Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart

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Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (French: Lancelot, le Chevalier de la Charrette) is an Old French poem by Chrétien de Troyes. Chrétien probably composed the work at the same time as or slightly before writing Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, which refers to the action in Lancelot a number of times. The love affair between Guinevere and Lancelot appears for the first time in this poem as does Arthur's court city of Camelot.

The action centers on Lancelot's rescue of the queen after she has been abducted by Meleagant. The Abduction of Guinevere is one of the oldest motifs in Arthurian legend, appearing also in Caradoc of Llancarfan's Life of Gildas and carved on the archivolt in Modena Cathedral. After Chrétien's version became popular, it was incorporated into the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and eventually Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

Chrétien says he composed the romance at the behest of Marie, countess of Champagne, the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France and apparently his patroness at the time. There is reason to believe the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere was invented wholecloth by Chrétien for the poem, but it is possible he found the episode already in whatever source material Marie provided him. The poet did not finish the work himself, leaving Godefroi de Leigni to complete the last thousand lines. There has been much speculation about Chrétien's attitude towards the poem; some scholars suggest he abandoned it because he disapproved of its adulterous subject. Additionally, he may have been uninterested by a tale thrust on him by his patroness, preferring to spend more time on Yvain. There is also speculation as to its relationship to the German Lanzelet by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, which features the Queen's abduction but not her affair with Lanzelet, and may derive from a version of the story that predates Knight of the Cart.

[edit] References

Chrétien de Troyes; Owen, D. D. R. (translator) (1988). Arthurian Romances. New York: Everyman's Library. ISBN 0-460-87389-X.
Lacy, Norris J. (1991). "Chrétien de Troyes". In Norris J. Lacy, The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, pp. 88–91. New York: Garland. ISBN 0-8240-4377-4.