IL BACIO DI PAOLO MALATESTA -- il bacio di Lancillotto -- il codice dell'amore cortese

Speranza

Godefroy de Leigni, concluding Chrétien’s Chevalier de la Charrete writes that he wishes neither to omit anything nor to add more, “por le conte
malmetre” (“so as to harm the story”).

“Seignor,” he writes, “se j’avant an disoie, / Ce seroit
oltre la matire” (7098–7099; “Lords, if I were to say further about it, / That would be beyond the
plot”).

This conventional statement points to a curious feature of the story as Chrétien and
(Chrétien de Troyes, “Le Chevalier de la Charrette, ou Le Roman de Lancelot,” l. 7112. Subsequent citations ar noted in the text by line number; translations are my own)

Godefroy have told it.

The adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere is here presented as relatively
unproblematic. To add more to the romance might mean, among other things, dealing with the
serious consequences of this affair.

These consequences would only be fully explored later, with
the longer Arthurian cycles, and presumably no knowledge of any tradition in which the couple’s
adultery precipitates a political crisis and ends in tragedy is assumed on the part of Chrétien’s
audience.

However, Guinevere was already associated with politically disastrous infidelity in
the accounts of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace, and the analogous, tragic love of Tristan and
Isolt was well known.

Hult suggests that “the social and political ramifications of the Lancelot/
Guenevere affair—ones that were irrevocably encoded in the most famous literary and historical
works of the late twelfth century—risked carrying [Chrétien] further than he wished to go” with
his romance.58 Topsfield argues that Chrétien had to invent a reason to keep Lancelot away from
Arthur’s court, in order to avoid a Tristanesque situation in which the lover/rescuer restores the
wife to her husband only to continue the affair in secret. In fact, it is necessary, in order to
preserve Chrétien’s “thematic structure,” to avoid “any formal recognition that this love affair
might continue at the court of the cuckolded Arthur.”59 Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner points out that
no date is set for a future meeting between the lovers, and the last reference to the two of them as
55. Something similar happens in the Folies Tristans, which likewise present only a piece of the story, and thus are
able to end happily (see Ch. 5). The difference is that there the conclusion of the story was already well known.
56. Gaston Paris was the first to suggest that Chrétien (or Marie) invented the idea of Lancelot and Guinevere as a
couple, and it has been generally accepted. See Kelly, Sens and Conjointure, 6.
57. Hult, “Author/Narrator/Speaker: The Voice of Authority in Chrétien's Charrete,” 87.
58. Ibid.
59. Topsfield, 156–57.
157
a couple is to the queen’s frustration at being unable to go to Lancelot in the presence of others.
“Both these passages suggest that the major ‘loose end’ of the Charrette is precisely the future of
Lancelot and Guenevere’s love affair. Their story is decidedly not closed, cannot be closed, when
Chrétien’s romance ends.”60 But when the Chevalier de la Charrete ends, it is debatable whether
it is Chrétien’s romance any more. Chrétien has to tell only part of the story in order to avoid its
tragic potential; in the event, he only told part of that part before turning the romance over to
Godefroy.
If the romance’s ending avoids dealing with the consequences of adultery, does the rest
of the text do the same? Some critics have suggested that Chrétien employs deliberate strategies
to empty the adulterous affair of moral meaning. Joan B. Williamson, attempting to argue that
Chrétien did not disapprove of the theme of adultery which he presents, suggests that “Chrétien
situates his romance in a symbolic world where Christian concepts of right and wrong do not
apply,” and as such neither Lancelot and Guinevere’s adultery nor their attempted suicide can be
condemned.61 It is hard to believe, however, that his intended audience would have taken the
romance in this way. Its characters, for one thing, are demonstrably Christian themselves. More
cogently, Bruckner points out that Meleagant’s capture of Guinevere, and Lancelot’s rescue, can
both be interpreted as instances of the “custom of Logres” whereby a woman riding with a knight
is fair game for any other knight able to defeat her escort. Bruckner continues:
60. Bruckner, “Le Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot),” 164.
61. Williamson, “Suicide and Adultery in Le Chevalier de la Charrete,” 574.
158
Their night of love is, according to the custom of Logres, nothing more than
Lancelot’s just due: having won Guenièvre by force of arms, the knight may do
as he pleases, ‘sanz honte et sanz blasme.’ Here is Lancelot’s perfect
justification, not in the secret value system of courtly love, not in the marvellous
realm of the pays de Gorre, but in the time-honored customs of Arthur’s own
kingdom! 62
But, as Bruckner is quick to add, this possible justification for Lancelot is never acknowledged
by the narrator. In fact, Chrétien does not ignore the problems posed by his main characters’
adultery. He simply doesn’t comment on them.
Rather than being elided, the problem of adultery is presented in a complex, albeit
oblique manner. When Guinevere is accused of sleeping with Kay, she and others are quick to
characterize this hypothetical act as abominable treachery. The queen asserts that Kay should be
above suspicion: “Je cuit que Kex li seneschax / Est si cortois et si leax / Que il n’an fet mie a
mescroire” (4839–4841; “I believe that Kay the seneschal / Is so courtly and so loyal / That he
would not do anything to be suspected”). At the same time, she asserts her own innocence in
carefully chosen words: “je ne regiet mie an foire / Mon cors, ne n’an faz livreison” (4842–4843;
“I do not sell my body at market / Or take money for it”). Meleagant is the one to accuse Kay of
treason against Arthur (4854–4857), declaring that no knight of Kay’s status has ever committed
“si grante descovenue” (4887; “such great impropriety”). For him, of course, this consideration is
secondary to his own outrage at the idea that his prisoner has enjoyed carnal relations with the
queen while he, her captor, has been kept at bay. Kay, the only one who can speak with perfect
sincerity in this situation, defends himself: “Certes, mialz voldroie estre morz / Que tex leidure
62. Bruckner, “An Interpreter's Dilemma: Why Are There So Many Interpretations of Chrétien's Chevalier de la
Charrette?” 61. She also makes the point that “Damsels may be up for grabs, but not married ladies” (63).
159
ne tiex torz / Fust par moi quis vers mon seignor” (4863–4865; “Indeed, I would rather be dead /
Than that such foulness or such wrong / Should be believed of me against my lord”). The fact
that Lancelot has actually just committed exactly this treachery passes without narratorial
comment, although the audience cannot fail to consider it. The introduction of the discourse of
treason into the story forces this consideration upon them. What we had just heard described as
“Une joie et un mervoille / Tel c’onques ancor sa paroille / Ne fu oïe ne seüe” (4677–4679; “A
joy and a wonder / Such that never since its equal / Has been heard of or known”) is now
characterized, indirectly, as leidure and torz. As Gerald Morgan writes, “The Queen’s
protestation of her innocence serves only to remind us of her guilt,” and “Keu’s response to the
accusation further underlines the nature of Lancelot’s crime and moreover suggests the moral
condemnation that is appropriate to it.”63 The situation is further complicated by the fact that the
queen’s accuser is himself a much more obvious traitor to Arthur than Lancelot, and is motivated
by his own frustrated desire to be the queen’s partner in adultery rather than just her captor.
Bruckner writes that Chrétien “shields Lancelot by making Meleagant the accuser and Kay the
mistaken culprit,” and this displacement “obscures the adultery by deflecting it onto another
issue: Meleagant’s error.”64 The irony of the fact that Lancelot is able to defend the queen against
her accuser simply because of the wording of his accusation may be read as either delightful or
63. Morgan, “The Conflict of Love and Chivalry in Le Chevalier de la Charrete,” 195. Morgan also suggests that
Chrétien reminds his audience of the adulterous status of the couple’s love by habitually referring to Guinevere by
her title rather than by name. However, this is his common practice with other characters, especially women.
64. Bruckner, “Le Chevalier de la Charrette,” 157.
160
troubling, depending upon one’s perspective.65 The religious overtones to Lancelot’s love, as
expressed in the consummation scene, are similarly ambiguous, offering either an exaltation of
love by assimilating it to religious experience, or a condemnation of it by figuring it as idolatry,
or, as Morgan suggests, both at once, in another of the poem’s instances of unresolved moral
tension.66 Chrétien can be both sympathetic to the lovers and critical of them at the same time.67
The fact that Chrétien’s romance does not follow the affair of Lancelot and Guinevere to
its possible disastrous conclusion does not mean that the text represents a glorification of
adultery.68 The examples cited above serve to show how equivocal is the presentation of the
couple’s relationship, in spite of the rapturous way in which their love is sometimes described.
Nor does the text end with any kind of “happily ever after,” although it closes on a positive note.
Without the stability of a marriage bond, such an ending is impossible, and the text must remain
simply an isolated episode suspended within an implied longer narrative, neither recounting the
beginning of Lancelot and Guinevere’s love nor examining its results. In effect, this 7000-line
romance presents a less complete story than any of the lais discussed in the previous chapter.69
This has led some critics to propose displacing the love story altogether from the centre of the
65. Topsfield writes of the “ensuing farce” of the scene, in which “A courtly audience would revel in Kay’s
misfortune” because the seneschal is often an unsympathetic character (Topsfield, 155).
66. Morgan, 196–97.
67. Morgan contends that this moral tension evaporates once Godefroy takes over the romance. Ibid. 201.
68. The thirteenth-century Prose Lancelot and Grail cycle, which give due attention to the problem of how the hero’s
adultery can be reconciled with his status as an exemplary knight, in effect make explicit some of the interpretation
which might be required of the audience of Chrétien’s story. See Kelly, Sens and Conjointure, 25.
69. Hult likens Lancelot to the lai, because of the restricted scope of its plot. Hult, “Author/Narrator/Speaker,” 76. In
fact, Lancelot deals with a much shorter period than, say, Yonec or Milun, but also contains many more digressions
and incidental details.
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romance. Kelly argues that the poem’s main plot should be seen as revolving around the theme of
freeing the prisoners from Gorre, with the love of Lancelot and Guinevere as a subplot.70 As
David F. Hult points out, the plot involving Meleagant begins the romance and is concluded at its
end, “while the theme that has struck most readers’ fancy, the love story involving Guenevere
and Lancelot, is largely left in suspension.”71 Hult contends that in Godefroy’s continuation,
“Guinevere is largely effaced from the romance: Not only does Lancelot not mention her or even
think of her after being placed in the tower, but even Meleagant’s aggressive intentions have
turned from a single-minded desire to possess the queen to a largely self-consumed escalation of
boastfulness and rage.”72 Emanuel J. Mickel suggests that the poem’s major theme, rather than a
glorification of “courtly love” (by which he means “adulterous love”) is an exploration of the
true meaning of honour, which is to be found in “the acceptance of apparent shame to one’s self
for the sake of others.”73 Mickel sets out numerous examples of how this theme pervades the text.
However, in endeavouring to show how Chrétien’s poem focusses on something other than love,
his analysis does not give adequate attention to the actual importance of love as a motivating
force in the text. Lancelot’s concept of honour is entirely wrapped up in his love for the queen, as
is demonstrated in the monologue in which he considers Guinevere’s cold reception at their
reunion (4352–4360). Lancelot’s willingness to suffer shame both for the queen’s sake (in the
cart) and at the queen’s request (at the tournament) stems not from charity but from adulterous
70. Kelly, Sens and Conjointure, 167; see also Hult, “Author/Narrator/Speaker,” 77.
71. Ibid., 77–78.
72. Ibid., 86.
73. Mickel, “The Theme of Honor in Chrétien's Lancelot,” 245.

desire. Bruckner makes an important point about the social role of this love: “Though Lancelot
and Guenevere’s love is adulterous and must, therefore, remain hidden away in the private realm
of the two lovers, it is not asocial like Tristan and Iseut’s love. Its values are secret, but operate in
the service of Arthurian society: to rescue the Queen is to rescue all the captives of Gorre.”74 If
Guinevere disappears from prominence in Godefroy’s continuation, it is not because she was of
less than primary importance in Chrétien’s narrative. Lancelot neither glorifies adultery nor
explores its tragic potential, but it is nevertheless a romance centred around an adulterous affair.
The mechanics of this affair form a central part of Chrétien’s story, and are described in
greater detail than is often recognized. The first hint that this will be the case comes when
Guinevere laments that her lover is not present to prevent her being taken out of the court by
Kay. Unknown to her, her words are overheard: “Molt le cuida avoir dit bas, / Mes li cuens
Guinables l’öi, / Qui au monter fu pres de li” (212–214; “She believed she had said it very
quietly, / But the count Guinables heard it, / Who was close to her as they were mounting”).
Guinables has not been mentioned before, and is not heard of again. In the event, nothing comes
of this incident, but it seems sinister, and one wonders if Chrétien might not have at some point
had an ending in mind that would have revived this threat. As Meleagant’s captive, Guinevere is
not only imprisoned to keep her from escape, but also guarded by Bademagu to protect her from
her captor. The king assures Lancelot of this himself: “La reïne a boene prison / que nus de char
a li n’adoise, / neïs mes filz (cui molt an poise)” (3362–3364; “The queen is well imprisoned /
For no one may join with her in the flesh, / not even my son [which bothers him greatly]”). Later,
74. Bruckner, “Le Chevalier de la Charrette,” 157.
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Kay confirms it:
Mes ne savez pas la franchise
Que il a a ma dame faite.
Onques ne fu par nule gaite
Si bien gardee torz an marche,
Des le tans que Noex fist l’arche,
Que il mialz gardee ne l’ait,
Que neïs veoir ne la lait
Son fil, qui molt an est dolanz,
Fors devant le comun des genz
Ou devant le suen cors demainne. (4048–4057)
But you do not know the generosity
which he has shown to my lady.
Never by any watchman was
Any border tower so well guarded
Since the time when Noah made the ark,
That he does not guard her better,
For he does not even let his son see her,
For which he is very sorrowful,
Except before the general populace
Or before his own noble person.
Here imprisonment is specifically figured as honour, because it guards the queen from the
assaults of her captor. Kay even uses the word franchise to describe Bademagu’s treatment of
Guinevere. She is said to have control over her imprisonment: “Onques deviseor n’i ot / Fors li
qu’ainsi le devisa” (4062–4063; “There is no other arranger / But she who has arranged it thus”).
Clearly, however, she does not have as much control as she could wish. Overcome with grief at
the report of Lancelot’s death, Guinevere is forced to dissemble because she is in the presence of
others (4165–4176), and retreats from the dinner table, “si se demante / Si que nus ne l’ot ne
escoute” (4178–4179; “and lamented in such a way / That no one could listen or hear”). In the
164
central episode of the consummation, the lovers face obstacles because of the precautions taken
by Bademagu to guard Guinevere from Meleagant (4524–4525). Kay’s presence in Guinevere’s
chamber, presumably related to his invalid state, presents another obstacle, one which is
mentioned only to be overcome without apparent difficulty (4520–4523; 4621–4626).75 Lancelot
feigns weariness and goes to bed that night, although he has no intention of sleeping, “por la gent
de son ostel” (4552; “on account of the people at his lodging”). The narrator comments archly
that “vos qui avez fet autretel” (4551; “you who had done likewise”) will understand well why
he did this. Half a century before the Roman de la Rose, the lovers act in accordance with the
advice given there by Amor:
Souvent, quant il te sovendra
de tes amors, te convendra
partir de gent par estovoir,
qu'il ne puissent apercevoir
le mal dont tu es anguisseus.76
Often, when you remember
your love, you will have
to depart from company of necessity,
so that they may not perceive
the sickness with which you are tormented.
Guinevere’s captivity imposes special limitations on the lovers, but these are no more than
variations on the constraints experienced by all adulterous couples.
Some of the romance’s physical details have a particular symbolic and intertextual
75. Kelly points out that Guinevere’s room is “ancortinee” (4738), which he evidently takes to mean that there was
some provision of privacy. Kelly, Sens and Conjointure, 134. One would hope so; but Kay’s presence still seems
unusual.
76. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 2257–61.
165
resonance. During his first battle with Meleagant, Lancelot is compared favourably with
Pyramus by the narrator, who describes him as one “Qui plus ama que Piramus, / S’onques nus
hom pot amer plus” (3803–3804; “Who loved more than Pyramus, / If any man could love
more”).77 Lancelot encounters physical obstacles in the course of the story closely analogous to
Pyramus and Thisbe’s wall: the orchard wall and the barred window which stand between him
and the queen on the night of their tryst. Surpassing Pyramus, as the narrator has already
commented, he easily overcomes both of these, passing through a hole in the orchard wall in the
way Pyramus and Thisbe fantasized about doing, and tearing out the bars in the window to enter
the queen’s chamber.78 Windows are important elsewhere; Lancelot and Guinevere look at each
other through windows upon the first two occasions where they are together (although separated)
in the text (540 ff., 3570 ff.). As Helen Roberts points out, the person inside the window looking
out is rendered inactive; this is first Lancelot, when he sees the queen passing by, then
Guinevere, when she watches the first combat between Lancelot and Meleagant. At the same
time, although Guinevere is framed by the window while Lancelot fights below, when he looks
up at her he is once again immobilized. Finally, Lancelot’s passage through the barred window
represents the passage “du domaine de la vue, de l’image idéal, à l’amour physique.”79 Lancelot
surpasses Pyramus in achievement as well as in emotion. When Chrétien abandoned the
romance, his hero was once more the passive figure inside at the window, this time in the tower
77. Jean Dornbush points this out as part of an elaborate and largely unconvincing commentary on Chrétien’s use of
Ovid’s story. “Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe and Chrétien's Le Chevalier de la Charrete,” 36.
78. Ibid., 39–40.
79. Roberts, “Lancelot par la fenêtre: la dégradation de l'idéal chevaleresque dans le Chevalier de la charrette,”
385–395.
166
where he is immured by Meleagant (6139). Godefroy is able to get him out through this window,
with the aid of a damsel and a pickaxe, but there is no second night with the queen awaiting him
in the conclusion of the romance.




Certain aspects of the adulterous affair are oddly refracted in the text.

Chrétien splits the jealous husband figure into two characters: Arthur is the
spouse, Méléagant is the gilous.”80

Of the two, Lancelot interacts only with Meleagant.

The latter
sees himself as Lancelot’s rival for possession of the queen, but does not recognize the full extent
of their rivalry.

Meleagant desires Ginevra, whom he declares to be “la rien que plus aim” (3279; “the
thing I love the most”), and his desire is frustrated by his father’s opposition.

But he does not
realize that Lancelot has achieved the union with the queen that he has been denied.

Instead, Meleagant
thinks that this privilege has been accorded to Kay, the man he has legitimately defeated in
battle.

 Discovering the evidence of an interloper in the queen’s bed, Meleagant rails that
guarding a woman is useless (4758–4761).

He has arrived at the conclusion discussed in the
previous chapter.

He thinks that the honourable imprisonment which his father has insisted upon
has been transformed into an invitation to dishonour, giving Guinevere the opportunity to
cuckold her husband and rob Meleagant himself of his perceived rights.


He is wrong, however.


Guinevere’s imprisonment in this instance proved a true obstacle, one which was only overcome
by the extraordinary strength of Lancelot’s love.

By providing Meleagant as an adversary for his hero, Chrétien has neatly side-stepped a conflict between husband and lover, substituting the


(Uitti and Freeman, Chrétien de Troyes Revisited, 74. See Bruckner, “An Interpreter's Dilemma,” 62)

conflict between lover and captor in which the lover is clearly in the right.

There are a few instances of intermediary activity in the romance.

One occurs when a "very wise girl" (“pucele molt sage”) recognizes that Lancelot is motivated by love of Ginevra, and asks Ginevra if she knows his name.



Guinevere considers the request
before granting it, concluding that there is “nule haïne, / ne felenie” (3658–3659; “no hatred, /
nor baseness”) in the question .

There is also the “pucele cointe et sage” (5637; “clever and wise
girl”) whom Guinevere sends with her messages to Lancelot during the tournament of Noauz
(5636–5654; 5835–5855; 5876–5889).

In both of these instances, the concern is with establishing
Lancelot’s identity, not bringing him and Guinevere together.

Neither involves any manipulation
of private space.

The first maiden perceives what could potentially constitute a powerful secret:
that Lancelot loves the queen.

But she uses this knowledge only to assist the knight in defeating
Meleagant.

She apparently does not construe the
love of a knight for the queen (which could
after all be unrequited, and is apparently at this point unconsummated)
as treason or a threat to
feudal stability.


The second maiden does not ask questions about the mysterious messages she is
made to bear from the queen to the unknown knight.

Nor, if she did, would the answers be
incriminating.

Lancelot’s devotion by itself does not constitute a crime.

----

The anonymous women who seek Lancelot’s love (or at least sexual favours) in the
course of the romance act without intermediaries.

The maiden who takes him in early in his journey stages an elaborate scene of attempted rape apparently in order to win his sympathy, or
perhaps only to test him, and boldly maintains her demand that he sleep with her, finally giving
up only after prolonged proof of his indifference, admiring his dedication to an honourable
mission.

Even then, she continues to accompany him for some time.

The
seneschal’s wife similarly takes the initiative, asking Lancelot to confide in her and requesting
his love in return for his temporary freedom, but recognizing that his heart belongs to another
when he refuses her.

Lancelot’s exemplary courtliness is demonstrated in his
deference to women throughout the romance.

Guinevere’s status as a sympathetic character
may suffer from the arbitrary tyranny she exerts over her lover — behaviour which is mirrored in
the irrational demands of the maiden who stages the rape, but also in the rash oath incident which
opens the romance.

However, the story presents a number of minor female figures who are
characterized by their loyalty and good sense.

Meleagant’s sister, the seneschal’s wife, the
maiden who asks Lancelot’s name at the tournament, and the girl sent as a messenger by

(For a discussion of why she does this, see Bruckner, “An Interpreter's Dilemma,” 61–62. She also presumably, as Bruckner points out, recognizes his love and its object (when she sees him fall into a
stupor over the comb). Ibid., 64–65  Ellen Lorraine Friedrich makes a case for reading the scene of the finding of the queen’s comb as a description of a sexual encounter between Lancelot and the maiden, but this is in no way convincing. “The Beaten Path: Lancelot's Amorous Adventure at the Fountain in Le Chevalier de la Charrete,” 199–212. Bruckner, “Le Chevalier de la Charrette,” 148.
Kelly notes: “Guenevere seems to strike most readers of the Charrette by her complete domination of Lancelot. The manner in which she receives him at their first meeting has been the source of much of the scholarly invective heaped upon her, and her apparently whimsical disregard of Lancelot’s honour at the Tournament at Noauz has
strengthened this view and even led some to regard her as an enemy of chivalry.” Sens and Conjointure, 57. Kelly’s rather weak explanation is that as Arthur’s queen Guinevere must have the best, submitting him to constant trial both to test and to increase his valor.)

Guinevere.

Yet none of them is made to play the role of intermediary between the lovers.


Absent from the practical details that surround Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair is any
reference to an intermediary figure.

The couple make the plans for their tryst while talking
together in the presence of others, and come together without involving any third
party.

They also escape the detection of the truth of their affair, and Lancelot’s knightly prowess
is able to dispel the threat posed by the misinterpreted signs that are discovered.

Unlike Tristan
and Isolt, they are not caught out in truth.

The charge from which Lancelot defends the queen is
actually somewhat independent of her actual transgression.

And when she declares that the blood
on her sheets is the result of a nosebleed, the narrator remarks,

“Et ele cuide dire voir” (4784;
“And she believed she spoke the truth”.

The outcome of Lancelot’s combat with Meleagant is
that the lovers’ affair fully maintains its secrecy.

Later, when Lancelot arrives to fight Meleagant
in front of Arthur and his court, Godefroy’s narrator comments that Guinevere must with
difficulty restrain her joy and await “a good and more private place” (un boen leu et un plus privé") to express her feelings.


The presentation of a love affair carried on without the aid of confidants or
intermediaries is in keeping with the way that the romance as a whole delicately skirts the more
troubling implications of an adulterous love between Arthur’s queen and one of his knights.

If
more were to be added, as Godefroy asserts it should not be, it is hard to avoid the conclusion

(Mickel also points out that Guenevere behaves honourably in acceding to Bademagu’s request that she halt the combat between his son and Lancelot (265). Hult makes this passage a major point of discussion, focussing on the fact that the queen is presented here as being absent even while her emotional “presence” is invoked. I’m not sure I agree that this is what is going on.
“Author/Narrator/Speaker,” 93–94)

that the lovers would need to employ some of the figures listed by Andreas Capellanus:

the
secretarius, secretaria and internuntius -- the "Galeotto" -- needed to help in the conduct of an ongoing affair.

And
the more they meet, the more people they involve in their secret, the greater the chance of
discovery would become, until the story also included figures with a primary function of spying
or revealing the existence of the illicit affair.

Indeed, this is precisely what happens with the
expansion of this story into the vast Prose Lancelot.

----

There the love affair is INITIATED -- in the episode of the 'first kiss', when Lancillott reveals his love to Ginevra (the motivational force of the "Adiue, fair sweet friend") with the
help of Galeotto.

Bors, Lionel and the Dame de Malehaut are also in the secret.

And Agravain
and Morgan le Fay attempt to break the couple up by revealing their affair.


If Godefroy gives an explicit statement about where the romance must end, did
Chrétien, by abandoning it some thousand lines earlier, implicitly indicate where he felt it needed
to end?

Chrétien left Lancelot unfinished because
its theme of adultery was distasteful to him.

This view is founded partly on a judgement of
Lancelot as an inferior, poorly composed poem, an opinion already expressed by Paris.

Maria
di Sciampagna, associated with the glorification of adultery by Andrea Cappellano
gave
Chrétien the assignment of writing a romance on that theme, and perhaps, as a result, his heart
was not really in it from the beginning.

It has even been claimed that by ascribing to Marie the

(89. Foerster, “Einleitung,” LXVIII. 90. Paris, “Le conte de la charrette,” 464. 91. Andreas presents a “judgement” purportedly given by Maria, which states, among other things, that Love cannot
exist between husband and wife (1.6.397).

With the single exception of the Charrete,
Chrétien upholds the ideal of love-in-marriage.

Lancelot and Guenevere: A Study on the Origins of Courtly Love,

Kelly cites a number of other examples of scholars who espoused this view: Sens and Conjointure, 12, 14–16.

Chrétien did not like adultery. This is almost universally accepted)


matiere and san in the prologue, Chrétien seeks to absolve himself of blame for the choice of a
subject which he personally disliked.

Topsfield, convinced of Chrétien’s antipathy for Tristan
and Isolt, supposes that he must have had doubts about the love triangle at Arthur’s court after
Lancelot’s return from the land of Gorre.

In this light, it is understandable that Chrétien
should leave Lancelot imprisoned in the tower, in the amorous impasse of consummated
Fin’Amors.”

Rather than bring Lancelot, Tristan-like, back to court, Chrétien chose to pass off
the romance to Godefroy.

Chrétien’s characteristic concern as a poet is with the fact of moral
tension”between love and chivalric fame.

Chrétien abandones "Lancelot" unfinished because, since
the story could not be modified along the lines of Cligès to have a happy ending, the moral
tension could not be resolved, something that he was unwilling to deal with.

An unfinishe  version, in which the text ended with Lancelot immured in Meleagant’s tower,
could in fact have been seen by Chrétien as an appropriate expression of the hopelessness of his
hero’s plight as lover of Arthur’s queen, while avoiding the endless sequence of adulterous
episodes in the Tristan mold which would otherwise loom on the narrative horizon.

On the
other hand, if the hint of a losengier character in the person of Guinables was intended to set the
stage for future difficulties for the lovers, it is possible to imagine a different reason why


(93. Bruckner discusses this suggestion in “Le Chevalier de la Charrette,” 137–38. Topsfield, 110–11. Morgan, 193–200. 96. Hult, 87. Hult goes on to suggest (rather cheekily, I think) that Chrétien might have made Godefroy up entirely, so that he could have his cake (leave Lancelot in the tower) and eat it (provide a tidy end to the romance) too)

Chrétien turned his work over to Godefroy.

Scholars who speculate about the reason why
Chrétien abandoned Lancelot have tended to focus on the idea that he disliked Marie’s plans for
the work and therefore failed to fulfil his commission.

It is perhaps more likely, given the power
dynamic suggested by the work’s prologue, that Maria herself should have been the one
dissatisfied by Chrétien’s proposed conclusion, and we might well imagine that the impetus to
take the work away from Chrétien and give it to Godefroy could have come from her.

This type of argument has rightly been challenged as a flimsy biographical speculation: a a perfect example of an argument created to fit a preconceived interpretation of
the text.

The only certain facts, that Marie gave Chrétien the “matière et sens” of the romance,
and that Chrétien did not write the last thousand lines of the text, are not sufficient to establish
Chrétien’s own attitude towards the work (or, for that matter, Marie’s).

Chrétien disliked Lancelot’s adultery
theme.

All of his other romances glorify romantic marriage.

Frappier
points out that by the time Chrétien abandoned his romance, “l’essentiel avait été dit,” and it is
not necessary to imagine him being repulsed by his subject matter.

Kelly sensibly notes that the
allusions to Lancelot in Yvain indicate that Chrétien could not have abandoned the earlier poem

Was the story going to deteriorate into Tristanesque tragedy, or was Chrétien going to try to kill off King Arthur?

This type of speculation is not particularly helpful, but it is very hard to resist, as the body of scholarship on this
romance attests.

Marie de Champagne might have handed the romance
over to Godefroy de Leigni to complete because she didn’t like Chrétien’s proposed ending.

Tis is not markedly more absurd than some of the things critics have suggested.
98. Mickel, 244.
99. See Kelly, Sens and Conjointure, 19.
100. Frappier, Chrétien de Troyes: L’homme et l’oeuvre, 125)

in disgust.

He need not have mentioned it again, much less made the plot of the subsequent
romance interlock with it, if he were actually disgusted with it.

The assumption that Marie de
Champagne was a champion of adulterous love rests on a very shaky foundation, since it
involves taking seriously the documents” presented by Andreas Capellanus.

Readers of the Charrette have been led to invent a romance about
Chrétien and his patroness based on Chrétien’s own romance about Lancelot and the Queen.

The
superior, even capricious lady who requires unquestioning obedience from her lover/servant.

In this scenario, Chrétien, who abandoned his appointed task in disgust, comes across as
distinctly less obedient than his hero.

As groundless as they may be, these speculations about Chrétien’s motivation do
address a real aspect of his work.

Lancelot presents a scenario which does not, in the long run,
seem likely to end well, and the romance does not follow it to any real conclusion.

In this it
differs from Chrétien’s other extant works.

Only in Lancelot is the possibility of the main
characters’ love being sanctified by marriage made completely out of the question.

The theme of adultery was in fact one of the major additions made by
Chrétien to his putative source, in which the queen’s rescuer is her husband, aided by Saint
Gildas.

Chrétien’s prologue assures us that we should not ascribe any of the romance to his
invention, but it is not clear that we can ascribe it to Marie de Champagne’s either, or which of
101. Kelly, Sens and Conjointure, 23–24.
102. Bruckner, “Le Chevalier de la Charrette,” 138.
103. Micha, “Sur les sources de la ‘Charrette,’” 345–58)

them was responsible for any modifications to a presumed source text.

In any case, this is the
only romance in which Chrétien gives unequivocal adultery such a prominent place.

By way of a
response to the incompatibility of dynastic marriage with courtly (= adulterous) love, he seems less interested in
glorifying adultery than in elaborating fantasies within which characters are able to combine love
and marriage.

The story of Lancelot does not provide any such opportunity, and Chrétien at some
point, for some reason, abandoned it.