Courtly Love from Medieval Times Comparing Chretien's Arthurian Romances and Malary's Le Morte d'Arthur with The Art of Courtly Love as the foundational work.
A depiction of these famous characters of English literature portraying no less, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, are characters who have long conjured up images in our minds ever since medieval times of perhaps playing the roles of the ultimate secret lovers that we may, as the readers of the works of Chretien De Troyes and Sir Thomas Malory, often have us fantasizing about these love triangle escapades in total fascination. I would like to hence undertake a critical examination threading through the writing of Andreas Capellanus’ “The Art of Courtly Love”, which was written in Latin, the universal language.
Andreas Capellanus or Andrew, The Chaplain, at around 1185 A.D., as he is otherwise referred to, was commissioned by Countess Marie of France who frequently sat with a gathering of some sixty to seventy women of the Court asked to write an account of the love cases that were brought to the attention of the Countess and the cases were tried by these women. Andreas painstakingly outlines for his friend, Walter, on matters of the heart and how to be more astute and discreet in carrying out his “les affairs de Coeur”. Andreas carefully writes, as a priest who tells you how to have an extramarital affair, concerning what is required to make these love affairs truly successful. The kinds of love affairs spoken of are those which are created as a result of acts of adultery.
This applies only to married people who wish to cheat on their spouse and who need to apply to learn these love techniques. These suggestions apply aptly to Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere: Sir Lancelot, being King Arthur’s most trusted and closest knight and Queen Guinevere as the wife of King Arthur. They find themselves in an entangled love affair, which consequently brings down the kingdom of Camelot because of their ill doings.
In “The Art of Courtly Love on Page 81, Andreas Capellanus writes his rules of love, some of the outstanding ones which are as follows and can be closely viewed as being applicable to the case of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere:
“II. Thou shalt keep thyself chaste for the sake of her whom thou lovest.
V. Be mindful completely to avoid falsehood.
VI. Being obedient in all things to the commands of ladies, thou shalt ever strive to ally thyself to the service of Love.”
Then again on Page 184 there are another set of rules of conducting an illicit love affair, which include:
“I. Marriage is not real excuse for not loving.
I. He who is not jealous cannot love.
VII. Boys do not love until they arrive at the age of maturity. (In Sir Lancelot’s case, he started the affair with Queen Guinevere at the age of 21.)
XV. Every lover turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
XVI. When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
XX. A man in love is always apprehensive.
XXI. Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
XXII. Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved.
XXIII. He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little.
XXVII. A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.”
Essentially, the comparisons and contrasts evident in “Lancelot, The Knight of the Cart” by Chretien de Troyes and “Le Morte d’Arthur” by Sir Thomas Malory are the two major works examined describing the extramarital affair between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. Chretien’s, “Lancelot, The Knight of the Cart” gives more or less of a fairytale account of a young Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. Here “pure love” is highlighted. Sir Lancelot is seen as the “true lover” or ultimate boyfriend for Queen Guinevere, which was a celebration of love’s power. Sir Lancelot is also seen as a Christ-like figure, as was often the case in medieval literature.
A minimalist style is emphasized with only basic information and not much detail is given. On the other hand, in Malory’s account of the love affair of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, he starts out in Books Seven and Eight with the month of May being a month that is full of love, in other words “the lusty month of May”. It was during a time when jousts were performed by the knights to honor their women, and ironically Malory said that chivalry is dead. In this book, the love affair has continued over a period of twenty-five years. There were people who knew of the love affair, like for instance Sir Lancelot’s relatives, but due to fear of losing his reputation due to shame (external force of guilt) they all kept the whole matter quiet.
Chretien’s, “Knight and the Cart” represented a romantic adventure story of the various trysts that Sir Lancelot went through. This tale of this adulterous affair was told in a fantasy style. The cart was seen as a symbol of shame and Sir Lancelot was seen as a young man who was as “wimpy” as a puppy, nebbish, or a baby. Chretien’s Sir Lancelot would not have killed the cart person as was the case in ”Le Morte d’Arthur”. Criminals were the ones to go in carts, not knights of the king, in this case Sir Lancelot was driven by an evil dwarf. There was no quarreling or bickering between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere in Chretien’s story. In the end of the story, it is not clear if Sir Lancelot had gotten a new girlfriend or not. However, throughout the story Sir Lancelot tried to manage exercising the principle of measure, which is a balance between the heart, being love and the head, being reason.
In Sir Thomas Malory’s tale of “The Knight of the Cart” written from the confines of a jail cell for having committed a murder, Sir Lancelot has become a man of perhaps forty-six years of age, approaching the end of the twenty-five love affair with Queen Guinevere, their Indian Summer, which was the culmination of the fall of the Kingdom of Camelot, where Queen Guinevere is to be found guilty of committing treason against the king, her husband, Arthur. This is a tragic tale told of epic proportions and portrayed a realistic setting and not one of a fairytale as in Chretien’s story. This love affair tore down the entire Kingdom of Camelot, an affair which was fine on the surface only. This story is an ironic satire describing how Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot had already sown the seeds of destruction of the Kingdom. The cart in Malory’s story is more of a pragmatic symbol, more of a badge of honor for Sir Lancelot, since his horse was wounded. Queen Guinevere was in this story more concerned about Sir Lancelot than she was in Chretien’s account since she was more insensitive and inconsiderate of Sir Lancelot’s welfare.
The threefold set of Codes existed, which upheld the love affair of Sir Lancelot and Queen Lancelot. There was first the Christian Code, which was maintained by King Arthur and Queen Guinevere with the bond of marriage. The Chivalric Code existed between Sir Lancelot as the major knight of King Arthur with loyalty and undying obedience to the king. Then the Courtly Code existed allowing the extramarital affair to persist between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. In courtly love practice the lady, the beloved is in control of the relationship, by whipping her lover, the man around. This was true of medieval love extramarital affairs. A successful extramarital love affair had to be done with a degree of measure showing a certain amount of balance in it, as was first described by Ovid of the Roman Empire, who was an expert in adulterous affairs. Lovesickness, as was first described by Sappho of Lesbos, a Greek writer, is also a prominent feature of medieval affairs, which was viewed as a real physical disease. If Sir Lancelot could not display its symptoms of sweating and palpitations with apprehension, he was to surely fake those symptoms in order to be worthy of the love of Queen Guinevere. This love was definitely a love of art which had to be cultivated to be of any value in a courtly situation.
