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Lancelot

Lancelot

Character Name Variants: Launcelot, Lanzelet, LancilottoBackground Essay Author: Alan Lupack
In Chrétien’s Erec (ca. 1165), Lancelot is said to be the third best knight after Gawain and Erec, but in Chrétien’s Lancelot (1179-1180), Lancelot becomes the central figure and the lover of Guinevere who is willing to take any risk or to suffer any indignity in service of the queen. According to both Chrétien and Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, that Lancelot was raised by a fairy. Ulrich tells how this woman who lives in an enchanted realm in the sea raises Lancelot until he is fifteen, at which point he asks to be allowed to go into the world to earn honor. In Ulrich’s Lanzelet, Lanzelet never becomes the queen’s lover; although he is a lover of several ladies, his true love is Yblis, whom he ultimately marries and with whom he has a daughter and three sons.

In the fourteenth-century Tavola Ritonda, Lancilotto is taken and raised by the Lady of the Lake when his mother Gostanza dies in childbirth. The Lady of the Lake names him Lancilotto, which is said to mean “very wise and skilled knight of the lance and sword.” In the thirteenth-century Vulgate Lancelot, Lancelot is raised by the Lady of the Lake when his father dies due to the treachery of Claudas. It is from this upbringing that he is called “du Lac” or “of the Lake”. His baptismal name is Galahad in memory of Galahad, the younger son of Joseph of Arimathea and the first Christian king of Wales, whose tomb Lancelot opens. (This event was foreseen in a vision by monks from Wales, who are present at the time of the opening of the tomb and who take the body to Wales.) Lancelot is called Lancelot, however, after his grandfather. The text also says that “just...

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