Although Romeo and Juliet are probably the couple most associated with tragic love within the canon of English literature, in many ways the story of Lancelot and Guinevere is fare more tragic. Their love, after all, brings about not only their own ruin but also brings about the disintegration of the kingdom of Camelot, and with this all of the dreams of glory and honor that Arthur and his knights envisioned when they founded the Round Table. The tragedy of these two figures is a tale of both courtly love and adultery, for as this paper argues the two concepts were in fact closely entwined with each other. For the concept of courtly love depended upon an opposing concept: Love could not be so courtly nor so noble if it were not opposed by the kind of sexual pollution that resulted from adultery.
The most familiar version of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere and the court of Camelot for most of us is Malory's rendition of the Arthurian legend, but the story of Lancelot is in fact far older, as Shichtman and Carley document. Somewhere early on in its evolution as a story, the tale of Lancelot and his love for the queen became entangled with the story of the search for the Holy Grail. In Malory's version, Lancelot is denied a vision of the Grail because only those who are pure of heart may have such visions; he himself has fallen from such a level of purity (first in his heart and then in reality) because he desires a woman to whom he has no marital right. Malory, in his Morte D'Arthur, uses Lancelot's inability to control his sexual desires and then his sexuality as a metaphor, or perhaps an allegory, for the essential weakness of all humans.
Malory's Galahad shows no such weakness; he remains sufficiently pure in both thought and deed to have God grant him a vision of the Grail. But while Malory's interpretation of Lancelot's desire for Guinevere is a legitimate and logical one (he does lust after her, after all), in many ways La...