Lancelot, also called LANCELOT DU LAC or LANCELOT OF THE LAKE, one of the greatest knights in Arthurian romance, the lover of Arthur’s queen, Guinevere, and father of the pure knight Sir Galahad. Lancelot’s name first appeared as one of Arthur’s knights in Chrdtien de Troyes’ early-l2th-century romance of Erec, and the same author later made him one of the heroes in Le Chevalier de Ia charette, which retold an existing legend about Guinevere’s abduction, making Lancelot her rescuer and lover. It also mentioned Lancelot’s upbringing by a fairy in a lake, a story that received fuller treatment in the German poem Lanzelet. These two themes were developed further in the great 13th-century Vulgate cycle, or prose Lancelot. According to this, after the death of his father, King Ban of Benoic, Lancelot was carried off by the enchantress Vivien, the Ladi of the Lake, who in time sent him to Arthur s court. Her careful education of Lancelot, combined with the inspiring force of his love for Guinevere, produced a knight who was the very model of chivalry.
BR> In later branches of the cycle in which worldly chivalry was set against chivalry inspired by spiritual love, Lancelot’s son, Sir Galahad, whom he fathered by Elaine, daughter of the Grail keeper King Pelleas, displaced him as the perfect knight. Lancelot’s adulterous love for the queen, moreover, caused him to fail in the quest for the Holy Grail and set in motion the fatal chain of events that brought about the destruction of the knightly fellowship of the Round Table. See Grail, Holy.
In medieval English romance, Lancelot played a leading role in the late-l4th-eentury Le Morte Arthure, which told of a fatal passion for Lancelot conceived by Elaine the Fair of Astolat and which described the tragic end of Lancelot’s love for Guinevere; he also played a central role in Malory’s 1 5th-century prose work Morte Darthur, in which it was essentially the conflict between Lancelot’s love for Guinevere and his loyalty to his lord that led to Arthur’s “dolorous death and departing out of this world.” Bideau Schimetzki
BR> In later branches of the cycle in which worldly chivalry was set against chivalry inspired by spiritual love, Lancelot’s son, Sir Galahad, whom he fathered by Elaine, daughter of the Grail keeper King Pelleas, displaced him as the perfect knight. Lancelot’s adulterous love for the queen, moreover, caused him to fail in the quest for the Holy Grail and set in motion the fatal chain of events that brought about the destruction of the knightly fellowship of the Round Table. See Grail, Holy.
In medieval English romance, Lancelot played a leading role in the late-l4th-eentury Le Morte Arthure, which told of a fatal passion for Lancelot conceived by Elaine the Fair of Astolat and which described the tragic end of Lancelot’s love for Guinevere; he also played a central role in Malory’s 1 5th-century prose work Morte Darthur, in which it was essentially the conflict between Lancelot’s love for Guinevere and his loyalty to his lord that led to Arthur’s “dolorous death and departing out of this world.” Bideau Schimetzki
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