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Fighting for his Lady’s honor.

Dalrock
March 15, 2017

I’ve touched on this before, but I think the chivalrous story of Lancelot fighting for Guinevere’s honor in Chrétien de Troyes Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart is worthy of a dedicated post.  I should note that I have not read the original work, and all quotes and summaries in this post are from CS Lewis’ Allegory of Love and Infogalactic’s synopsis of the 12th century poem of chivalry and courtly love.

In the poem Lancelot challenges Meleagant to a fight to defend Guinevere’s honor after Meleagant accuses Guinevere of adultery, and this leads to Lancelot fighting in a tournament.  However, as Lancelot is duty bound to follow his Lady’s every whim, he at first must humiliate himself by losing.  From Infogalactic:

When he finally did fight the tournament fighters, Guinevere asks for him to lose to prove his love. He obliges and when he starts to lose, Guinevere changes her proposal, now hoping for him to win. Lancelot complies and beats the other tournament competitors…

But a bit of back-story is needed to explain how Lancelot came to defend Guinevere’s honor at the tournament.  Guinevere (King Arthur’s wife) was abducted by Meleagant, and Lancelot (one of Arthur’s knights) sets out on a quest to free her.

As one of the prime virtues in courtly love is a man debasing himself out of romantic love for another man’s wife, Lancelot is early on forced to humiliate himself by riding in a cart:

Lancelot encounters a cart-driving dwarf, who says he will tell Lancelot where Guinevere and her captor went if Lancelot agrees to ride in his cart. Lancelot boards the cart reluctantly since this is a dishonorable form of transport for a knight.[2] Gawain, not about to demean himself, chooses to follow them on horseback. Along this journey they encounter many obstacles, with the most prominent one coming from other people being unwilling to talk to Lancelot due to his implied low status because of the cart.

The quote above is from Infogalactic.  Lewis offers a more detailed explanation of the symbolism of the cart.  The cart Lancelot rides in is no ordinary cart, but a tumbril, a cart to haul manure that was also used to humiliate criminals, similar to a cucking stool*.

In this predicament he is met by a dwarf driving a tumbril. To his questions, the dwarf—surly like all his race—replies, ‘Get in, and I will bring you where you shall have news of the Queen’. The knight hesitates for a moment before mounting the cart of shame and thus appearing as a common criminal; a moment later he obeys.50 He is driven through streets where the rabble cry out upon him and ask what he has done and whether he is to be flayed or hanged.

After much hardship and humiliation, Lancelot finally encounters Guinevere.  But his queen rebukes him coldly, because she has learned of his momentary hesitation in climbing into the tumbril:

When he has crossed the bridge, wounded in hands, knees, and feet, he comes at last into the presence of the Queen. She will not speak to him.

Eventually Guinevere warms to Lancelot, and she commits adultery with him.  Ironically this is the act of adultery that Lancelot is defending.  From Infogalactic:

They spend a passionate night together after Lancelot breaks into her tower. He injures his hand during his break-in, and leaves blood all over Guinevere’s sheets. Lancelot sneaks out of the tower before sunrise, and Meleagant accuses Guinevere of committing adultery with Kay, who is the only wounded knight nearby. Lancelot challenges Meleagant to a fight to defend Guinevere’s honor.

When conservatives mourn our ostensibly lost sense of chivalry in our feminist age, the values taught in tales like Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart are what they are referring to as lost virtue.  Courtly love was from the very beginning a glorification of adultery, and a worship of women with men ritually debasing themselves to the intertwined sovereigns of romantic love and women.  As Lewis explains, Lancelot worships Guinevere and her sexuality:

The submission which Lancelot shows in his actions is accompanied, on the subjective side, by a feeling that deliberately apes religious devotion. Although his love is by no means supersensual and is indeed carnally rewarded in this very poem, he is represented as treating Guinevere with saintly, if not divine, honours. When he comes before the bed where she lies he kneels and adores her…

Even after Lancelot worships Guinevere’s sexuality, and even while he is defending her (nonexistent) honor, Lancelot demonstrates the virtue of courtly love by yet again humiliating himself:

Even when he is forgiven, his trials are not yet at an end. The tournament at the close of the poem gives Guinevere another opportunity of exercising her power. When he has already entered the lists, in disguise, and all, as usual, is going down before him, she sends him a message ordering him to do his poorest. Lancelot obediently lets himself be unhorsed by the next knight that comes against him, and then takes to his heels, feigning terror of every combatant that passes near him. The herald mocks him for a coward and the whole field takes up the laugh against him: the Queen looks on delighted. Next morning the same command is repeated, and he answers, ‘My thanks to her, if she will so’. This time, however, the restriction is withdrawn before the fighting actually begins.53

Above I wrote that conservatives mourn the ostensible loss of chivalry, because the idea that a woman’s sexuality is divine is if anything more deeply rooted today than it was in the original works of courtly love nearly a thousand years ago.  In the past this divinity was merely implied, but today we have conservative pastors explicitly teaching that a woman’s sexual desire (or lack thereof) is a message from God, and that a wife’s romantic love is needed to sanctify sex in marriage.  We also have country music hits where men explicitly worship their wives, singing about their sexuality as holy and sanctifying:

You’re an angel. Tell me you’re never leaving
‘Cause you’re the first thing I know I can believe in

You’re holy, holy, holy, holy
I’m high on loving you, high on loving you
You’re holy, holy, holy, holy
I’m high on loving you, high on loving you

You made the brightest days from the darkest nights
You’re the river bank where I was baptized
Cleansed from the demons
That were killing my freedom
Let me lay you down, give me to ya
Get you singing, babe, hallelujah
We’ll be touching
We’ll be touching heaven

What conservatives commonly mourn as a lost virtue is in reality a sickness that has grown more malignant over time.  The problem with courtly love is not that it started as noble and was later twisted.  The evil has been there all along, and it plays into a weakness men and women both exhibit going all the way back to the fall in Genesis.

*Tumbril is in fact an alternate name for a cucking stool.

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Post Information
Title Fighting for his Lady’s honor.
Author Dalrock
Date March 15, 2017 4:42 PM UTC (7 years ago)
Blog Dalrock
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/Dalrock/fighting-for-his-ladyshonor.7282
https://theredarchive.com/blog/7282
Original Link https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/fighting-for-his-ladys-honor/
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