The focus of this volume, which perceives the World of Arthur through the dual lenses of the Grail and the Quest, reveals some interesting problems with respect to medieval English Arthurian literature, and in this chapter I want to explore sketchily some of these problems. Our almost reflexive linking of the two terms, in ‘Grail Quest’, assumes a marriage that, in late medieval England at least, is rocky. The quest is certainly an important mode of adventure in the English world of Arthur, with testing as its energetic center. But in England, the search for the Grail has only a marginal importance.

To be sure, the Grail itself is well represented in Middle English. Henry Lovelich's History of the Holy Grail and the alliterative Joseph of Arimathie, along with early printed versions of Joseph in prose – all these survive. Following their French sources closely, they tell the early history of the Grail and the story of Joseph of Arimathea and do not reach as far as the later accounts of Galahad and the Quest. The Grail in those French sources was, to varying degrees, the Cup of the Last Supper, the vessel used by Joseph to collect the blood of Christ on the Cross and shown again to Joseph in prison in the Gospel of Nicodemus, a sweat relic, a blood relic or a sacramental vessel of the Eucharist – all connections designed first to account for the graal in Chrétien's Perceval and then to shape the symbol to doctrinal advantage.