released 8/21/2026
In August 2026, poet Malcolm Guite received the 2026 Parnassus Prize from Memoria College, an annual literary award “given to a recent book that best contributes to the cultivation of the Western liberal arts tradition.” The book is Guite’s epic ballad Galahad and the Grail, the first of a four-volume series retelling the Arthurian legends. This Feature presents a short conversation with Martin Cothran, Provost of Memoria College, who presented the Parnassus Prize to Malcolm Guite. That conversation is followed by Guite’s lecture upon receiving the award, in which he explains how the literary tradition is received, studied, indwelt, and then passed on as a living thing. Guite shares how he came to “take up the tale” after being mentored by the great poets in the Western literary tradition, stressing that poetic mentorship is precisely how the tradition continued over the centuries. He reads from Galahad and the Grail and also from The Coming of Arthur, the second volume in the series. As the boy Arthur was instructed in the pre-Christian stories, even so must we learn them in order to discover how the God of all time will “judge and fulfill” the hidden truths therein.
65 minutes
PREVIEW
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Listeners who enjoy this lecture will likely also appreciate the Classical Et Cetera podcast episode (sponsored by Memoria College), in which Malcolm Guite speaks about the significance of the Arthurian tales with Martin Cothran, Tanya Charlton, and Paul Schaefer. You can view that conversation below.
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