ABSTRACT
Unsurprisingly, many of the themes and practices of medieval funerals and burial were reflected within contemporary literature. In Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur there are descriptions of the funerals and burials of Queen Guinevere and Lancelot. Guinevere was ‘wrapped in cered [waxed] cloth of Rennes, from the top to the toe, in thirtyfold; and after she was put in a web of lead, and then in a coffin of marble’ (Malory 1995:42). There is more description of Lancelot’s death-bed scene and the funeral service. When Lancelot’s companions discovered him dead:
Then was there weeping and wringing of hands, and the greatest dole [sadness] they made that ever made men. [The next morning the bishop gave a Requiem Mass and then took the body to ‘Joyous Gard’ on a horse bier with one hundred torches burning about him.]… And there they laid his corpse in the body of the choir, and sang and read many psalters and prayers over him and about him. And ever his visage was laid open and naked, that all folks might behold him.
