Influences Not only is
A Glastonbury Romance concerned with the legend that
Joseph of Arimathea brought the Grail, a vessel containing the blood of Christ, to the town, but the further tradition that
King Arthur was buried there. Powys's wide reading in the literature relating to the Grail, King Arthur,
fertility ritual, and
Celtic mythology shaped the mythological ideas that underlie this novel. This includes
John Rhys's
Studies in the Arthurian Legend, the works of the Cambridge classical scholars,
Jane Harrison,
Francis Cornford, and
Gilbert Murray,
Roger Loomis on the
Fisher King and W. E. Mead on
Merlin. In addition
Alfred Nutt "on the Celtic version" of the Grail Legend. However, "it was
Jessie Weston's controversial theories of the Grail's origins ... that particularly absorbed him". In writing this novel Powys was also clearly influenced by both
James Joyce's
Ulysses and
T. S. Eliot's
The Waste Land. Just as Joyce established a series of parallels between Homer's
Odyssey and his novel, Powys used the Grail as "a peg upon which to hang his huge narrative". In a letter to Kenneth Hopkins, Powys comments "There is all the way through the book a constant undercurrent of secret references to the Grail Legends, various incidents playing roles parallel to those in the old romances of the Grail". Eliot in his first note to his poem attributes the title to Jessie Weston's book on the Grail legend,
From Ritual to Romance. The allusion is to the wounding of the Fisher King and the subsequent sterility of his lands; and to the restoring the King and make his lands fertile again.
Island of Avalon Though no longer an island the high conical bulk of
Glastonbury Tor had been surrounded by marsh prior to the draining of
fenland in the
Somerset Levels. In ancient times,
Ponter's Ball Dyke would have guarded the only entrance to the island.
The Romans eventually built another road to the island. Glastonbury's earliest name in Welsh was the Isle of Glass, which suggests that the location was at one point seen as an island. At the end of the 12th century,
Gerald of Wales wrote in
De principis instructione:
Holy Grail The
Holy Grail is a treasure that serves as an important motif in
Arthurian literature. Different traditions describe it as a cup, dish or stone with miraculous powers that provides eternal youth or sustenance in infinite abundance, often in the custody of the
Fisher King. The term "holy grail" is often used to denote an elusive object or goal that is sought after for its great significance. A "grail", wondrous but not explicitly holy, first appears in
Perceval, le Conte du Graal, an unfinished
romance written by
Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. Chrétien's story attracted many continuators, translators and interpreters in the later 12th and early 13th centuries, including
Wolfram von Eschenbach, who perceived the Grail as a stone. In the late 12th century,
Robert de Boron wrote in that the Grail was
Jesus's
vessel from the
Last Supper, which
Joseph of Arimathea used to catch
Christ's blood at
the crucifixion. Thereafter, the Holy Grail became interwoven with the legend of the
Holy Chalice, the Last Supper cup, a theme continued in works such as the
Lancelot-Grail cycle and consequently ''
Le Morte d'Arthur''. Joseph of Arimathea was, according to all four
canonical gospels, the man who assumed responsibility for the
burial of Jesus after
Ηis crucifixion. A number of stories that developed during the
Middle Ages connect him with
Glastonbury. and also with the
Holy Grail legend. Powys lists the forms that the Grail has been known "in those parts for five thousand years": "a cauldron, a
horn, a
krater, a mwys (basket), a well, a
kernos, a
platter, a cup, and even a nameless stone". W. J. Keith comments that cauldrons "are an especially common feature of
Celtic literature, and include "
Bran's cauldron of rebirth ... and
Ceridwen's cauldron of inspiration", but especially the "Cauldron of the Head of Hades" (Cauldron of Yr Echwyd), which is "the object of Arthur's quest in ... "The Spoils of Annwn" (
Preiddau Annwn)". In the "Preface" to the 1955 edition of
A Glastonbury Romance Powys describes the Grail as referring "us to things beyond itself and to things beyond words", and that it is "older than Christianity", "older than the orbits of the stars", "a symbol of beyond-life", a symbol of "a lapping up of one perfect drop of noon-day happiness". For Geard it is "a fragment of the Absolute", "a little nucleus of eternity".
Fisher King In
Arthurian legend, the
Fisher King also known as the
Wounded King or
Maimed King is the last in a long bloodline charged with keeping the
Holy Grail. Versions of the original story vary widely, but he is always wounded in the legs or
groin and incapable of standing. All he is able to do is
fish in a small boat on the river near his castle,
Corbenic, and wait for some noble who might be able to heal him by asking a certain question. In later versions, knights travel from many lands to try to heal the Fisher King, but only the chosen can accomplish the feat. This is achieved by
Percival alone in the earlier stories; he is joined by
Galahad and
Bors in the later ones.. The Fisher King appears first in
Chrétien de Troyes'
Perceval, the Story of the Grail in the late 12th century, but the character's roots may lie in
Celtic mythology. He may be derived more or less directly from the figure of
Brân the Blessed in the
Mabinogion. In the
Second Branch, Bran has a cauldron that can resurrect the dead (albeit imperfectly; those thus revived cannot speak) which he gives to the king of Ireland as a wedding gift for him and Bran's sister
Branwen. Later, Bran wages war on the Irish and is wounded in the foot or leg, and the cauldron is destroyed. He asks his followers to sever his head and take it back to Britain, and his head continues talking and keeps them company on their trip. The group lands on the island of
Gwales, where they spend 80 years in a castle of joy and abundance, but finally they leave and bury Bran's head in London. This story has analogues in two other important
Welsh texts: the
Mabinogion tale "
Culhwch and Olwen", in which
King Arthur's men must travel to Ireland to retrieve a magical cauldron, and the poem
The Spoils of Annwn, which speaks of a similar mystical cauldron sought by Arthur in the otherworldly land of
Annwn. The injury is a common theme in the telling of the Grail Quest. Although some iterations have two kings present, one or both are injured, most commonly in the thigh. The wound is sometimes presented as a punishment, usually for
philandering. In
Parzival, specifically, the king is injured by the bleeding lance as punishment for taking a wife, which was against the code of the "Grail Guardians". In some early story lines, Percival asking the Fisher King the healing question cures the wound. The nature of the question differs between
Perceval and
Parzival, but the central theme is that the Fisher King can be healed only if Percival asks "the question". The location of the wound is of great importance to the legend. In most medieval stories, the mention of a wound in the groin or more commonly the "thigh" (such as the wounding of the ineffective suitor in
Lanval from the
Lais of Marie de France) is a euphemism for the physical loss of or grave injury to one's penis. In medieval times, acknowledging the actual type of wound was considered to rob a man of his dignity, thus the use of the substitute terms "groin" or "thigh", although any informed medieval listener or reader would have known exactly the real nature of the wound. Such a wound was considered worse than actual death because it signaled the end of a man's ability to function in his primary purpose: to propagate his line. In the instance of the Fisher King, the wound negates his ability to honour his sacred charge.
Characters who see the Grail There is some disagreement amongst critics with regard to the how characters relate to the Grail. Glen Cavaliero states that "Persephone, Sam, and Evans are all seeking the Grail", but that "only the single-minded ones, Sam and Mary, are allowed to see it", though he also states that "Bloody Johnny [Geard] lives as if the Grail were his loving cup – earlier Cavaliero denied that Geard was "seeking the Grail Evans "pursues the Grail experience relentlessly, for release from his masochistic prison of perverted sexuality". W.J. Keith, however, claims that the only "unequivocal Grail-experiences in the romance" are "Sam Dekker's and Mr Geard's just before his death". In addition, Keith, suggests that "various individuals are rewarded with experiences that, if not of the Grail itself, are none the less preternatural, and often spiritually fulfilling". This includes Cordelia Geard's visit to Chalice Hill, "John Crow's vision of Arthur's sword", and Mary Crow's ecstatic experience upon seeing "something that seemed more blood-red than sunlight hit ... the great broken arch" of the Abbey ruins. The Grail even seems to enter the mind of its arch-enemy Philip Crow, in the form of grail-dream or nightmare. To this should be added Geard's daughters Cordelia and Crummie, who "act as grail-bearers to Evans and Sam respectively ... and the "'dark' grail bearer ... Mad Bet".
King Arthur The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of
Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century
Historia Regum Britanniae (
History of the Kings of Britain). In some
Welsh and
Breton tales and poems that date from before this work, Arthur appears either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld
Annwn (see reference to Gwyn ap Nudd above). How much of Geoffrey's
Historia (completed in 1138) was adapted from such earlier sources, rather than invented by Geoffrey himself, is unknown. According to Geoffrey in the
Historia, and much subsequent literature which he inspired, King Arthur was taken to Avalon in hope that he could be saved and recover from his mortal wounds following the tragic
Battle of Camlann. Much of the work appears to be derived from
Gildas's 6th-century
De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae,
Bede's 8th-century
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, the 9th-century
Historia Brittonum ascribed to
Nennius, the 10th-century
Annales Cambriae, medieval Welsh genealogies (such as the
Harleian Genealogies) and king-lists, the poems of
Taliesin, the Welsh tale
Culhwch and Olwen, and some of the medieval Welsh saints' lives, C. A. Coates comments that after this experience Geard "has achieved something in the psychic sphere and established his right to be called a magician". This combined with the legend about the Holy grail containing drops of Christ's blood, gives Geard the Christ-like power of curing Tithie Petherton of her cancer, and bringing an apparently dead boy back to life (pp. 707, 893-4). In his
Autobiography Powys states that "my dominant life-illusion was that I was, or at least would eventually be, a magician". Later, after describing how reading Thomas Hardy helped him overcome his sadistic thoughts, Powys says that he felt himself "to be what the great Magician Merlin was before he met his '
Belle Dame sans Merci' " (
Autobiography, p. 309). Merlin again appears in
Morwyn (1937), and as Myrddin in
Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages (1951), while in
Owen Glendower (1941), Glendower is presented as a magician by Powys, following Shakespeare's suggestion, in
Henry IV: Part 1 (III.i. 530), There is also, earlier, in
Wolf Solent (1929) reference to Christie's mother being Welsh and claiming descent from Merlin.
Christ One of the legends that Powys make use of is that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Grail, a vessel containing the blood of Christ, to Glastonbury. With regard to Powys's use of Christ, Glen Cavaliero, comments that: The figure of Christ, although a powerful influence in the spiritual world of Glastonbury, is ambiguous in character and means different things to different people. Christ is associated mainly with three of the novels major characters: Own Evans, John Geard, and Sam Dekker. A more minor role is played by Sam's father, Matt, vicar of Glastonbury, who is based on Powys's father and represents traditional Anglican beliefs. A central episode in the novel involves Owen Evans's highly realistic portrayal of Christ's suffering on the cross in the pageant scene. Earlier Evans had hoped that he could free himself from his sadism by discovering the "ancient Cauldron of Celtic myth", one form that the grail takes, however, because this quest fails, he decides to "seek" to expiate "his would-be crimes" by emulating Christ's suffering on the cross. But, "he exults in his agony" and "[i]t not only failed to purge him of his vice" but "[h]is sado-maschochistic orgy" "aids in its gratification". Sam Dekker believes "that Christ is a God" who opposes " 'the cruelty of the great Creator-God' " – is "the enemy of God", "like Lucifer". This leads him to renounce "the world, the devil and the flesh", to give up his adulterous love affair with Nell Zoyland and endeavour to live the life of a saint. Such a "puritanical and neurotic attitude is condemned in the novel" and Evans sees this as form of auto sadism. However, "[it] is the existence of pain which has caused Sam, in his hypersensitive sympathy, to reject the whole life force". Subsequently Sam's sensitivity to nature" is "greatly intensified". The "growth of sensitive awareness suddenly [becomes a] mystical vision", with Sam's Grail experience. Following this–and Sam giving Mr Twig an enema–"he no longer has scruples about making love to Nell". She, however, has gone back to her husband. John Geard's "intention is to inaugurate a new religion", a "Fifth Gospel", by showing "'the world ... that the real Grail still existed in Glastonbury' ". For Geard the Grail and Christ's Blood have made Glastonbury a focus of spiritual force. Geard's "passive reciprocity" to "the psychic power" of the Grail "gives him powers he can use positively". However, in the "Preface" to the 1955 edition of the novel, Powys notes that "the Holy Grail" is "much older than Christianity" and it is on the night of Christ's Resurrection that he has his encounter with the spirit of Merlin, which creates "an essential link between himself and Merlin ... [and] unites pagan and Christian religion in a loose bond". Another pagan dimension is provided by the reference to Cybele, the Mother goddess, as well as the temple to the
Neolithic goddess of fertility, in the final pages. == Themes ==