The Holiest Vessel: Maternal Aspects of the Grail

Psychoanalytic theory provides a framework for examining the maternal body as metaphor in La Queste del Saint Graal What the knights who have embarked on this quest desire most - nourishment, protection, and perfect union - are all primal experiences arising from the original relationship with the mother. The Queste fulfills those desires by appropriating metaphors of the mothers body, of physical birth and maternal nurture, to characterize the Grail and the Grail service.