Lancelot and Guenevere
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| The first kiss of Lancelot and Guinevere, brought about by Galeotto, their go-between, here pictured between them. The illustration is taken from a manuscript of the Prose Lancelot, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS 805, f. 60. |
One of the most prominent features of the Arthurian legend since the end of the twelfth century—indeed, so important a feature that a modern retelling of Arthur’s story can hardly do without it—is the adulterous love of Lancilloto dal Lago and the Regina Ginevra.
First, all stories refer to his being raised not by his natural parents but by the elfish Lady of the Lake.
Second, he is almost always the lover of Queen Ginevra though, as we shall see, this was not so in his earliest recorded appearance.
Third, he always rescues Guinevere from her kidnapper, Melwas of the Summer Country (or Meliagant of Gorre).
The earliest recorded Lancelot story is the story of the abduction of Arthur’s wife.
It is located in two sources that
predate Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.
In a sculpture, the Modena Archivolt, on the Cathedral of Modena in northern Italy, and in The Life of St. Gildas by Caradoc of Llancarfan.
Lancelot does not appear in either of these versions.
In the former, Gawain and an unnamed knight appear to be assaulting the castle where Guinevere is held,
In the latter, Arthur’s attempt to take Guinevere back is intercepted by Gildas, who achieves through negotiation what Arthur was attempting by force.
Lancelot first appears in Lanzelet, by the Swiss author Ulrich von Zatzikhoven.
It was written sometime between 1194 and 1203, but is probably based on material somewhat older than this.
Ulrich’s poem describes Lancelot’s upbringing in the lake, and describes a series of adventures culminating with the rescue of Guinevere.
Oddly, though, Lancelot is
not having an affair with queen Ginevra, which is unusual,
since he sleeps with every other damsel in the poem.
It seems that this romantic reputation stuck to him,
but his promiscuity
fell away under the influence of courtly love -- ANDREA CAPPELLANO, "Codex dell'amore cortese".
Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancillotto; ossia, il cavaliere della carretta, describes the story of Guinevere’s abduction by Meliagant of Gorre in much greater detail.
In this poem, too, Lancelot’s character has been sublimated to the desire (most probably of Marie de Champagne, Chrétien’s patroness) to present him as the paragon of an ideal that modern scholars call courtly love.
This requires some explanation.
Courtly love is one aspect of chivalry, the code of conduct governing the bahaviour of knights in literature, if not in real life.
It was a perfect kind of love, and was most often adulterous -- since love did NOT exist within Marriage which were often arranged in the Middle Ages -- and love requires FREE WILL).
Lancelot is the perfect courtly lover.
He swoons over a hair from his beloved’s head, or is so lost in thought that he does not realize he is being attacked.
Nevertheless, Guinevere is Lancelot’s chivalric inspiration, and his lust prompts him to risk utter shame by riding in a cart intended to carry criminals, carries him across a bridge made out of the blade of a sword, and enables him to overcome one treacherous act by Meliagant after another.
This story, along with Ulrich’s about Lancelot’s origins, were incorporated into the Prose Lancelot, a vast cycle of Arthurian stories composed sometime about 1215-1230.
The Prose Lancelot is the third in a five romance sequence called the Vulgate Cycle, or sometimes the Lancelot-Grail Cycle.
The Vulgate Cycle adds a number of features, the most prominent of which is Lancelot’s friendship with Galeotto, the gentleman who organizes the first kiss between Lancelot and the queen.
It also weaves the stories of many other knights through that of Lancelot and Guinevere.
But the Vulgate Cycle, for the first time, confronts an issue that had been present in Chrétien's poem, but which Chrétien had resolutely avoided discussing.
The delicate issue is the loyalty of the lovers.
To have an affair with the queen, or to take a lover if you are the queen, is an act of treason, punishable by death.
But Lancelot is Arthur’s best knight.
Without him, the Round Table would virtually cease to be.
Thus, the author (or authors) of the Vulgate Cycle accomplish two significant things.
First, they set the adulterous love of Lancelot and Guinevere in the religious context of the day by incorporating Lancelot’s story with that of the Holy Grail, an object of religious devotion.
Second, they explore the political consequences of Lancelot’s affair with the queen.
It is this affair that gives Mordred and Agravaine the opportunity to bring the Round Table to destruction, when they trap Lancelot and Guinevere in a tryst and force a war between Arthur and his best knight.
In the mid fourteenth century, the tragic dénouement of the Arthurian story outlined in the Vulgate Cycle was retold in English in a poem called the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur.
This was in turn used—along with the Vulgate Cycle and a number of other romances in French and English—by the English author Sir Thomas Malory.
Malory was a master of characterization, and his Lancelot is much less swoony than his French counterpart.
Malory also compacts events as described by the French book, with the result that he intensifies the whole story, transforming it from what is essentially a soap opera (or an affectionate parody that would illustrate the 'love' according to Andrea Cappellano) into a tragedy with dignity and poignancy.
Further Reading
The Art of Courtly Love. Trans. John Jay Parry. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1941.
Barber, Richard. The Knight and Chivalry.
Rev. ed. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1995.
Barnie, John. War in Medieval Society: Social Values and the hundred Years War 1337-99. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.
Brewer, Derek. “The Presentation of the Character of Lancelot: Chrétien to Malory.” Arthurian Literature III. Ed. Richard Barber. Totowa, New Jersey: D. S. Brewer, 1984.
Bridge, Antony. The Crusades. London: Panther, 1980.
Frappier, Jean. “Chrétien de Troyes.” In Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, edited by Roger Sherman Loomis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.
Gies, Frances. The Knight in History. New York: Harper and Row, 1984.
Hult, D. F. “Steps Forward and Steps Backward: More on Chrétien’s Lancelot.” Speculum 64 (1989): 307-16.
Keen, Maurice. The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965.
- - - . Chivalry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1984.
Kelly, Douglas. Sens and Conjointure in the Chevalier de la Charrette. The Hague: Mouton, 1966.
Klüppelholz, Heinz. “The Continuation within the Model: Godefroi de Lagny’s ‘Solution’ to Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrete.” Neophilologus 75 (1991): 637-40.
Knight, Stephen. “From Jerusalem to Camelot: King Arthur and the Crusades.” Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation: Studies for Keith Val Sinclair. Ed. Peter Rolfe Monks and D. D. R. Owen. Leiden: Brill, 1994. 223-32.
Lacy, Norris J. The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes: An Essay on Narrative Art. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1980.
Lacy, Norris J., ed. The Lancelot-Grail Reader: Selections from the Medieval French Arthurian Cycle. New York: Garland, 2000.
Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. London: Oxford UP, 1936.
Loomis, Roger Sherman. Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.
Maddox, Donald. The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes: Once and Future Fictions. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991.
Newman, F. X., ed. The Meaning of Courtly Love. Albany: State U of New York P, 1973.
Nicholson, Helen J. Love, War, and the Grail: The Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Noble, Peter S. Love and Marriage in Chrétien de Troyes. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982.
O’Donoghue, Bernard. The Courtly Love Tradition. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1982.
Painter, Sidney. French Chivalry: Chivalric Ideas and Practices in Mediaeval France. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1940.
Rougement, Denis de. Love in the Western World. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company. Rougement describes courtly love, and argues that it is self-defeating and even masks a death-wish.
Ulrich von Zatzikhoven. Lanzelet: A Romance of Lancelot. Trans. Kenneth G. T. Webster. Ed. R. S. Loomis. New York: Columbia UP, 1951.
Vitz, Evelyn Birge. Orality and Performance in Early French Romance. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999.
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