Een vorstin met een verleden? Over Guenièvre (en Lancelot) in Die Riddere metter Mouwen

Samenvatting

Apart from Chrétiens Le Chevalier de la Charrette and the prose cycles, Old French Arthurian romances rarely show Lancelot and Guinevere as lovers. Things are different, however, in Middle Dutch literature. Passages added to episodic romances interpolated in the Lancelot compilation refer to the couple’s adulterous love affair, and one of the original stories (now lost) even seems to have made fun of Lancelot as a lover. This contribution describes Guinevere and Lancelot as secondary characters in Die Riddere metter Mouwen (‘The Knight with the Sleeve’), demonstrating that their performance in the story, by way of contrast, contributes to a celebration of non-controversial courtly love.