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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
What we have here is the earliest book where it isn’t just A grail, which wouldn’t be very interesting as everyone already has one, you see? But the actual Holy Grail. There are also other elements which will be picked up and reused in later romances – assuming that an early date for this book is correct.
It’s essentially episodic, but rather than each episode simply exemplifying the theme as you’d expect, it quickly becomes apparent that the characters from each episode are recurring and also appear in the narratives of the other several main characters. I’d hesitate to call these plots, but it’s more sophisticated than I’ve come to expect from this sort of thing.
It’s rather funny at times and the translator also has a sense of humour. Given all the possibilities of rendering something into English he at several points choose exact quotations from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
There’s a wonderful dream-like quality to the story. This is hardly a genre known for its realism, but this is unreality raised to a high art. At the start Arthur’s squire has a dream the events of which obtrude into reality. I think the entire book takes place inside this dream world. It’s beautifully done.
Those four stars are for the first two thirds of the book. I didn’t want to undersell it, but it does have a couple of faults.
The first of these is structural. Perceval achieves the Grail two thirds of the way through (spoilers oh too late). I rather got the impression that the author had written the book he wanted to write and had then come back by popular demand and the muse was no longer with him. First there’s a narrative dealing with the court politics of Camelot. This isn’t actually bad but the tone is very different. It would be less noticeable if its episodes had been interwoven into the earlier part of the book. What’s interesting though is seeing Arthur as an actual character (as much as you get characters in romances) rather than just being a static figurehead.
The second problem is the religious bigotry. You might say that you can hardly have a Grail story without a bit of anti-Semitism, but Wolfram von Eschenbach managed without it, and he’s a German. This bigotry first appears when Perceval achieves the Grail, which appears to turn him into a mass murderer and the body count rises swiftly thereafter. There is an earlier translation and one bloodthirsty passage in particular reminded me of the scene in Python where Lancelot quite unreasonably kills all the wedding guests. I wonder if it was exactly this book that they are satirizing there. There’s a failure of vision here on the part of the author, made all the more glaring when compared to the beautiful passage earlier when Gawain sights the Grail but screws it up.
Overall, still worth a read though.
It’s essentially episodic, but rather than each episode simply exemplifying the theme as you’d expect, it quickly becomes apparent that the characters from each episode are recurring and also appear in the narratives of the other several main characters. I’d hesitate to call these plots, but it’s more sophisticated than I’ve come to expect from this sort of thing.
It’s rather funny at times and the translator also has a sense of humour. Given all the possibilities of rendering something into English he at several points choose exact quotations from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
There’s a wonderful dream-like quality to the story. This is hardly a genre known for its realism, but this is unreality raised to a high art. At the start Arthur’s squire has a dream the events of which obtrude into reality. I think the entire book takes place inside this dream world. It’s beautifully done.
Those four stars are for the first two thirds of the book. I didn’t want to undersell it, but it does have a couple of faults.
The first of these is structural. Perceval achieves the Grail two thirds of the way through (spoilers oh too late). I rather got the impression that the author had written the book he wanted to write and had then come back by popular demand and the muse was no longer with him. First there’s a narrative dealing with the court politics of Camelot. This isn’t actually bad but the tone is very different. It would be less noticeable if its episodes had been interwoven into the earlier part of the book. What’s interesting though is seeing Arthur as an actual character (as much as you get characters in romances) rather than just being a static figurehead.
The second problem is the religious bigotry. You might say that you can hardly have a Grail story without a bit of anti-Semitism, but Wolfram von Eschenbach managed without it, and he’s a German. This bigotry first appears when Perceval achieves the Grail, which appears to turn him into a mass murderer and the body count rises swiftly thereafter. There is an earlier translation and one bloodthirsty passage in particular reminded me of the scene in Python where Lancelot quite unreasonably kills all the wedding guests. I wonder if it was exactly this book that they are satirizing there. There’s a failure of vision here on the part of the author, made all the more glaring when compared to the beautiful passage earlier when Gawain sights the Grail but screws it up.
Overall, still worth a read though.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Violence, Blood, Antisemitism, Religious bigotry, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, Religious bigotry
Moderate: Genocide, Misogyny, Sexism, Blood, Antisemitism, Kidnapping, Grief