Supper. . Works CitedBaines, Keith. What does thatattitude say about the spiritual authority of Rome except that it is in thebackground. For although thereare resonances of deep meaning and rare experience, the overall tone ofOver Sea, Under Stone is that of adventure melodrama, far more redolent ofthe residue of secular chivalry than the journey of an individual soul.The focus is on the exploits of the hero quite as much as on anyspecifically spiritual object of the exploit. Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthurand the Legends of the Round Table [modern adaptation]. During the evolution of Grail literature it will be rememberedthat two unhappy ferments were at work in the Western Branch: (1) thedenial of the Chalice to the laity; (2) the various doctrinaltendencies which resulted in the definition of Transubstantiation. Also important is the tone ofGawain's declaration, which emphasizes the prospect of personal achievementand the adventure that is implied will precede it. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. . . By the way, Merry is noless ambiguous in Over Sea, Under Stone than in Malory, and it is that veryambiguity that lends narrative and thematic weight to Cooper's treasure-hunt story. Ecclesiastical History of the English People, with Bede's Letterto Egbert and Cuthbert's Letter on the Death of Bede. Bulfinch's Mythology Illustrated: The Age of Fable,The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne. The fact that Over Sea, Under Stone is the first in a series ofbooks for juveniles indicates an epic narrative design. . . Throughout this period, the individual, whether as religious devoteeor secular member of society, was to achieve increased significance inEuropean culture. On the other hand,it is significant that the Grail found its way with Joseph of Arimathea toEngland and that Galahad, the last survivor of Joseph's line, finds thegrail, only to have his soul, along with the vessel and the spear, assumedinto heaven at the same time (Malory 367-72). . By the time of chivalric romance in the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, the prevailing view of orthodoxy had changed. Latham. Whatever spirituality mayhave been at the heart of chivalric grail romance is so diluted in OverSea, Under Stone that it takes the form of a treasure-hunt adventure, withthe Grail resembling Hitchcock's Maguffin far more than the preeminentEucharistic symbol. It is at this point that the manner in which Susan Cooper continuesthe evocation of the Arthurian legend becomes relevant. Nor ever will,!'he added softly to himself, "for there is something of each in everyman" (Cooper 74). The backgrounds of the legend lay inpagan, specifically Celtic, myth. If it is not to be said that at the epoch of the Grailliterature the highest minds had grown weary of the Vatican an all itsways, it can be affirmed at least that there were both competitive anduncompetitive streams of tendency which pursued their paths openly andin secret towards another term (Waite 511).Waite, accordingly, sees that while Galahad's quest "draws into Romance thehypothesis of the Church catholic concerning..... All the same, spiritual implications inform Cooper's work. [but] the eternal spirit of Religionwithin and behind the Churches" (Waite 499). The repetition of the imagery of the beamof light throughout the children's search for clues to the whereabouts ofthe grail is a quotation of the beam of blinding light that dominates themagical entry of the Grail into Arthur's banquet hall and the brilliantlight that bears up the soul of Galahad to heaven with the vessel and thespear. LeoSherley-Price, rev. by R.E. This finds a direct analogue in Cooper's work in the prepubescentinnocence-of the children. This is confirmed in the in Le Morte d'Arthur in the opening sceneof the tale of the Sangreal, at the magical appearance of the Grail atArthur's court on the feast of Pentecost (the feast of the biblical storyof the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles): That evening the Holy grail passed through Camelot. And wedo not have to ask or guess what the reference of such a legend may havebeen or why the allegory in its time touched so many hearts; thecondition of the Church, above described, explains this well enough(Campbell 5 8). Some of the connections between present and romance past are made bythe clever use of language. Well, this is clearlywhat we know from Malory, whose stories do go on and on before coming tothe point. The Graildisappeared as it had appeared, and the knights found that they wereable to speak again. InMerry's soft murmur, moreover, can be discerned a presentation of thehighly individual experience of good and evil that is consistent withWaite's view that the medieval Grail Quest is also highly individual andnot institutional. Indeed, Waite saysthere was never any question of a pan-Britannic church. By variousschools of modern scholarship the Grail has been identified with theDagda's caldron of plenty, the begging bowl of the Buddha in which four bowls, from the four quarters were united,the Kaaba of the Great Mosque of Mecca and the ultimate talismanicsymbol of some sort of Gnostic- Manichaean rite of spiritual initiation,practiced possibly by the Knights Templar. One infers thatin subsequent editions of the book the fabric of the Grail quest, or moreexactly the action of questing itself, will be even more tightly woundaround the lives of the children, even as the details of the story willmanifest the significance of the Grail to the Celtic culture. There is a direct connection between Merlin,the avuncular, pedagogue/magician who is the and moral anchor of Arthur'scourt and the comforting presence for the children of Great-Uncle Merry, orMerriman Lyon of the novel. It follows that the Arthurian romance can be read as aliterary attempt to establish a spiritual or cultural identity independentof the medieval Roman church. As the vessel of the initial sacrament of the Eucharist, the Graillegitimates worship and the spiritual authority, not to say hegemony, ofChristian theology. As Malory's tale makes plain,the pull of priorities among affairs of the heart, assorted courtintrigues, and the persistence of the need to reclaim the Holy Grail forthe crown of England. "Iwould rather that my whole realm were lost, and myself killed; he was amagnificent fighter." "He is more whole than you are," Merlin replied. All of this is consistent with the Celtic traditions ofthe individual hero and the pre-Renaissance humanism of Malory's focus,which is more on the knights (particularly Galahad) at the center of theQuest, whose aim is to wander Britain and partake of heightened spiritualexperience, than on the spiritual meditation itself. owing to the Celtic quest legends, the (Roman)Christian Early History gradually assumes a specifically Celtic character,especially as used by Malory: "The grail is dwelt upon almost solely in itsmost material aspect. The GrailQuest is successfully completed, according to Malory, only by the mostperfect, the "highest," the most (sexually) innocent of knights (Waite 19). The terms ofchivalric romance vary with narrative edition. This is backed up in Malory's text aswell: "You have killed him with your magic," said Arthur hotly. Vol. Thebackgrounds of the legend lay in pagan, specifically Celtic, myth. Placingthese clues in the context of an imaginative juvenile mystery story is away of introducing contemporary youngsters who doubtless know of Arthur inonly the most general terms to the mists and mysteries of Celtic culture.The idea is to make the mysteries live in the present, by means of atreasure hunt whose details are the symbols and imagery of the Arthurianlegend. All such alien, primitive,or related Oriental forms, however, were in the European romancesreinterpreted and applied to the local, immediate spiritual situation.specifically, the legend refers to the restoration of a land laid wastethrough a Dolorous Stroke dealt to its king by an unworthy hand, whichtook possession of a sacred lance that in the later versions of the legend is identified with the lance that pierced Christ's side. More generally, Nuttbelieves that Celtic quest legends predate what he calls the Early History,or the stories emanating from the East about how the Grail found its wayfrom Jerusalem to the west. . There is a tacit suggestion that, perhaps, the youngsters whobecome exposed to the legend will be drawn to the original, to flesh outthe provenance of Celtic culture and so understand its accidentals,customs, practice, and psychology. Trans. He mighttake years and years. Le Morte d'Arthur. The mystery of the Grail in general iswell suited to the environment of a juvenile adventure story, just as thechivalric romances appear to have been well suited to the task ofbuttressing the juvenile adventurism of the medieval culture and moregenerally in creating the heroic mythos of western culture. . Waite viewsthis as evidence that the text "tend(s] to set the Custodians [i.e.,knights] of the Holy Grail in a position superior to that of the OfficialChurch, though the Cycles are not otherwise manifestly hostile to thatChurch" (Waite 24). Thesetting of the story is in Cornwall, the location of the throne of KingMark. The purpose of this research is to examine the continuation of theArthurian tradition established in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, particularlyin the story line dealing with the quest for the Holy Grail, in the post-medieval juvenile novel Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper. This form is closely connected with the GalahadQuest, and its chronology has been elaborately framed to correctly bridgeover the difference in time between the Apostolic and Arthurian ages" (Nutt94). Introduction. The ending of thenovel, which has the fate of the lead-encased manuscript unresolved,provides more clues to the provenance of the chalice recovered in the caveby the children and sets the stage for the first sequel. New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1961.Weston, Jessie L. It is the unifyingfigure of the uncle who holds the anchor of the modern quest, just as it isthe figure of Merlin who mentors the creation of the Round Table and itsdissolution in the questing enterprise in Malory. It is not at all clear that fifteenth-century Malory intendedspecifically to use twelfth-century literary sources to answer in narrativeform the Venerable Bede's eighth-century narrative of Roman Churchauthority in Britain in his ecclesiastical history of England, with a viewtoward establishing a specifically "English" Church. Itsheroes were the old champion Cuchullin and the rest, returned inknightly armor as Gawain, Percival, or Galahad, to engage, as ever, inmarvelous adventure. There is more than a hint of magic in the enterprise of enriching theexperience of a familiar culture. New York: NewAmerican Library/Mentor, 1962. the Eucharist . As Great UncleMerry says when the children first tell him about their discovery of themanuscript: "First of all, you have heard me talk of Logres. That struggle goes on all round us all the time, like two armiesfighting. To participate directly in theexperience of it confers a kind of spiritual authority on any who do theparticipating. Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and theLegends of the Round Table [modern adaptation]. In Cooper'scase, indeed, we have the benefit of modern hindsight to place the myth inperspective as cultural juvenalia on one hand, and to position it as theprovenance for the dashing, chivalrous hero in literature on the other.Other hints of the marvelous occur in the description of the grail when thechildren finally find it. But far more importantwith regard to character and action development is the adventure ofexperience that has visited the Round Table. xi--xx.Malory, Sir Thomas. Throughout the book, Cooper shores up her treasure-hunt story withthe imagery and thematic references of Camelot. Although Mark's principal story in Malory is that he is mean-spirited and that he is betrothed to and betrayed by Isolde with Tristan,Cooper's focus is simply on the locus of his reign, which is of course thelocus of the story. The fisherman Mr. Penhallow is a play on Pellinore,father of Percival (Parisfal), who in Malory's tale eventually accompaniesGalahad and, with him, sees the Grail. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimesthe other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. No less important is the view, shared by Nutt and Waite, that theGrail story, particularly Galahad's quest, is a parable of the personaljourney of a soul that achieves legitimacy outside the realm of orthodoxCatholic dogma. It is instructive to note two specific elements: (1) the debt thatArthurian romance owes to British folk tales the predate continentalversions of the Quest, and (2) the persistence of an individualistichumanist content (also British) in Malory's Grail narrative as against thepersistence of Roman Catholic authoritarian content in Bede. "He willnot only live, but serve you excellently: It is to him that you will giveyour sister in marriage, and she will bear two sons--Sir Percivale and SirLamerok--who will be two of the most famous of the Knights of the RoundTable" (Baines 41). Bederecites stories of biblelike miracles wrought by English bishops, ofpriests invested by pious English kings "of wide learning" (289), ofapocalyptic tales whose moral rests on the willingness to behave with"simple disposition and self-restraint" (289) under English custom. You can search and search, on a quest, and in theend you may never get there at all" (Cooper 14). In this regard, Weston cites the various forms theGrail (talisman) takes, from Last Supper vessel to the one containing theblood that dripped from the Saviour's crucifixion wound, but she agreesthat the focus of chivalric romance literature is on the Quester more thanon its object: "In the final form the result of the Quest is rather theattainment of spiritual enlightenment by the Quester, who, beholding thedeep things of God, passes at the moment of vision from the world" (Weston2-3). . New York: Crown/Avenel,1979.Campbell, Joseph. The Holy Grail: The Galahad Quest in theArthurian Literature. Its recovery became the sacred quest for KingArthur's knights" (Bulfinch 9 9). Campbell further explains the reason forthe obsession with the Grail in the Arthurian court as a new element ofreligious experience in the Western world inasmuch as it added a franklyhumanistic component to the experience of spirituality: For what reason, pray, should a Christian knight ride forthquesting for the grail when at hand,in every chapel, were the blessedbody and blood of Christ literally present in the sacrament of thealter for the redemption and beatitude of his soul? theChurch is not of Rome, as such....... There is some content thatis consistent with the medieval concept of the spiritual quest, but it iselaborated in a highly simplistic form that is also consistent withjuvenile fiction and contemporary juvenile understanding. . The Quest of the Holy Grail. New York: Penguin, 1964.Cooper, Susan. It was the oldname of this country, thousands of years ago; in the old days when thestruggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. This is a tone adoptedby all subsequent Questers, including Percival and Galahad. In providing clues to what was important to and exciting about Celticculture in past time, the writer seeks to provide clues to the connectionsthe Celtic present may make with the past and so enrich itself. Bede's protracted discussion of "the logical and canonical time of keepingEaster" is predicated of a presumption that the Roman Church'sestablishment of the date was both logical and canonical, i.e., had beenwritten into positive religious law and formed the basis for unity andauthority of the Roman Church in ecclesiastical life in Britain.
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