Lancelot

Having survived the Perilous Bed, Lancelot survives the Sword Bridge, and then he has disenchanted the castle in which Guinevere is a captive. He comes in to receive her great greeting and gratitude. But she's as cold as ice.

Campbell reads Lancelot's ordeal in Chrétien's Knight of the Cart as a test of total commitment to the beloved, where even a momentary hesitation — the three steps before the cart — constitutes a failure of the devoted will that the goddess-figure of Guinevere immediately perceives and judges.

Campbell, Joseph, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis

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Giving the example of Lancelot, Lot-Borodine comments: Overcome by vertigo, love can no longer be sustained at this altitude without a complete transformation. In this respect, the edifying end of Lancelot du Lac, who, returning from so far away, dies a hermit in

Lot-Borodine, cited by Louth, interprets Lancelot's trajectory from courtly lover to dying hermit as evidence that profane love, at its most intense, trembles at the threshold of sacred devotion and demands total spiritual transformation.

Louth, Andrew, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Presentthesis

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When, however, the knight was of high degree, and his love, as represented in the paradigm of Lancelot and Guinevere, legitimate, full, and true, the quality of his lady's grace was in accord.

Campbell establishes the Lancelot-Guinevere relationship as the highest paradigmatic instance of courtly love, where the knight's nobility of degree corresponds directly to the fullness and legitimacy of the grace accorded by the lady.

Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968thesis

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Then Sir Launcelot remembered him, and he arose up and went to the window. And anon as he had unshut the window the enchantment was gone; then he knew himself that he had done amiss. Alas, he said, that I have lived so long; now I am shamed.

The passage from Malory, cited by Campbell, depicts Lancelot's recognition — after being deceived into siring Galahad with Elaine — as a moment of profound shame, establishing the structural irony by which the greatest knight's love for Guinevere simultaneously bars him from the Grail and generates its destined achiever.

Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968thesis

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The two are like father and son, like Lancelot and Galahad. So that once again we may recognize here, as there, the virtues of the younger knight as of the spirit or essence of his elder.

Campbell deploys the Lancelot-Galahad relationship as the structural template for understanding how the man of the world generates, in his spiritual offspring, the transcendent essence of his own highest potential — a pattern he maps onto Gawain and Parzival as well.

Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting

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Lancelot, or The Knight of the Cart: after 1176 Yvain, or The Knight of the Lion: c. 1180 Perceval, or The Legend of the Grail: after 1181

Campbell situates Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot within the genealogy of courtly literature, identifying the Knight of the Cart as a foundational text of the amour courtois tradition and one of Chrétien's attempts to counter the Tristan matter.

Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting

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The first writer was Chrétien de Troyes, the court poet of Marie of Champagne. Chrétien began writing at the end of the twelfth century — 1160 to 1190 are the main dates.

Campbell establishes the literary-historical context in which Lancelot as a figure first received coherent written form, tracing the transmission from Celtic bardic storytellers through Chrétien's courtly adaptation.

Campbell, Joseph, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990supporting

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Li Livres de Lancelot (the Vulgate or Prose Lancelot). This interminable terminal moraine of Arthurian bits and pieces is the product of many hands.

Campbell characterizes the Prose Lancelot — the vast Vulgate compilation that elaborated Lancelot's legend — as a composite secular work sharply distinguished in spirit and authorship from the monastic Grail romances that surround it in the cycle.

Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting

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In the courtly world, on the other hand, even where his roles were taken over by Lancelot or Perceval, he was not condemned, but was ever the noble, gracious elder of the new heroes, aiding them in their adventures, much like a father to his sons.

Campbell notes that in the pre-monastic courtly tradition, Gawain's roles passed to Lancelot and Perceval without condemnation, contrasting the secular valorization of these figures with the Cistercian Queste's harsh moral reordering of their hierarchy.

Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968aside

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