Abstract
It has long been customary to speak of the interaction between his? torical crises and imaginative ones. But at times there are changes so radical in a civilization that they alter conventional distinctions between history and imagination themselves.1 A radical shift of this kind, I think, develops in European civilization in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. During this period a leading form of narrative often luxuriant in its subject matter and largely secular in orientation?chivalric romance?is increasingly trans? figured by a sacralizing story evocative of Christian Scripture. This is the story of the Holy Grail,2 a redemptive object associated (in a formative version of the story) with the Last Supper and initially entrusted to Joseph of Arimathea, the New Testament figure who had furnished a sepulchre for the crucified Christ. In relating how the numinous
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