Lancelot and the Round Table

Paper Summary:

The love story of Lancelot and Guinevere is one of the most tragic love stories in Western literature because their love brings about not only their own ruin but that of the kingdom itself and of all the dreams that Arthur and his knights brought to the founding of the Round Table. This paper examines the role that Lancelot plays in bringing about the downfall of the Round Table. Beyond the specific fates that befall Lancelot, Guinevere, and the other denizens of Camelot, this paper explores to some extent the idea of sexual pollution and the reasons why adultery -- surely a far lesser sin than murder or rape or pillage -- looms so large in this narrative.

From the Paper:

"We are most familiar with the story of Lancelot and how his inability to control his sexuality becomes a metaphor for the inability of humans to control their animal natures and so a metaphor for all of the ways in which humans are divorced from divinity through Sir Thomas Malory s Morte Darthur. This telling of the Grail story remains a significant work over 500 years after its publication not only for the clarity of its prose but also because it helped to codify and circulate the Arthurian legend (which is something of a cosmological origin story for the British), as well as for the important role the work had in creating a vernacular tradition of written English literature."

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