at achieving the grail, even though he is a a “descendant” of one of the gaelic gods on whom life and agriculture depended, and the grail is a descendent of a cauldron that offered the same type of riches to life.

So what happened?

Supposing that there are the three functions inherent in this myth(per Dumezil), they are as follows:
(1) the maintenance of cosmic and juridical sovereignty; (2) the exercise of physical prowess; and (3) the promotion of physical well-being, fertility, wealth, and so on

There were, in most versions, a guaranteed 2 that acheived the grail, Perceval and Galahad. Bors is added in some versions as well. Perceval represents the “cosmic sovereignty”, as it falls on him in most versions to ask about the mystery surrounding the keeper of the grail, it is on him to understand the mystical and non-human, cosmic answers.

Bors represents the “judicial” sovereignty aspect, dependent largely on the fact that he is the one that transmits the story to Arthur and the round table, representing the actions of these three to the court and king.

Galahad, as the perfect knight and warrior (even better than Lancelot) obviously represents the second function. No questions asked.

But what of the third function? That function is represented by Gawain, and he fails to acheive the quest because of his inherent shying away from anything spiritual. But why would the third function fail to achieve the grail? It is because the grail had transformed, from its earlier life giving, wealth giving aspect to that of a purely spiritual object tied directly into the ruling aspects of the universe(jesus’ blood, or the communion wafer as seen in Chretien De Troyes). Since Knights are servants of the church in most arthurian romances, the best of them is entitled to acheiving the grail as well.

However, Gawain, unchanged in his functioning(unlike the Grail), fails to acheive it. Not just because he “sins” and cannot be purified, but because he is at his essense a representative of the third function, that of agriculture and life on this earth. And the grail, since it changed throughout the arthurian world, has very little to do with that function, therefore giving an added dimension to why Gawain (who throughout many of the cycles, is a great hero) fails at the grail quest.

That, in a nutshell, is my paper due to be mailed out on Friday.

this paper is murdering me.

Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it up tonight.