Guinevere

Aquest article es centra en el personatge femení de la reina Ginebra, esposa del rei Artús en el cercle literari artúric. En aquesta recerca s’ha dut a terme un estudi sobre el tractament de la condició de la dona a través de l’enfocament que Chrétien de Troyes i l’autor anònim de La Mort del rei Artús exposen en les seves novel•les. Les relacions de la reina Ginebra amb el cavaller Lancelot duran al regne de Logres a la seva decadència i destrucció, convertint al personatge femení en un instrument del diable que allunya als homes del Regne de Déu.


This paper aims to study Guinevere, the Queen consort of King Arthur in the Arthurian literature. The research is about the treatment of the condition of the women from the point of view of Chrétien de Troyes and the anonymous author of La Mort le Roi Artu. The relationship of the Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot led to the kingdom of Logres to his own decay and destruction. The female character became a tool that the devil uses to avert man from the Kingdom of God.

Since Rossetti executed most of his Arthurian works between 1857 and 1864, it has often been thought that his medievalist turn was primarily determined by his friends William Morris and Edward Coley Burne-Jones. Our paper attempts to foreground the existence of previous influences triggering his interest in Malory, which would crystallize in the watercolour Arthur’s Tomb (1854). By means of an interdisciplinary analysis, we will collect a set of evidences leading us to assert that Rossetti had already developed a personal view of Le Morte Darthur (1485) in the early 1850s. We will also state that his watercolour proves not merely a literal rendition of the last meeting between Lancelot and Guenevere: it rather points at the glory and fall of Camelot on the basis of individual failure and the prevalence of individual desire over a common, iconic structure of stability.

NOTE: A revised version of this article is included in: Mesa Villar, Jose Maria. 2014. Women in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Arthurian Renditions (1854-1867). Bern: Peter Lang (pages 64-81).

Dans mon mémoire de maîtrise, j'analyse le sujet de la tendresse dans Lancelot du Lac, un roman médiéval français anonyme du XIIIe siècle. Le roman fait partie du large cycle Lancelot-Graal de la matière arthurienne et raconte les aventures du meilleur chevalier du monde : Lancelot. Mon mémoire comprend trois chapitres. Dans le premier chapitre, je me concentre sur la tendresse maternelle. Dans le deuxième chapitre, je présente la tendresse entre amis, et finalement dans le troisième chapitre, j'analyse la tendresse entre amants. J'emploie la méthode philologique. Mon but est de prouver que la tendresse est un sentiment de base et un droit pour chaque homme, et que la tendresse des amants procure le bonheur et la force sans comparaison. Lancelot de Lac est devenu une histoire d'amour universelle.

In my Master's thesis, I analyse the theme of tenderness in Lancelot du Lac, a medieval anonymous French novel from the 13th century. The novel is placed in the large Lancelot-Grail Cycle in the Arthurian matter and tells the adventures of the greatest knight of the world: Lancelot. My thesis consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I focus on the maternal tenderness. In the second chapter, I show the tenderness among friends, and finally in the third chapter, I consider the tenderness among lovers. The method employed is that of close philological reading. The aim is to prove that the tenderness is a basic feeling and right for each human and that the amorous tenderness gives happiness and strength without any comparison. Lancelot du Lac became an universal history of love.

W mojej pracy magisterskiej analizuję motyw czułości w Lancelocie pisanym prozą, francuskiej średniowiecznej anonimowej powieści pochodzącej z XIII w. Powieść ta wpisuje się w obszerny cykl Lancelot-Graal w materii arturiańskiej i opowiada przygody najlepszego rycerza świata - Lancelota. Moja praca zawiera trzy rozdziały. W pierwszym rozdziale koncentruję się na czułości macierzyńskiej. W drugim rozdziale przedstawiam czułość między przyjaciółmi, i w końcu w trzecim rozdziale analizuję czułość między kochankami. Stosuję metodę filologiczną. Moim celem jest udowodnienie, że czułość jest podstawowym uczuciem i prawem każdego człowieka, oraz że czułość, którą okazują sobie kochankowie, daje szczęście i siłę bez porównania. Lancelot pisany prozą stał się uniwersalną historią o miłości.

Abstract: The paper proposes the concept of eroticon in order to better define the unique nature of love fiction. Unlike other forms of prose, erotic or amorous fiction uses the impact of visual poetics in order to describe the love situation. The demonstration first states the presence of a reccurent scene (the scene of the two lovers contemplating each other from a window), and then develops a detailed analysis of the scene in Chrétien de Troyes' Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart. With arguments from narratology, reading-response theories and theories of fictional worlds, the paper investigates the potential of amorous fiction in visual communication.