page_title: Guinevere
section_title: Abduction stories
hierarchical_section_title: Guinevere / In medieval literature / Abduction stories
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: talesofroundtabl00langrich (find matches) Title: Tales of the Round table; based on the tales in the Book of romance Year: 1908 (1900s) Authors: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912 Subjects: Arthur, King Publisher: London, New York (etc.) Longmans, Green and co. Contributing Library: University of California Libraries Digitizing Sponsor: MSN View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ' Text Appearing After Image: (See p. 745. &gt; LANCELOT BEARS OFF GUENEVERE TALES OFTHE ROUND TABLE BASED ON THE TALES IN THEBOOK OF EOMANCE EDITED BY ANDREW ^^ANQ WITH 4 COLOURED PLATES AND 21 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS By H. J. FORD ^^ OF THF OF ifEW IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1908 CONTENTS. (^ PAGE The Drawing of the Sword . . . • . •&#160;% 1 The Story of Sir Balin . . . .&#160;» i&#160;» . * 8 The Questing Beast . . 17 How Morgan le Fay Tried to Kill King Arthur, . . 26 How the Round Table Began . . . . . 33 The Death of Merlin . . 37 What Beaumains Asked of the King . . «&#160;. . , 38 The Quest of the Holy Graal . . . . . 69 The Fight for the Queen .... . 101 The Fair Maid of Astolat , . . 109 Lancelot and Guenevere . , - • . 129 The End of It All , . . . 151 co,A9S2 ILLUSTEATIONS. COLOUEED PLATES. Lancelot Bears off Guenevere (p. 145) . Lancelot at the Chapel Guenevere and Sir Bors ....Lancelot Brings Guenevere to Arthur FrontispieceFace vaoe IQ 112 ILLUSTEtalesofroundtabl00langrich Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Guinevere, often written as Guenevere or Guenever, is the wife and queen of King Arthur in the Arthurian legend. Guinevere has been portrayed as everything from a villainous and opportunistic traitor to a fatally flawed but noble and virtuous lady. She has first appeared in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, a pseudo-historical chronicle of British history written in the early 12th century, and continues to be a popular character in the modern adaptations of the legend.
  In the later medieval romances, one of the most prominent story arcs is Queen Guinevere's tragic love affair with her husband's chief knight and friend, Lancelot, indirectly causing the death of Arthur and many others and the downfall of the kingdom. This story first appeared in Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart and became a major motif in the Lancelot-Grail of the 13th century, carrying through the Post-Vulgate Cycle and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
context_section_description: Welsh cleric and author Caradoc of Llancarfan, who wrote his Life of Gildas sometime between 1130 and 1150, recounts her being kidnapped by Melwas, king of the "Summer Country" (Aestiva Regio, perhaps meaning Somerset), and held prisoner at his stronghold at Glastonbury. The story states that Arthur spent a year searching for her and assembling an army to storm Melwas' fort when Gildas negotiates a peaceful resolution and reunites husband and wife. The episode seems to be related to an Old Irish abduction motif called the aithed in which a mysterious stranger kidnaps a married woman and takes her to his home; the husband of the woman then rescues her against insurmountable odds. A seemingly related account was carved into the archivolt of Modena Cathedral in Italy, which most likely predates that telling. Here, Artus de Bretania and Isdernus approach a tower in which Mardoc is holding Winlogee, while on the other side Carrado (most likely Caradoc) fights Galvagin (Gawain) as the knights Galvariun and Che (Kay) approach. Isdernus is most certainly an incarnation of Yder (Edern ap Nudd), a Celtic hero whose name appears in Culhwch and Olwen. Yeder is actually Guinevere's lover in a nearly-forgotten tradition mentioned in Béroul's 12th-century Tristan. This is reflected in the later Romanz du reis Yder, where his lover is Guinevere-like Queen Guenloie of Carvain (possibly Caerwent).
  Chrétien de Troyes tells another version of Guinevere's abduction, this time by Meliagant (Maleagant, derived from Melwas) in the 12th-century Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. The abduction sequence is largely a reworking of that recorded in Caradoc's work, but here the queen's rescuer is not Arthur (or Yder) but Lancelot, whose adultery with the queen is dealt with for the first time in this poem. In Chrétien's love triangle of Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot, Guinevere consummated her love affair with Lancelot when Arthur and his knights are trying to rescue Guinevere from the land of Gorre. It has been suggested that Chrétien invented their affair to supply Guinevere with a courtly extramarital lover; Mordred could not be used as his reputation was beyond saving, and Yder had been forgotten entirely. This version has become popular and is most familiar today by its inclusion in an expanded form in the prose cycles, where Lancelot comes to her rescue on more than one occasion (see below).
  There are furthermore several other variants of this motif in medieval literature. In Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet, Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood, claims the right to marry her and carries her off to his castle in a struggle for power that reminds scholars of her prescient connections to the fertility and sovereignty of Britain. Arthur's company saves her, but Valerin kidnaps her again and places her in a magical sleep inside another castle surrounded by snakes, where only the powerful sorcerer Malduc can rescue her. In Diu Crône, Guinevere's captor is her own brother Gotegrim, intending to kill her for refusing to marry Gasozein who claims to be her rightful husband, and her saviour is Gawain. In Durmart le Gallois, Guinevere is delivered from her peril by the eponymous hero. In the Livre d’Artus, she is briefly taken prisoner by King Urien during his rebellion against Arthur. The 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym alludes to Guinevere's abduction in two of his poems.
  A version of the narrative of Guinevere is associated in local folklore with Meigle in Scotland, known for its carved Pictish stones. One of the stones, now in the Meigle Sculptured Stone Museum, is said to depict Vanora, the local name for Guinevere. She is said to have been abducted by King Modred (Mordred). When she is eventually returned to Arthur, he has her condemned to death for infidelity and orders that she be torn to pieces by wild beasts, an event said to be shown on Meigle Stone 2 (Queen Venora's Stone). This stone was one of two that originally stood near a mound that is identified as Vanora's grave. Modern scholars interpret the Meigle Stone 2 as a depiction of the B
caption: Lancelot and Guinevere in Henry Justice Ford's illustration for Andrew Lang's Tales of the Round Table (1908)
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