Mixing Memory and Desire:
The Re-Emergence of the Grail
In the Industrial World

By Mary Jones

Senior Honor Thesis
West Chester University
West Chester, PA

Dr. Elizabeth Nollen, Project Director

April 15, 2001

Acknowledgements

"Accompanying the attendants was a beautiful, gracious, and elegantly attired young lady holding between her two hands a graal of fine pure gold, adorned with many kinds of precious jewels, the richest and most costly found on sea or land, those on the bowl undowbtedly more valuable than others."

--Chretien de Troyes, Perceval

Much thanks to Dr. John Kelly, without whose help this could not have been completed.

For my parents, who first introduced me to the legend.

Table of Contents:

• I.The Myth
• II.A Brief History of Grail Romance
• III.The Industrial Revolution
• IV.Science and the Occult
• V.World War I and Modernism
• VI.The Third Reich's Search for the Grail
• VII.The Grail in the New World Order
• VIII.Conclusion
• IX.Endnotes
• X.Works Cited