Research Catalog

Title

Prophecy and the quest for the Holy Grail : critiquing knowledge in the Vulgate cycle / Kathryn Karczewska.

Author

Karczewska, Kathryn, 1959-

Publication

New York : P. Lang, [1998], ©1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xvi, 279 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

• 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.

Series Statement

Studies in the humanities ; vol. 37

Uniform Title

Studies in the humanities (New York, N.Y.) ; v. 37.

Subjects

• Prophecy in literature
• Grail > Romances > History and criticism
• Prophecy > Christianity
• Lancelot (Prose cycle)
• Arthurian romances > History and criticism

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-267) and index.

Contents

Theorizing the Sacred: The Semiotics of Grail Prophecy. Telling the News: The Logic of Christian History. The Crack in the Mirror of God: Specular Writing and the Veil of the Temple. The Logic of Promise and Reading Yes. The Wasteland, the Quest, and the Road to God -- The Vicars of Christ: Tradition, Translation, and the Three Grail Tables. Genealogies of the Sacred: Knowledge and Identity in the Song of Joseph. The Play's the Thing: Laughter and the Ludic(rous) in Lestoire de Merlin. Amazing Grace: Magic, Wonder, and Knowledge of God. The Darker Gabriels: Scrift, Script, and the Scene of Reading -- Sometime World Pass Me By Again: Sacred Time(s) and Space(s). Visions by Night: Dreams, Illusions, and Other Realities. A(na)mnesia and the Legacies of the Grave. The Eighth Day of Creation: Arriving at Sarras, or Galahad Through the Looking Glass.

ISBN

0820438529

LCCN

97020816

OCLC

ocm37107022

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries