Love, War and the Grail: Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance 1150-1500

An interesting study of the role of the Military Orders in medieval fictional literature that examines the continued support for the Orders' cause but also the medieval convention that fiction should be `realistic'. Instead of examining the mystical aspects of the grail legend, Nicholson focuses on the historical context of a large number of grail stories produced across Europe, including Chrétien de Troye's Conte du Graal , the 12th-century Orendal , the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Middle English verses such as the 14th-century Richard Coeur de Lion .