Corbenic

Corbenic
"How at the Castle of Corbin a Maiden Bare in the Sangreal and Foretold the Achievements of Galahad" (Arthur Rackham's illustration to The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, by Alfred W. Pollard, 1917).
Le Morte d'Arthur location
Created by	Thomas Malory
Genre	Arthurian legend
Type	Castle of the Holy Grail
Notable characters	Fisher King, Sir Galahad

Corbenic or Corbin is the name of the Grail castle, the castle holding the Holy Grail, in the Arthurian literary tradition following the 13th-century Lancelot-Grail cycle and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. It is the domain of the Fisher King and the birthplace of Sir Galahad.

In Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail, the first work to mention the Grail, the Grail castle is described somewhat differently than in later literature, and is given no name. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, based on Chrétien, the Grail castle's name is Munsalväsche (rendereing Monsalvat, in medieval tradition associated with the name of Montserrat in Catalonia).

As befits the castle of the Grail, Corbenic is a place of marvels, including, at various times, a maiden trapped in a magically boiling cauldron, a dragon, and a room where arrows assail any who try to spend the night there. These wonders cause Sir Bors to name it the Castle Adventurous, "for here be many strange adventures" (Le Morte d'Arthur, book XI). Yet it can also appear quite ordinary: on an earlier occasion, according to the Lancelot-Grail, the same Sir Bors visited without noticing anything unusual.

(Perhaps conscious of this apparent contradiction, T.H. White in The Once and Future King treats Corbenic as two separate places: Corbin is the relatively mundane dwelling-place of King Pelles, while Carbonek is the mystical castle where the climax of the Grail Quest takes place.)