Akademik

(Guinevere, Gwenhwyfar, Gaynour, Guenhumare)

   Guenevere is the wife and queen of King ARTHUR and in most texts the lover of Arthur’s greatest knight, Sir LANCELOT du Lac, in the vast body of medieval literature belonging to the Arthurian legend. While throughout the Arthurian tradition, Guenevere is depicted as unfaithful to her husband, the treatment of her character varies significantly depending upon the object of and the motivation for her illicit love.

   In GEOFFEY OF MONMOUTH’s influential chronicle HISTORIA REGUM BRITANNIAE (History of the Kings of Britain, ca. 1136), Guenevere is described as the most beautiful woman in the land, and as belonging to a noble old Roman family in Celtic Britain (in later texts she is the daughter of Arthur’s ally, King Leodegraunce of Camiliard). In Geoffrey’s story, however, which provided the frame for all subsequent versions of the legend, Arthur leaves both his realm and his queen in the care of his nephew Mordred when he goes to the continent to make war on the Roman emperor. While Arthur is out of the country, Mordred usurps his throne, and Geoffrey tells us that Guenevere is living adulterously and out of wedlock with her husband’s nephew, having forsaken her marriage vows.When Arthur returns to Britain to make war on the traitor, Guenevere enters a convent out of despair.

   Geoffrey’s immediate followers, WACE and LAYAMON, took different directions in their depictions of the queen. In his Roman de Brut (ca. 1155), a verse chronicle in French written for English king HENRY II,Wace admits that Guenevere had given her love to a noble knight with many virtues, though the fact that he is her husband’s nephew is a problem for Wace.Wace also describes her motive for entering the convent as sorrow for the sin she had committed. A harsher picture of Guenevere appears in Layamon’s English ALLITERATIVE VERSE Brut (ca. 1200). Layamon never mentions love as a motivation for Guenevere, and Arthur vows to burn the queen when he catches her. GAWAIN, Mordred’s brother, follows his uncle by vowing to hang Mordred and to pull the queen apart with horses. The chronicle tradition influences the famous tragic 14th-century ALLITERATIVE MORTE ARTHURE, in which Guenevere is said to have married Mordred.When Arthur returns to fight his nephew,Mordred writes a letter to Guenevere telling her to flee along with their children. It is the only English text in which Guenevere is not barren. In the Alliterative Morte, she flees to a nunnery in fear of her true lord, Arthur. In the Welsh tradition, Guenevere does have children with Arthur, and the queen is depicted as a fallen and despicable woman fairly universally in Welsh texts. In MARIE DE FRANCE’s 12th-century LAI of LANVAL, probably based on Breton sources related to the Welsh traditions, Guenevere (called simply “the Queen”) is lustful and treacherous, propositioning the noble Lanval, and then lying to Arthur and accusing Lanval of indecency when he rejects her advances.

   It is in the French ROMANCE tradition that Guenevere’s reputation begins to soften, first and most significantly in CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES’s romance of LANCELOT, or The Knight of the Cart (ca. 1175). This text introduces Lancelot as Arthur’s invincible knight, whose love for the queen reaches nearly religious heights and spurs him to remarkable feats of arms, of self-deprivation, and of fidelity (to his lady). While the queen, like most courtly mistresses, is shown as somewhat haughty and capricious, her love for Lancelot is unquestioned, and, the text implies, perfectly justifiable because of the knight’s worthiness, according to the COURTLY LOVE tradition.

   As the romance tradition develops, the contrasting representations of Guenevere combine to make her a far more complex character. In the lengthy Prose Lancelot, part of the series of early 13th-century French prose romances known as the VULGATE CYCLE, the Lady of the Lake reassures the queen that her love for Lancelot, the noblest knight in the world, cannot be wrong. But in a later romance of the Vulgate Cycle, the more ascetically Christian Quest of the Holy Grail, it is Lancelot’s illicit love for the queen that causes his failure to achieve the Grail. In the final romance of the cycle, the Mort Artu, the affair of Guenevere and Lancelot is one of the causes of the fall of Arthur’s Round Table.Guenevere herself, however, is strong in defense of her virtue against the traitor Mordred. When Arthur leaves England in his charge, she is angry because she knows Mordred cannot be trusted.When he usurps the throne and attempts to marry the queen, she takes refuge in the Tower of London and sends a message to Arthur herself, warning him of Mordred’s treachery.

   Thomas MALORY’s picture of Guenevere in his MORTE DARTHUR is the culmination of the medieval legend, and provided the model of the character of Guenevere for all modern treatments of the legend. Malory used both the Alliterative Morte and the Vulgate Cycle as sources, but chose to accept the Vulgate attitude toward the queen’s love. In Malory, Guenevere’s love is clearly ennobling, and she seems to move from the haughty and selfish mistress to a more generous and courageous character in the end as she resists and thwarts Mordred’s designs.Malory declares that the queen was a true lover all her life, and that as a result she had a good end. Her end in Malory’s text comes, as usual, in a nunnery. But she is a true nun, not simply one who has fled for sanctuary out of fear. In Malory, she rejects the vanities of the world, admits her culpability in causing the fall of Arthur’s kingdom, and embraces true Christian charity, inspiring Lancelot to lead a life of prayer, and dying a holy and respected abbess. In Malory, Guenevere has come as far as possible from the traitress of Geoffrey of Monmouth or the lustful wench of Marie de France. After Malory, it was no longer possible to depict Guenevere as an uncomplicated adulteress, and much more difficult to make her a villain.

   Bibliography

   ■ DiPasquale, Pasquale, Jr. “Malory’s Guinevere: Epic Queen, Romance Heroine and Tragic Mistress,” Bucknell Review 16 (1968): 86–102.

   ■ Ruud, Jay. “Teaching the ‘Hoole’ Tradition through Parallel Passages.” In Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition, edited by Maureen Fries and Jeanie Watson, 73–76. New York: Modern Language Association, 1992.

   ■ Wheeler, Bonnie, and Fiona Tolhurst, eds. On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries. Dallas: Scriptorium, 2001.