Looking For The Holy Grail Analysis

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Barber, Richard. "Looking For The Holy Grail." History Today 54.3 (2004): 13-19. History Reference Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2016. In “Looking For The Holy Grail”, Richard Barber write of the earliest references of the Holy Grail. He rejects the idea that Troyes borrowed the idea of the grail from Celtic or pagan stories, even though this is what Barber expected to find. He concludes, that for Troyes, it is created as an “object linked to the central images of the Christian faith” (Barber 13). The trend towards looking for Celtic origins came some six hundred years later (13). Chretien de Troyes introduces the mystery of the grail in his 12th century writing. The story of Perceval encountering the Fisher King is the first literary reference to …show more content…

He is utterly alone before the absolute. He does not have anyone around him” (7). Since Quijote can communicate his vision and action to others, by this definition, he is a tragic hero (8). But Unamuno defines faith as the absurd, and the “madness and alienation from his peers” (9), makes Quijote a knight of faith. Unamuno, according to Barber, laments the loss of Spain being able to embrace the absurd; which has resulted in rational thinking standing in the “way of progress on every front” (9). But Evans describes Kierkegaard as portraying Quijote as what Christians should never be. The fixed ideas of Quijote have led to a person “who withdraws from the world, resisting any intellectual challenges to this faith” (12). It seems that the two writers, according to Evans, disagree on whether or not embracing the absurd is necessary for faith. The passion of Quijote is unquestioned, but it may simply be due to his “inability to accept this world” …show more content…

The parables interrupt the daily activities and plans of the king. The daily reality is interrupted with stories that create dilemmas, as well as questions. The actors within the stories will have to choose “between two loyalties, two lives, two worlds, two selves” (196), and so will the king. The king, as well as reader, can discover truth within the fiction, “if only fiction can reach below the misleading surface of reality” (185). The night stories interrupt the status quo, and show how different current reality could be (187). The night is seductive but it also reveals to King Shahrayar the possibility of choice in this conflict of the worlds of fiction and reality. The hope of Sharazad, and the moral of the night stories is to disclose truths within the parables, that “will in the end influence reality”

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