Main Menu | List of entries | finished

LAUNCELOT. Lancelot, son of King Ban of Benoic or Brittany, was brought up by the Lady of the Lake, and thus called Lancelot du Lac. In Chrétien's Erec et Enide (late 1150s), 1694, Lancelot is third in the hierarchy of knights, Gawain the first and Erec the second. He appears as Queen Guenevere's lover in Le Chevalier de la charrette (c. 1172), and in the prose romance Le Livre de Lancelot du Lac (1215-1222) he is called la flor des cheualiers del monde, "the flower of the world's knights." He plays a very important role in Malory's Le Morte Darthur (c. 1468-1470). Francesca da Rimini tells Dante that he and Paolo were reading the story of Lancelot's adulterous affair with Guenevere when they fell in love, Inf V.127-137. Because of his love for the queen, Lancelot fails in the Grail quest, and Arthur's kingdom is destroyed.

No one could describe the dances and the subtle looks at Cambyuskan's feast but Launcelot, and he is dead, SqT 283-287. The Nun's Priest says that his story is as true as the book of Launcelot de Lake, NPT 3210-3214. [Arthour]


Chrétien de Troyes, Erec und Enide, ed. W. Foerster, 63; ibid., Lancelot or The Knight of the Cart (Le chevalier de la charrette), trans. W.W. Kibler; "Lancelot do lac," the Non-Cyclic Old French Prose Romance, ed. E. Kennedy; N.J. Lacy, ed., The Arthurian Encyclopedia; Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. E. Vinaver; J. Weston, The Legend of Sir Launcelot du Lac.
From CHAUCER NAME DICTIONARY
Copyright © 1988, 1996 Jacqueline de Weever
Published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London.

Main Menu | List of entries | finished