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The Frame Story: Feirefiz, Parzival, and Their Father

G. Ronald Murphy

in Gemstone of Paradise: The Holy Grail in Wolfram's “Parzival”

Wolfram clearly used the text of Chrétien's doubly named Perceval, or The Story of the Grail, and he, too, wove together what are two perhaps quite different tales, the folktale of the naive young ... More

Wolfram clearly used the text of Chrétien's doubly named Perceval, or The Story of the Grail, and he, too, wove together what are two perhaps quite different tales, the folktale of the naive young man who goes forth to seek his fortune, and the more mysterious tale of the enigmatic Grail castle and its inhabitants. Since Wolfram did follow Chrétien's story line, it is helpful to attempt to contrast the two versions in order to determine what the authorial intent of Wolfram was, especially if Wolfram's version is seen in the light of inventions of plot and gemstone symbolism found in the framing Chapters 1 and 2 and 15 and 16. This chapter examines Wolfram's vision of the Grail, contrasting it with that of Chrétien whenever appropriate and possible, and first and most of all, by examining it in the light of the Christian-pagan frame story invented by Wolfram.Less

Introduction

Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner

in Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte du Graal and its Verse Continuations

The introduction gives an overview of the corpus included in this study, Chrétien's Conte du Graal and the four verse continuations: the anonymous First or Gauvain Continuation, the Second or ... More

The introduction gives an overview of the corpus included in this study, Chrétien's Conte du Graal and the four verse continuations: the anonymous First or Gauvain Continuation, the Second or Perceval Continuation by Wauchier de Denain, Manessier's Third Continuation, and Gerbert's Fourth Continuation. The Perceval Continuations are then situated in relation to the larger group of Grail stories that proliferate across England and the Continent from the end of the 12th to the 15th and 16th centuries. A comparison between prose and verse rewritings highlights their differences in the contrast between centripetal and centrifugal textuality, as distinct responses to the key traits of the Conte: its enigmas, contradictions, and incongruities, its ‘and/both’ logic, its desire and deferral of ending. The introduction ends with a brief discussion of the book's organization into five chapters.Less

Telling Tales, Of Maidens in Tents

Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner

in Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte du Graal and its Verse Continuations

Chapter 2 analyzes the relationship within couples by following the interplay between sexuality, retelling, and rewriting. Perceval's comic caricature of rape, when he finds a beautiful maiden ... More

Chapter 2 analyzes the relationship within couples by following the interplay between sexuality, retelling, and rewriting. Perceval's comic caricature of rape, when he finds a beautiful maiden sleeping in a tent is reinvented as a more serious erotic encounter for Gauvain in the First Continuation. Although seduced by a maid eagerly awaiting his arrival at her tent, he later retells their story as rape. Gerbert gives Gauvain's adventure another turn in the Fourth Continuation, where it is replayed as a real rape, subsequently transformed into love. These variations show how the relationship between love and the Grail remains unresolved across the cycle, even as competing ideologies (Christian and chivalric) reorient the tale.Less

Sons and Mothers, Mothers and Lovers

Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner

in Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte du Graal and its Verse Continuations

Chapter 3 focuses on the alternately protective and destructive relationships between mothers and sons in Perceval and the First Continuation. Although the Veuve Dame dies when her son leaves the ... More

Chapter 3 focuses on the alternately protective and destructive relationships between mothers and sons in Perceval and the First Continuation. Although the Veuve Dame dies when her son leaves the Welsh forest for the world of knights, she continues to play a significant role in Perceval's erotic connections with Blancheflor and family connections to the Grail Castle. The issue of mothers and marriage unexpectedly returns when Gauvain's grandmother, mother, and sister appear at the Roche de Champguin, liberated from enchantment by Arthur's nephew in the last unfinished episode of Chrétien's romance. Problematic but essential connections continue to be traced between mothers, sexuality, sons, and lovers, as the first continuator extrapolates his anonymous elaboration of Gauvain's story and inserts the story of Caradoc, a son whose revelation of his mother's adultery leads to punishment and then cure with the help of his lady, configured as a kind of virginal mother.Less

The Trip to Europe

Paul C. Gutjahr

in Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy

Chapter seventeen provides insight into why Charles Hodge decided to leave his family and friends for a two-year study trip in Europe. Insecure about his own knowledge and abilities to train seminary ... More

Chapter seventeen provides insight into why Charles Hodge decided to leave his family and friends for a two-year study trip in Europe. Insecure about his own knowledge and abilities to train seminary students, Hodge applied to the Seminary Board for a European study leave, which the Board granted. He left in the Fall of 1826 and spent his first few months in Paris studying with Sylvestre de Sacy and Armand-Pierre Caussin de Perceval. While in Paris he also met Alexander von Humboldt, Phillip Stapfer, and General Lafayette.Less

Introduction: Shaping Identity in Medieval French Literature

Adrian P. Tudor and Kristin L. Burr

in Shaping Identity in Medieval French Literature: The Other Within

This introduction establishes the importance and fluidity of identity in medieval French literature, viewed particularly through the lens of the “Other Within,” an example of which is seen in ... More

This introduction establishes the importance and fluidity of identity in medieval French literature, viewed particularly through the lens of the “Other Within,” an example of which is seen in Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal when Perceval exists simultaneously within and an outside of a community. The introduction also situates the book within the scholarly discourse on identity. Finally, it provides a synopsis of the chapters that make up the volume. Taken together, the chapters study a wide variety of medieval French texts and point to the process and consequences of forming and re-forming identity, at the same time revealing how identity may be imposed and self-imposed by authors, characters, and audiences. They invite readers to consider how multiplicities of understanding may exist and interact, leading to new insights regarding identity shifts.Less

Roger Fry, Chinese Art and The Burlington Magazine

Ralph Parfect

in British Modernism and Chinoiserie

The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs was founded in 1903 by a group of art theorists, scholars and historians that included Roger Fry, later a co-editor of the magazine for almost ten years ... More

The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs was founded in 1903 by a group of art theorists, scholars and historians that included Roger Fry, later a co-editor of the magazine for almost ten years (1909-1919). On Fry’s death in 1934, the magazine itself described him as ‘the man who in the past did most to establish it and mould its character’. Part of this character was a consistent attention to Chinese art that he shared with fellow Bloomsbury writers, artists and intellectuals. This chapter illuminates Fry’s practice as a theorist and an editor interested in the arts of China by examining how these were represented and discussed in the Burlington Magazine under his auspices. It focuses especially on the kinds of language, discourse and textual strategies of sinophile contributors such as Arthur Waley, Lawrence Binyon, Perceval Yetts and R.L. Hobson. The chapter locates their approaches to Chinese art within a longer-term Western historiography of China and its culture(s), as well as within late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century discourses such as aestheticism, scientism and orientalism. It thus attempts to unpack the ideological implications of the ‘connoisseurship’ professed by the magazine’s title as applied to the subject of Chinese art.Less

The Hurly-Burly of Natural History

Anthony Chaney

in Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness

This chapter investigates how double-bind theory was received by the psychiatric community with respect to contested views of the etiology and treatment of schizophrenia. A moral model of ... More

This chapter investigates how double-bind theory was received by the psychiatric community with respect to contested views of the etiology and treatment of schizophrenia. A moral model of schizophrenia is contrasted with a medical model of an earlier, more rigorously defined dementia praecox. The treatment of schizophrenics in the United States, especially during and after the world wars, is described as pragmatic and eclectic. The double-bind theory's environmental, biological, interactive model of the disease was met with hope among clinicians and helped shape new treatments such as group therapy and family therapy. As the double-bind group continued its work, Gregory Bateson was conflicted with his research team over fundamental matters of science: he recommended an approach that focused on pattern and relationship; they, more conventionally, focused on substance and measurement. His collaboration with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann lead to the Natural History of an Interview research project. It also took Bateson further from clinical work and toward research with octopi and the editing of the journals of an early 19th-century schizophrenic, later published as Perceval's Narrative.Less

‘He would put in allusions’: The Uses and Abuses of Revivalism

in Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival

This chapter analyses the allusive technique used by James Joyce in writing Dubliners. It identifies a number of previously unconsidered texts that lie submerged in the stories and considers what ... More

This chapter analyses the allusive technique used by James Joyce in writing Dubliners. It identifies a number of previously unconsidered texts that lie submerged in the stories and considers what they might tell us about Joyce's attitudes towards literary revival and to Ireland's tragic history. The chapter also highlights the phantom presence of several other authors in Dubliners including William Butler Yeats, Alfred Perceval Graves, William Rooney and Ethna Carbery.Less