The Lady of Escalot
The medieval Arthurian tale of the maiden who dies for love of Lancelot, transmitted anonymously in the romance tradition.
- Original byline
- Anonymous
- Published
- Date not recorded
- Form
- Other works
- Authorship
- Still unknown
- Reason for anonymity
- Unrecorded
- Copyright
- Public domain
The authorship story
The story of the Lady of Escalot, the maiden who dies of unrequited love for Lancelot and whose body drifts by barge to Camelot, enters literature in the anonymous thirteenth century French prose cycle known as the Mort Artu and in later retellings, including the Middle English stanzaic Morte Arthur, before Malory and Tennyson made her Elaine and the Lady of Shalott famous. Every medieval link in that chain is authorless: the prose cycle's writers are unknown, the English poet unnamed. One of the most retold images in Arthurian romance descends entirely through anonymous hands.
Questions readers ask
Who wrote The Lady of Escalot?
Nobody knows. No author for The Lady of Escalot has been identified in the documented record.
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The Lady of Escalot is in the public domain, though this site has not yet verified a free full-text source for it.
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