SOURCE: “Geoffrey of Monmouth: A Source of the Grail Stories,” Quondam et Futurus, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1991, pp. 1-14.

In the following essay, Furtado concludes that the Elidurus episode in Geoffrey's narrative, or at least a related document or tradition, served as the source for later versions of the legend of the Holy Grail.

The most influential version of the Grail story, the first to introduce the term “grail” (a deep wide dish, a platter), is the Perceval—li Contes del Graal of Chrétien de Troyes. Chrétien died before concluding the work, and one can only conjecture the kind of ending he had in mind. Nor did he have the chance to review what he had written, in order to eliminate inconsistencies. To make these matters even more controversial, he declared at the outset: “That is the Story of the Grail, found in the book the count...