Além da cruz e da espada: acerca dos resíduos clássicos d'a demanda do Santo Graal

Abstract

The present work has as main objective to point the passages of classic content presented in the medieval novel A Demanda do Santo Graal (portuguese edition of The Quest for the Holy Grail), a novel about chivalry of the first half of the thirteenth century, in order to explain the reason why exist these passages in the novel in question. Another objective is to show how the Middle Ages realize a retaking of values of classical Antiquity, especially with regard to the attitude of the medieval knight: this was the greek hero (or roman hero) as the ideal of bravery, virtue and loyalty; the imaginary of medieval cavalier (or "the imaginary created around of the medieval knight") was practically the same imaginary of greek hero (or roman hero), because of the similarity between the historical and literary contexts in which they both arose. The theory that underpins this work is the Teoria da Residualidade, created by Roberto Pontes, critic, essayist and professor of Literature of the Universidade Federal do Ceará – UFC. During the research, the concepts of imaginary and residual, proposed respectively by the École des Annales and Raymond Williams, a marxist literary critic, are also present. With regard to the methodology, it must be said that the research was conducted, at first, through readings of classics of the ancient Literature (Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses) and portuguese novels about chivalry (Amadis de Gaula and, especially, A Demanda do Santo Graal) and through comparative literature, since there was a work of comparison between these texts. Finally, this research is relevant to the academic community because it mentions, in a medieval and christian novel (A Demanda do Santo Graal), an important aspect of the novels about chivalry: the classic, so much neglected by most scholars which deal with the novels of the breton cycle.