Speranza
Let's try and interpreting the Character of Lancelot in Chrétien de Troyes’ Le
Chevalier de
la Charette
With Le Chevalier de la
Charrete circa 1170, Chrétien de Troyes was the first to write a romance in
which Lancelot is the central figure.
Since then, Lancelot has come to
symbolize chivalric perfection.
But Chrétien’s original romance is unclear
about Lancelot’s character, and many scholars speak about Chrétien’s Lancelot in
contradictory absolutes which point to the ambiguity inherent in the
character.
Is Lancelot truly a romantic hero, or is he actually an adulterous villain?
Who ultimately determines what a character in literature represents?
Exploring
the factors that contribute to Lancelot’s ambiguity leads to answers to these
questions.
The surface meaning of the text portrays Lancelot as a perfect
knight, both adventurous and chivalrous to the highest degree.
But other
instances that reveal Chrétien’s opinion on Lancelot, such as narrative
asides and his tone in some passages, suggest an imperfect picture of a
knight constantly engaged in wrong or
FOOLISH
behaviour in his love for
GINEVRA.
The views of Chrétien’s audience on adultery and treason seem to
agree with this view of Lancelot as a felon, betraying love and his lord by
engaging in an adulterous affair with GINEVRA.
But Le Chevalier de la
Charrete is not unique in portraying chivalry and love of
this kind, and
there is evidence that Marie de Champagne’s court, the intended audience for
this romance, engaged in discussions of theories of love whose conclusions
were in direct opposition to the reality of the time.
This points to a
difference between reality and the literary ideal of love, so that characters in
literature do not need to conform to the norms of society.
Ultimately,
Lancelot became a symbol of perfect chivalry because his readers interpreted
him
as such on the basis of a literary ideal, irrespective of reality or
Chrétien’s own point of view.
With Le Chevalier de la Charrete circa
1170, Chrétien de Troyes was the first to write a romance in which
Lancelot is the central figure.
Since then, Lancelot has come to symbolize
chivalric perfection. But Chrétien’s original
romance is unclear about
Lancelot’s character, and many scholars speak about Chrétien’s Lancelot in
contradictory
absolutes which point to the ambiguity inherent in the
character. Is Lancelot truly a romantic hero, or is he actually a
villain?
Many factors play a part in determining how we should read Lancelot, from the
text itself to the author’s
tone and the romance’s original audience.
A
quick read of the text leaves readers with the impression that Lancelot is truly
a perfect knight.
He is certainly
adventurous and daring.
He gains the right
to sleep in the forbidden bed through fearlessness and quick action
(ll.
470-534).
He takes on multiple knights at once in defending the maiden
pretending to be raped and continues
fighting after sustaining crippling
injuries (ll. 1126-1180).
He lifts a slab of stone “more easily than ten men
could
have done” (ll. 1910-1914).
He fights his way through a guarded pass
using shrewdness as much as physical fightin
and impresses his
opponents (ll. 2222-2243).
These are just a few examples of his daring, and as
the romance goes
on, the list of Lancelot’s successful exploits grows,
culminating in the fierce battle with Meleagant where Lancelot proves his
strength and cunning (ll.7002-7090).
Lancelot is therefore undoubtedly the
epitome of perfection in knightly excellence.
But the question of
his
behavior as a lover is of more importance to the investigation of the
essence of his character, as “it is Lancelot as a
lover that is the ultimate
center of the romance” (Staines xix).
And he proves again and again that he is
indeed
chivalrous to his lady-love the queen as well as to other women.
He
battles with himself between keeping his
promise of sleeping with his hostess
and remaining faithful to his love for the queen (ll. 1195-1265).
He promises
to
defend the girl as they ride together (ll. 1322-1324).
He even allows
himself to be defeated time and again when he
could easily have overcome his
opponents, simply because Guinevere tells him to
“do your worst” and he is
utterly
loyal to his love (ll. 5635-5662).
But going beyond the surface
reading, ambiguities abound.
Almost every critic of this romance points
to
Chrétien’s opening statements as proof that the author did not see
Lancelot as the perfect exemplar of chivalric
knights.
Chrétien writes:
I
will say, however, that Marie's command has more importance
in this work than any thought or effort I might put into it.
The
source and the meaning are furnished and given him by the Countess, and he
strives carefully to add nothing but his effort and diligence” (ll. 21-29).
The
scholarly consensus is that with these words Chrétien is alluding to his
reluctance to write this story, to his view of
Lancelot not as a hero to be
admired but as a felon, betraying his lord.
This counters the apparent
chivalric
excellence and brings Lancelot’s status as a romantic hero into
question.
Chrétien’s treatment of the topic of love can leave readers
wondering as well.
From the beginning of the narrative,
the author moves into
asides about the nature of love many times, commenting on what is happening to
Lancelot and
examining what love is and what love does.
The first time this
happens is when Lancelot hesitates before getting
into the cart.
Chrétien
writes there that
Reason, which does not follow Love’s command told him NOT to get in.
but ultimately Love wished it and he jumped in.
The shame
mattered not to him , Since Love ruled his action” (ll. 365 – 377).
Though in
this case Chrétien has love win over reason, it is unclear what exactly he
thought about this.
----
The result of this victory is that Lancelot rides in a
cart, a shameful experience since carts at that time were used only to
transport criminals, and he is mocked and ridiculed for this throughout the rest
of the narrative.
At the same time, though, GINEVRA punishes Lancelot later
for his hesitation, guided by reason over love, so that while he is mocked
for allowing love to ultimately win, he is also punished for allowing reason to
even engage in a battle with love.
This raises the question as to whether the
victory is justified, in Chrétien’s mind, or Lancelot is acting foolishly
in
allowing love to win over reason.
Twice in the beginning sections of the
story, Chrétien describes Lancelot’s preoccupation with his love for
the queen, and both these incidents again are ambiguous as to whether
Lancelot is being praised or ridiculed for his thoughts.
The first time
Lancelot and Gawain catch sight of the queen, Lancelot sees her from a window.
When he was no longer able to see her he would gladly have cast
himself down to shatter his body below” (ll. 565-7).
He is only stopped by
Gawain who drags him back from the window.
This could be interpreted as a sign
of
Lancelot’s complete and utter devotion to the queen, so that Lancelot is a
perfect lover, ready to die for his love.
But
this can also be read as a
foolish move on Lancelot’s part, where he is no longer capable of reason, which
Gawain
and the girl remind him of by suggesting they leave the tower where
they can do nothing and instead pursue the queen’s party.
Later, when
Lancelot sets out for the Sword Bridge, he is again overtaken by thoughts of
love for the queen, to the
point that his horse leaves the path and he does
not notice until confronted with a knight who challenges him.
Chrétien
describes his state of mind as that of a man with no strength or defense against
Love, who torments him.
His meditation was so deep that he forgot his own
identity
(ll. 712-15), suggesting not a man in control of his love,
but
love controlling the man.
This choice of words, “torments” and “no strength or
defense against Love,” and the
long description which details just how out of
touch with the world Lancelot is as he contemplates his love for the
queen,
challenge the force of love as a purely positive force.
Lancelot is subjugated
to the power of love, to the
point that he is no longer rational and is in
some ways weakened by it.
By portraying love as a catalyst for
Lancelot
entering into these situations, Chrétien seems to be saying that it
is a potentially negative and dangerous force, not
an ideal to strive
for.
John Benton claims that the reason modern readers need to closely study
and explain the nature of Lancelot’s love is that the modern perception of
love is of a purely positive conquering force, but
if we find Lancelot
a sympathetic figure because he was guided by love rather than reason, it is
because modern attitudes differ from medieval ones in ways Chrétien could not
foresee.
The reading of these situations
as
negative outcomes resulting from love’s conquest of reason is the correct
one.
But taken on their own and studied
for the results within the work
itself, neither of these situations is unambiguously negative when love
triumphs.
Besides, further incidents studied on their own suggest a
more clearly positive view on being guided by love.
When the girl tells
Lancelot and Gawain where the queen has been taken and how to get to her, she
demands that
each knight promise to do whatever she bids them to. Lancelot
swore Like one whom Love has made powerful
And strong and bold for any
endeavor)” (ll. 629-31).
His love for the queen enables him to be stronger and
bolder
than he might have been otherwise.
Contrary to the times when love
weakens his prowess and distracts him from his
mission, here love actually
strengthens him.
Another instance where love is portrayed positively is at
the home of the girl who demanded that Lancelot sleep
with her in exchange
for her hospitality.
Trying to both keep his promise to his hostess and remain
loyal to his love,
Lancelot gets into bed and turns away from the girl.
His
heart was kept fixed on a single object By Love, which
rules all hearts. All hearts? Not really, only those it esteems. And whomever Love deigns to
rule Should esteem
himself the more” (ll. 1232-6).
Here again, Chrétien
makes an aside about the nature of love, and in this case, the
tone is again
obviously positive.
Being ruled by love is a reason for Lancelot to think more
highly of himself, and
Chrétien does not find fault with him for setting
his purpose by Love’s commands” (ll. 1240-2).
In this incident
it appears
that bowing to love’s demands is inarguably a positive thing.
Even if love is
a positive force, however, Lancelot’s chivalric propriety comes into question,
since in acting with
complete devotion to his lady-love, Lancelot is
inevitably committing a misdeed.
His love, Guinevere, is a married
woman.
The attitude of the medieval audience toward ADULTERY suggests that they would
not have been sympathetic
to a character whose main goal is to engage in an
adulterous affair with a married woman.
“The fate of adulterous
queens and
courtier-lovers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance is well documented.
Adultery
was treason and was
punished as such.
Benton provides many
examples of adultery being punished severely, beginning
with Roman laws to
sew the violators of marriage in sack and burn them alive.
Events more
contemporary to
Chrétien’s work echo this law, such as the chroniclers’
report that in about 1000 Count Fulk Nerra of Anjou burned
his adulterous
wife Elizabeth” (Benton 26).
A translation and commentary of the 44th psalm,
ironically dedicated to
Marie de Champagne who commissioned Lancelot, states
as the custom of the world that when a woman deserts
the love of her husband
for another she would in fact be better off in the grave” (Benton 26).
The
words used when talking about the clandestine meeting between Lancelot and
Guinevere are telling as to what
Chrétien may have thought about this issue.
In describing Lancelot’s thoughts about going to Guinevere, Chrétien
writes interestingly.
Because for nothing would he rest there nor could he, nor did he dare, nor did he wish to have such
daring or such courage” (ll. 4555-8).
Lancelot
makes the decision to keep his appointment with Guinevere, but his
thoughts
about staying away are in terms of daring and courage.
The language of
courage used to describe
staying away leads the reader to see the alternative
as directly opposed to courage.
The tryst itself, then, would be
the opposite
of daring and courage, so that rather than being a positive meeting of lovers,
it is characterized by
cowardice.
Later, when Kay is accused of having
slept with Guinevere, the language again points to an attitude of aversion
to
a lovers’ tryst rather than glorifying the love.
Kay says:
“Indeed, I would
much rather be dead than have committed such a base and blameworthy act
toward my lord” (ll. 4863-5).
It can be assumed that this attitude is
what
prevails in the rest of the characters and in the author as well, since
Kay is one of the most honorable knights in
King Arthur’s court.
Lancelot
himself assumes this attitude in public, and ironically, it is he who defends
Kay’s
honour against the accusation that he slept with Guinevere.
The way he
takes Kay’s defense, by saying:
May it never please God to let anyone doubt either you or him in such a matter” (ll. 4932-3), makes it clear that he sees
such an
act as a despicable deed and a huge slight to anyone’s honor to be
accused of.
The fact that he takes this stance
publicly proves that, whatever
he might think
or feel, in private about wanting to meet
with Guinevere, the
prevailing
attitude is one of disgust with such a meeting.
In that case, the
author seems to want the reader not to see Lancelot as
merely a hero and a
devoted lover but as a character with a tinge of something dishonorable.
As
to why Lancelot is not then explicitly condemned in the narrative, Chrétien wrote
courteously of Lancelot not because he found his
behaviour admirable but because he was writing in the medieval tradition of
irony which a thirteenth-century teacher of grammar and rhetoric
defined as the unadorned and gentle use of words to convey disdain and
ridicule, for it is nothing but vituperation to commend the
evil deeds of
someone through their opposite.
The truth of what Chrétien
thought of Lancelot lies in
the subtlety of his language and the ironic
situations he puts Lancelot in.
Having Lancelot defend Kay from the act
he
himself committed is no longer simply an amusing twist of events.
According
to Benton, it is an invitation to
the reader to see the HYPOCRISY in Lancelot
and thus highlight his shortcomings.
Another point to take into consideration
in regard to the illicit nature of Lancelot’s love is the fact that the
woman
he loves is not only married, but is married to Arthur, the king, and Lancelot's liege lord.
Engaging in an affair with his lord’s wife goes
beyond mere adultery and
crosses into the territory of treason, of betraying his lord to whom he owes
full service.
There is a difference between a man having affairs
with other women and a man betraying his lord’s trust by sleeping with
his lord’s wife.
Kay’s defense of himself supports this, as he says
“I would
much rather be dead than have committed such a base and blameworthy act
toward my lord” (ll. 4863-5), ending with horror not at committing adultery
but, SPECIFICALLY, at committing adultery with his lord’s wife.
-- Not Malatesta's case.
This is the kind
of behaviour
that the medieval courtly audience would condemn.
This analysis of medieval attitudes toward adultery, however, may not be
applicable in the question of determining
what kind of character Chrétien’s
Lancelot is and would have been to his medieval audience.
Moral standards
in
reality and within literature do not necessarily align and may differ in
massive ways.
Gaston Paris’ term "amour courtois" (amore cortese) was coined
“to describe the adulterous relationship of Lancelot and Guinevere in
this
romance.
In a society where adulterous love was
punishable by extreme measures, and where adultery
with the queen was
treasonous and therefore so much worse, the love between Lancelot and Guinevere,
the queen, developed “as an artistic CONVENTION in and around the courts of
southern France in the late eleventh and early
twelfth centuries -- and up to the Castel di GRADARA in 1282.
Literature of this time did not portray the reality of the existence of
love but the late
medieval aristocracy as it fain would be.
Chrétien was writing amid an ever-spreading craze for
courtly love amongst
high-born dames.
Prevailing sentiment demands courtly love between a
knight and a
married woman.
Comfort describes the actualities of
medieval love, and explains that women craved
romance depicting courtly
love as controlled by love rather than anything else because therein lay its
charm for a
society in which the actual relations of the sexes were rigidly
prescribed by the Church and by feudal practice, rather
than by the
sentiments of the individuals concerned.
This system of love
where adultery was not condemned but celebrated may have its roots in a practice
explained
by Andreas Capellanus in his book Tractacus de Amore et de Amoris
Remedio.
Andrea CAPELLANO relates
how Eleonora d'Aquitainia, along with her daughter
Marie of Champagne,
presided over courts of love in Poitiers,
France,
recording 21 cases presented by lovers, asking the court
for
a judgment as to the proper course of action.
The real existence of
these courts is called into question by many scholars, but the mere mention of
them
in a work possibly commissioned by Marie suggests that it could be
plausible that they did exist.
What matters is
that this literary ideal
of adulterous love was fully embraced by the readers of the time.
One passage
cites an exchange of letters, the first asking about love between spouses as
opposed to love between
lovers, and Marie’s response:
Love cannot exist
between husband and wife.
For lovers give each other everything freely,
under no compulsion of necessity.
Bt married people are in duty bound to give
in to each other's desires and deny themselves to each other in nothing”
(Capellanus).
The kind of love championed by this court of
women was not love
in marriage.
In fact, they claim that love between husband and wife is simply
impossible.
Instead, they put forth illicit love as the only possible true
love.
Thus Lancelot was received by this court as the perfect lover, because
he is indeed engaged in an illicit relationship with GINEVRA.
In this model
of love, the discussion of whether
Lancelot being ruled by love rather than
reason is viewed by
Chrétien as good or foolish is easily resolved.
In this
type of situation, such love is irrational, indeed usually in
direct
opposition to reason’s urgings,” and for Lancelot in particular.
Guided by love
and not by reason Lancelot is an ideal courtly lover, viewed by the narrator
with
AFFECTIONATE irony.
In writing a character based on
the
ideal crafted by women which could never hold true in reality, Chrétien may
indeed have felt a sort of
affectionate irony to both the character and his
mistress Marie.
Based on this, Lancelot fits the role of romantic
hero
perfectly and would have been received by his original audience as such
irrespective of actual social norms of the
time.
What, then, ultimately
determines whether Lancelot is a hero or a villain, treasonous or chivalrous?
Lancelot’s
reputation as the most perfect knight through the ages, beginning
with Marie of Champagne’s court, speaks for
itself.
Whatever the author may
have intended for Lancelot, the original audience’s reception of the character
places
him firmly in the heroic, chivalric sphere.
Analysis of Le Chevalier
de la Charrete provides us, as modern readers,
with the multiple layers that
went into the creation of this character, and it is certainly fascinating to
consider all of
them.
But ultimately, Lancelot became a symbol of perfect
chivalry because his readers interpreted him as such on
the basis of a
literary ideal, irrespective of reality or Chrétien’s own point of
view.
Interestingly, Lancelot was not always received as a perfect romantic
hero.
In Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur,
Lancelot is portrayed as the reason for
the fall of Arthur’s kingdom (replacing Arthur’s nephew Mordred as the
lover
of the queen and the cause of the kingdom’s downfall in some earlier texts), and
in that work cannot be
interpreted as the epitome of knightly excellence or
chivalry.
Malory’s audience would have seen any redeeming
traits that
Lancelot has as shadowed by his treason in having an affair with his lord’s
wife.
The difference between
Chrétien’s audience, Malory’s audience, and the
modern audience lies in cultural and regional differences.
Chrétien’s
audience in France lived with the prevailing sentiment glorifying the love
between Lancelot and
Guinevere.
But Malory’s audience in England would have
had a very different idea of love,
modern attitudes
to love differ vastly from medieval reality.
The result is that as each
audience, marked by
differences in geography and time, reads a work,
the character is interpreted according to these differences.
Chrétien’s
original audience, influenced by the medieval reality and the ideal that grew in
southern France,
interpreted Lancelot as the ultimate chivalric hero.
REFERENCES:
de Troyes, Chrétien. Lancelot or, The Knight of the Cart (Le
Chevalier de la Charrete). ed. W.W. Kibler. New York and London: Garland
Publishing, Inc, 1981.
Benton, John F.
“Clio and Venus: An Historical View of
Medieval Love.”
The Meaning of Courtly Love. ed, F.X.
Newman. New York: SUNY,
1968.
Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn.
“Le Chevalier de la Charrette.” A Companion
to Chrétien de Troyes. ed. Norris J. Lacy
and Joan Tasker Grimbert.
Rochester: D.S. Brewer, 2005.
Comfort, W.W.
Arthurian Romances. London: Dent,
1914 (repr. 1967).
Frappier, Jean. Chrétien de Troyes: The Man and His Work.
trans. Raymond J. Cormier. Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1982.
Jackson,
W.T.H.
Lancelot: The Knight of the Cart, Chrétien de Troyes. New York: Columbia
University Press,
1984.
Kelly, Amy. “Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Courts
of Love.”
Speculum 12:1 (1937): 3-19.
Staines,
David. The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1990
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment