Sir Lancelot's Role in Arthurian Legend

There are obvious clashes between the three elements of knighthood (chivalry, Christianity, and courtly love) that are apparent without having ever read Chrétien's "The Knight of the Cart." Do not covet your neighbor's wife, for example, is one of the Ten Commandments that is in direct contrast to the basis of courtly love, which is between a married woman and an unmarried man. At the same time, it is impossible to follow the rule of chivalry that says that a knight should "live to serve King and country" when the knight is having a courtly love affair with the king's wife. It is my belief that Chrétien recognized these clashes between the rules of these three elements of knighthood, and therefore wanted to compose a story that examined how the inability to abide by the customs of all three could cause torment and dishonor in a knight that attempted to do so. He did this through the character Lancelot, who is known as "the knight of the cart." There are many instances in "The Knight of the Cart" in which Lancelot forgoes the rules of both chivalry and Christianity in order to devote himself completely to his courtly love of Gwenevere, suggesting that Chrétien was attempting to expose the tensions that arise when a knight attempts to synthesize and abide by the customs of each of these three elements of knighthood.

The title of the story in itself suggests the first of the many tensions between courtly love and chivalry. Lancelot is known as "the knight of the cart" because he rode in a cart after his horse died on his way to rescue Gwenevere. According to Chrétien, carts were used in that time to transport "all criminals alike, for all traitors and murderers, for all those who had lost trial by combat, and for all those who had stolen another's possessions by larceny or snatched them by force on the highways" (211). Lancelot hesitated prior to getting into the cart, but he decided in the end that it was the only way he was going to be able to follow the queen. Chrétien describes his hesitation as a battle between "Love" and "Reason" (212). Reason told Lancelot that he would be disgraced by getting into the cart, but love told him that he may never see Gwenevere again if he did not.

After Lancelot gets into the cart, Chrétien says that "since Love ruled his action, the disgrace did not matter" (212). The disgrace that he speaks of comes from Lancelot's failure at that moment to follow one of the codes of chivalry: "Live one's life so that it is worthy of respect and honor." Because Lancelot rides in the cart, he is continuously ridiculed and treated poorly by those who knew he had ridden in it. While Lancelot was resting with the people of Logres, a knight came and ridiculed him for having ridden in the cart. The people of Logres wondered what he had been accused of and thought that he would have been the boldest knight in the world if it were not for his riding in the cart (240). They believed that riding in the cart made him a lesser knight than he would have been had he not ridden in the cart. Furthermore, later in the story, Gawain is told that he will only be led to the queen if he rides in a cart, but he refuses, stating "I believe I'd rater be dead than suffer this disgrace" (241). Gawain refuses to ride in the cart because he knows that he'll lose his honor if he does.

There are other ways in which Lancelot loses his honor in order to pursue his love of Gwenevere. During his first battle with Meleagant, Lancelot catches sight of the queen and begins to fight with his back turned to Meleagant (252). He is so blinded by his love for Gwenevere that he can't even keep his mind on battle. Upon noticing this, the woman who had asked the queen for Lancelot's name yells to him, "Once you were the embodiment of all goodness and prowess, and I can't believe that God ever made a knight who could compare with you in valor and worthiness. Yet now we see you so distracted that you're striking blows behind you and fighting with your back turned" (253). Again, Lancelot is a lesser knight because of his extreme adoration of Gwenevere. Furthermore, after Gwenevere asks him to stop fighting Meleagant, he refuses to deliver one more blow to him, even though Meleagant continues to attack him until the king forces Meleagant to stop fighting (254).

This is just one instance, however, when Lancelot refuses to fight with honor because of a request of Gwenevere. At the tournament in which the ladies of the land were to choose husbands based on what knights were most victorious, Gwenevere send word to Lancelot to "do his worst" (276). Her reasoning for this was to determine whether or not the knight was actually Lancelot. Lancelot did not fight after this, causing him to be ridiculed by the other knights as well as the onlookers. They called him "the worst, the lowliest, the most despicable of knights" -- one as a host of Cowardice "who loves and serves her so faithfully that he has lost all honor for her sake" (278). Much like the instance with riding in the cart, Lancelot had lost his honor as a knight based on his love of Gwenevere.

Another code of chivalry that was not addressed by Lancelot was "live to serve King and country." Lancelot was responsible for the freeing of all of the prisoners of Logres; however, the woman who asked the queen for Lancelot's name recognized that he "had not undertaken the battle for her sake, nor for that of the common people assembled in the square: he never would have agreed to it had it not been for the queen" (252). Though by fighting for the queen, Lancelot happened to be serving his country, it seems as though the fact that he was benefiting king and country was incidental in his quest to please and rescue the queen. His intentions are apparent in the section of the story where he is debating whether or not he should save the woman who was being raped by another knight. Lancelot is annoyed because the girl first wants him to sleep with her, and then she needs his help. He thinks, "I have set off in pursuit of nothing less than the queen, Gwenevere...and still I hear this miserable girl constantly begging me for help" (221). Lancelot wishes to simply rescue the queen rather than uphold his honor and be respectful of host and women or protect the innocent.

The final code of chivalry which was frequently ignored by Lancelot is "die with honor." There is never one moment in the story in which Lancelot fears he is nearing death based on his losing a battle or for some favor that he is doing for king or country. Rather, he tries to kill himself twice because he thinks that he will never see the queen again. The first time he tries to jump out of a window after he sees the queen pass by in captivity. The only reason he does not succeed in killing himself is because Gawain stops him as he is halfway through the window (214). The second time he tries to kill himself when he thinks that Gwenevere is dead. He ties his belt around his neck and then ties the other end to his saddle horn, hoping that his horse will drag and strangle him to death. Members of his party see him being drug by the horse and stop to help him (260). Neither of these instances show Lancelot wanting to die with honor; instead, they show him wanting to die because he can't deal with a life without Gwenevere.

Though Lancelot suffers most significantly with synthesizing the customs of both chivalry and courtly love, he also struggles with feeling courtly love and abiding by the rues of Christianity. In fact, there are several instances when Lancelot appears to worship Gwenevere as a god. When he finds the comb that holds several strands of Gwenevere's hair, he held removed her hair and looked at it with reverence, "touching it a hundred thousand times to his eye, his mouth, his forehead and his cheeks" before "placing [it] on his breast near his heart." In fact, "he placed so much faith in these strands of hair that he felt no need for any other aid" (225). He placed his faith in Gwenevere's hair rather than in God. Later, Chrétien states that Lancelot's heart was "its own lord and master" (256).

In another instance, Lancelot is mourning having to leave Gwenevere chamber after their rendezvous in Meleagant's castle. As he was leaving, he felt "a martyr's agony" (265). In the Christian religion, a martyr is someone who dies because they were being punished for giving their life to God. Rather than feeling that he was being punished by not being able to worship God in his own way, he felt punished for not being able to worship Gwenevere in the way that he wanted. After he replaces the iron bars in the window, he "bowed low before the bedchaimber, as if he were before an altar" (265). This is more evidence of his worshipping Gwenevere before God. Finally, when Gwenevere gets up in the morning, she does not notice that her sheets are covered in blood. Rather she "thought them still to be pure white, fair, and proper" (256). White, as a Christian symbol, represents purity, and Gwenevere would have been nothing but pure after breaking one of the Ten Commandments and having an affair. However, she, like Lancelot, is so disillusioned by their love that she believes she has done nothing wrong by having an affair.

Throughout the story, Lancelot seems to have a general air of confusion about what is the right action when more than one action is right in its own way. In one instance, he is torn because he has promised a knight mercy, but he is also bound to a woman to whom he promised to do whatever favor she asked of him. The woman wants the head of the knight that he has promised to show mercy to. He is bound to the woman by "Generosity" and to the man by "Compassion," and he can't decide which of the two is the more honorable path to follow. "He wishes to content them both: Generosity and Compassion demand that he satisfy them both, for he is both generous and merciful. Yet if the girl carries off the head, Compassion will have been vanquished, and if she must leave without it, Generosity will have been routed." Though Lancelot does eventually come up with a solution to this problem, it appears that it is only one of many that he struggles with in determining what action to take when more than one action is required.

Lancelot does not do well with abiding by the customs of chivalry or Christianity while he is bound by courtly love for Gwenevere. He is known as the knight of the cart, a title alone that makes him a lesser knight than he would be if he'd not sacrificed his honor for his love of the queen. Interestingly enough, at the point where Chrétien is no longer writing the story, the instances where Lancelot struggles with synthesizing and abiding by the customs of the three elements of knighthood seem to disappear -- the story becomes more about Lancelot's triumphs as a valiant knight rather than the tension that occurs in attempting to fulfill the requirements of each of these elements. In this way, it seems that Chrétien was attempting to show how courtly love overrides both chivalry and Christianity -- it is impossible to be honorable when love insists that you do things that will diminish your honor, and it's impossible to worship God as a true and faithful Christian when you worship the person you love in the way that you should worship God. In this way, Lancelot becomes the best knight that ever lived because of his abilities on the battle field, but he also becomes the most tormented because of courtly love. This, in effect, makes him a lesser knight due to his inability to synthesize the customs of the three elements of knighthood.

References

Source: The Knight of the Cart -- Chretein de Troyes.