Wisdom and the Grail: The Image of the Vessel in the Queste del Saint Graal and Malory's Tale of the Sankgreal. By Anne Marie D'Arcy. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000. Pp. 412. $65.

Anne Marie D'Arcy's Wisdom and the Grail examines the symbol of the Holy Grail in the thirteenth-century Queste del Saint Graal and Thomas Malory's fifteenth-century adaptation of the French text. The former is dealt with far more thoroughly than the latter—only the last of the book's six chapters looks at Malory. D'Arcy's reading is grounded in iconography and theology, and these, along with an exhaustive survey of previous attempts to define the symbol of the Grail, form the basis for her exegesis.

Siân Echard
University of British Columbia