Jessie Laidlay Weston

“ King and queen fly, carrying the child with them, and while the wife is tending her husband, who dies of a broken heart on his flight, the infant is carried off by a friendly water-fairy, the Lady of the Lake, who brings the boy up in her mysterious kingdom. In the German poem this is a veritable “Isle of Maidens,” where no man ever enters, and where it is perpetual spring. In the prose Lancelot, on the other hand, the Lake is but a mirage, and the Lady’s court does not lack its complement of gallant knights ”

“ The trend of modern critical opinion is towards accepting Map as the author of a Lancelot romance, which formed the basis for later developments, and there is a growing tendency to identify this hypothetical original Lancelot with the source of the German Lanzelet. ”

“ In the continuations added at various times to Chrétien’s unfinished work the rôle assigned to Lancelot is equally modest. Among the fifteen knights selected by Arthur to accompany him to Chastel Orguellous he only ranks ninth. In the version of the Luite Tristran inserted by Gerbert in his Perceval, he is publicly overthrown and shamed by Tristan. Nowhere is he treated with anything approaching the importance assigned to him in the prose versions. Welsh tradition does not know him; early Italian records, which have preserved the names of Arthur and Gawain, have no reference to Lancelot ”

“ Finally, his relations with Guenevere are revealed to Arthur by the sons of King Lot, Gawain, however, taking no part in the disclosure. Surprised together, Lancelot escapes, and the queen is condemned to be burnt alive. As the sentence is about to be carried into execution Lancelot and his kinsmen come to her rescue, but in the fight that ensues many of Arthur’s knights, including three of Gawain’s brothers, are slain. Thus converted into an enemy, Gawain urges his uncle to make war on Lancelot, and there follows a desperate struggle between Arthur and the race of Ban. ”