Copyright 2001
The Romance of Lancelot and Guinevere: Problematic Elements of Summer Love in Camelot
During the Middle Ages, the concept of courtly love was extremely popular among the European aristocracy. This popularity was fueled by the circulation of intriguing works such as Ovid's Amores, Boccaccio and Chaucer’s versions of Troilus and Creseyde and Boethius' exploration of the dynamics of cosmic love. Although Thomas Malory in Book XIV of Le Morte D' Arthur extols the transcendent virtues of courtly love between Lancelot and Guinevere during the glorious Arthurian age, close examination of the text reveals many problematic elements of their love: it is arguably lecherous; its obsessive and dysfunctional elements lead to Lancelot's madness; its scandalous nature is a catalyst for the final conflicts that destroy the great fellowship of knights.
Malory's famous passage on the "month of May", reminiscent of Chaucer's introduction to the Canterbury Tales, is the author's great defense of Guinevere's virtue and purity in the matters of love. Malory speaks of the Middle Ages as a Golden Age of honorable and true love, devoid of intemperance and fiery passions that demand immediate gratification:
But nowdays men can nat love sevennyght but they must have all their desyres. That love may nat endure by reson, for where they bethe sone accorded and hasty, heete sone keelyth. And ryght so faryth the love nowadayes, sone hote sone colde. Thys ys no stabylyte. But the olde love was not so. For men and women coulde love togydirs seven yearys, and no licoures lustis was betwyxte, and then was love triuthe and faythefulnes. And so in lyke wyse was used such love in kynge Arthurs dayes. (Malory, 649)
This passage serves as a prelude to the story of the abduction of the queen and her valiant rescue by Lancelot. Obviously intended to qualify the events that follow, the reader is encouraged to believe in the pure and noble nature of the intimate friendship between Lancelot and the queen. Interestingly, this idyllic concept of love is reminiscent of Boetheus' ideas about cosmic love:
That the universe carries out its process in accord and with stable faith, that he conflicting seeds of things are held by everlasting law, that Phebus in his golden chariot brings in the shining day, that the night, led by Hesperus , is ruled by Phoebe...all this harmonious order of things is achieved by love which rules the earth and the seas, and commands the heavens...Love binds together people joined by a sacred bond, love binds scared marriages by chaste affections; love makes the laws that joins true friends. (Consolation of Philosophy, Bk 2)
Boetheus speaks of a cosmic love that not only holds together the universe, but holds together human relationships. Ironically, Lancelot and Guinevere's alleged noble love, free of "licoures lustis, " exacerbates the entropy in the world of the court and contributes immeasurably to the destruction of Arthurian society.