Disability and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur [1° ed.] 1138334278, 9781138334274

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Disability and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur

This book considers the representation of disability and knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur. The study asserts that Malory’s unique definition of knighthood, which emphasizes the unstable nature of the knight’s physical body and the body of chivalry to which he belongs, ­depends upon disability. As a result, a knight must perpetually oscillate between disability and ability in order to maintain his status. The knight’s movement between disability and ability is also essential to the project of Malory’s book, as well as its narrative structure, as it reflects the text’s fixation on and alternation between the wholeness and fragmentation of physical and social bodies. Disability in its many forms undergirds the book, helping to cohere its multiple and sometimes disparate chapters into the “hoole book” that Malory envisions. The Morte, thus, construes disability as an ambiguous, even liminal state that threatens even as it shores up the cohesive notion of knighthood the text endorses. U ­ sing contemporary and medieval studies of disability in addition to studies of Malory’s depictions of violence and injury, this study demonstrates that key moments in the Morte position the liminality of disability not as marginal but as powerful, thus blurring clear demarcations between the body and its fluids, the sacred and profane, the masculine and feminine, the virginal and sexual, and the disabled and able-bodied. Tory V. Pearman, Associate Professor of English at Miami University Hamilton, earned her MA at Purdue University and her PhD from Loyola University. She has published widely on the intersections between gender and disability in medieval literature. She is author of Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (2010).

Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture

3 Cultural Difference and Material Culture in Middle English Romance Normans and Saxons Dominique Battles 4 Mary Magdalene in Medieval Culture Conflicted Roles Edited by Peter V. Loewen and Robin Waugh 5 The Signifying Power of Pearl Medieval Literacy and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre Jane Beal 6 Language and Community in Early England Imagining Distance in Medieval Literature Emily Butler 7 Storytelling as Plague Prevention in Medieval and Early Modern Italy The Decameron Tradition Martin Marafioti 8 Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature Albrecht Classen 9 Beowulf’s Popular Afterlife in Literature, Comic Books, and Film Kathleen Forni 10 Disability and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur Tory V. Pearman For a full list of titles published in the series, please visit www.routledge.com

Disability and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur

Tory V. Pearman

First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Tory V. Pearman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-1-138-33427-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-44545-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

For Jordan

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: “Able to do Lyke a Knight”: Disability in Malory’s Morte Darthur 1 1 Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code: Women Healers and Harmers in the Morte 20 2 ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’: Women and the Love-Madness of Tristram and Lancelot 46 3 “(Dis)abling Heteronormativity: The Touch of the Queer/Crip in Malory’s Morte” 64 4 Vessels of Blood: (Dis)abled Bodies and the Grail in Malory’s “Tale of the Sankgreal” 92 5 Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry, and Images of (Dis)ability in the “Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

121 151 157 193 207

Acknowledgments

I am deeply thankful for the personal and professional support of many people in helping to make this book a reality. Edward Wheatley has provided guidance in the form of advice and commentary on chapter drafts and continues to serve as an academic role model, mentor, and friend. The seeds of this book were planted long ago when I took a course with Dorsey Armstrong on gender and Malory; her enthusiastic teaching and admirable scholarship continue to inspire my own academic growth. I am especially thankful for my encouraging colleagues in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Writing at Miami University Hamilton, all of whom provided generous support and advice throughout this long process. Encouragement from Whitney Womack Smith, Kelli Lyon Johnson, Tom Flanigan, and Diana Royer kept me going on days when I most needed it. Katie Kickel, Theresa Kulbaga, and Leland Spencer were kind enough to read drafts of my work and offer insightful feedback and suggestions that were invaluable to my revision process. Likewise, perceptive commentary from Joshua Eyler and Molly ­Martin helped me to refine this project. Suggestions from two anonymous manuscript readers helped to sharpen my thinking, arguments, and language. I am ­thankful for the many informative and lively conversations I have had with my colleagues from the Society of Disability in the Middle Ages, which have helped me continue to develop my inquiries into medieval disability. Thanks, too, to my writing partner, Daisy. Financial assistance from the Miami University Committee on Faculty Research, the Miami Hamilton Research Fund, and the Miami ­Hamilton Center for Teaching and Learning helped to make this project possible. Thanks to library staff at Miami University Hamilton for helping me to access needed research materials. In the early stages of this book, I was lucky enough to have a student assistant, Ashley Johnson, through the generous support of the Humanities Center Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship. Ashley was integral to gathering initial research, and I am so pleased I had the opportunity to work with her. Indeed, I thank all of my students at Miami Hamilton, whose enthusiasm for learning and creative ways of thinking keep me inspired and teach me something new every day.

x Acknowledgments Selections of the Introduction and Chapter 4 of this book appeared previously as “Disability, Blood, and Liminality in Malory’s ‘Tale of the Sankgreal’” in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 10.3 (2016): 271–86 and appear here with kind permission from the Journal of ­Literary and Cultural Studies. I wish to offer a very special thanks to my parents, siblings, and extended family for their support; love; and, in the case of my sister, Tara Vickers, helpful writing suggestions. My children, Gram and Marina, helped me by facilitating just enough focus and distraction to keep me committed to finishing this book; I love you both too much to put into words here. I leave my last thanks and all my love to Jordan, whose unwavering support of me and my work is the reason I was able to complete this book: this is for you.

Introduction “Able to do Lyke a Knight”: Disability in Malory’s Morte Darthur

Disability permeates Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur: knights frequently incur physical injuries as well as mental impairments; kings suffer from deteriorating bodies; and knights, ladies, and other figures miraculously cure impaired characters. As Stephen Atkinson succinctly notes, Malory’s text “contains a higher ratio of wounds per page than” any other “substantial Middle English narrative.”1 Indeed, disability bookends the text, appearing first in the form of Uther’s debilitating lovesickness incurred from the sight of Igrayne and ending with Arthur’s purported “healing” in Avalon. Throughout the text, wounds and injuries appear to be a hindrance to a knight’s reputation, and, as a result, a knight’s eschewal of disability seems necessary to the reestablishment and maintenance of his reputation. The division between knighthood and disability, however, is not so unambiguous; instead, a knight must perpetually oscillate between disability and ability in order to maintain his status, making (dis)ability central to knighthood. The bloody violence of knightly combat facilitates this movement. As this study will show, the knights’ movement between disability and ability is also essential to the project of Malory’s book, as well as its narrative structure, as it reflects the text’s fixation on and alternation between the wholeness and fragmentation of physical and social bodies. Disability in its many forms—including physical impairment, sensory impairment, mental illness, and chronic disease—undergirds the book, helping to cohere the text’s multiple and sometimes disparate chapters into the “hoole book” that Malory envisions. Despite its pervasiveness, however, the representation of disability in the Morte has yet to move to the forefront in critical readings of the text. Many scholars have focused on the role of injury and blood in the text’s construction of knighthood, adding much to our understanding of the ways in which the physical combat of knights intersects with issues of gender, comments on fifteenth-century warfare, and drives the actions of Malory’s text. 2 The scholarly interest in the “essentially military spirit” of the Morte rightly focuses on the importance of physical acts of combat to knightly chivalry.3 This military spirit, moreover, echoes the chaotic times in which Malory was writing, reflecting England’s

2 Introduction internal Wars of the Roses (1455–87) as the Lancasters and Yorks fought for monarchial control as well as the external wars fought throughout the fifteenth century with France.4 However, equally important to the Morte’s explorations of combat and warfare are its engagements with the impairments and conditions inevitable to such violent acts. Exposure to war means an exposure to soldiers returning with various impairments; thus, it is probable that men with visible physical impairments were a common sight in Malory’s fifteenth-century England. Despite the likely ubiquity of disabled soldiers in late medieval society, however, “historical, financial, and literary records […] only seldom mention the impairment of knights and other warriors of all ranks as resulting from combat.”5 Archaeological evidence, on the other hand, indicates that the survivors of military combat participated in multiple battles. For example, Irina Metzler finds that remains from an archaeological site at ­Towtown, the location of a violent battle fought during the Wars of the Roses in 1461 in which Malory may have participated,6 suggests that many of the warriors were veterans of previous battles. Among the thirty-­seven reassembled remains, twelve exhibited healed fractures commensurate to wounds incurred during military fighting or training. Two others exhibited healed wounds to the head and face concomitant with combat wounds.7 Malory, being of the knightly class and involved in the political intrigue of his day, would most likely have been in contact with men physically and emotionally influenced by the violence of war, and this exposure may have affected his use of disability in the text.8 However, the primary intent of this study is not to offer a biographical study of Malory’s representation of disability and combat or a strictly historical study of disability and combat in fifteenth-century England, although either would be most welcome. While I indeed supplement my analyses of disability with medieval historical, religious, and social perspectives, I am chiefly interested in how the literary representation of disability informs Malory’s particular definition of knightly masculinity and affects the thematic and formal elements of his book. I acknowledge that literary representations of disability are not always correspondent to the lived experience of disability; however, they do reveal one way in which readers (both medieval and modern) who may consider themselves “normate” may make sense of concepts of (dis)ability, normalcy, and deviancy.9 Because the disabled body lays bare the illusion of the perfectly abled body, it threatens the cohesiveness of social and physical bodies and identities, creating what disability scholar Ato Quayson calls “aesthetic nervousness,” a textual “anxiety” that occurs across all levels of the text: between disabled and nondisabled characters, across structural and thematic aspects of the text, and between the reader and the text itself.10 Before delving into the representations of disability in Malory’s work, it is important to first consider the prevalent concerns of current

Introduction  3 disability studies scholarship, primarily the models through which disability has been situated, as these have shaped scholars’ approaches to disability in the Middle Ages. Primarily, disability studies scholarship seeks to undo the negative connotations attached to disability by turning attention to the constructed nature of the norm itself. Lennard Davis has famously stated, “[T]he problem is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is constructed to create the ‘problem’ of the disabled person.”11 One way to “reverse the hegemony of the normal” in the ways Davis calls for is to forgo viewing disability under a medical model that positions it as a problem in need of cure or treatment.12 Alternatives to the medical model situate disability as a product of social, historical, and cultural factors. The social model, for instance, distinguishes between impairment, or the physical reality of a bodily or mental condition, and disability, or the social interpretation of that bodily or mental condition. While the social model has done much to draw attention to the ways in which disabling is a social process that occurs in the interactions between the able-bodied and the disabled, recently, it has been critiqued for obscuring the bodily experience of disability. For example, Tom Shakespeare and Nicholas Watson, although they concede the positive changes the social model has made by revising the medical model, acknowledge its shortcomings: “Disability should not be reduced to a medical condition. It should not be overlaid with negative cultural meanings. Neither should it be reduced to an outcome of social barriers alone, however important these might be in people’s lives.”13 In order to address the “interactional space between embodiment and social ideology” that is missing from a rigid social model approach, disability theorists like Shakespeare, Mitchell, and Snyder have adopted a cultural approach that theorizes the ways in which bodily differences shape experiences with one’s society, culture, and materiality.14 Mitchell and Snyder, who consider disability alongside “sites of cultural oppression,” note that any study of disability “must incorporate both the outer and inner reaches of culture and experience as a combination of profoundly social and biological forces.”15 Medieval scholars of disability have similarly debated how to best approach notions and representations of disability in the Middle Ages. Irina Metzler has adopted a social and historical approach to medieval disability, keeping a distinction between impairment and disability, while also underscoring the liminality or in-between nature of disability.16 ­Edward Wheatley’s study adds that religion was a principal disciplinary force for regulating disabled bodies in the Middle Ages.17 Joshua Eyler, acknowledging the multiple ways in which scholars have approached medieval disability, advocates for the kind of cultural perspective advocated by Mitchell and Snyder, which investigates disability as “something that is constructed by both bodily difference and social perception at the same time.”18 Because there was no medieval-specific definition of

4 Introduction “disability,” scholars of medieval disability have moved toward this sort of cultural model, noting how religious, economic, gendered, and/or cultural discourses worked together to create varying responses to impaired people, some disabling, some enabling, and some without evaluable effect, while also being careful not to ascribe contemporary notions of disability identity to medieval experiences of disability.19 Recently, Julie Singer has encouraged medieval disability scholars to be less concerned about finding precise definitions of and distinctions between impairment and disability, instead promoting “inquir[ies] into the transformative effects that ‘disabled’ bodies might operate on other categories of social identity.”20 This book adopts a similar approach, noting how disability defines, troubles, and finally transforms the social and physical bodies of Malorian knighthood. While I do, at times, distinguish between physical impairment and social disabling in order to draw attention to the social and cultural factors that contribute to a nuanced conception of corporeal difference in the Middle Ages and, more specifically, in the purview of Malory’s text, I most often adopt modern disability theorist Susan Wendell’s notion of “disability as difference,” wherein she regards disability “as a form of difference from what is considered normal or usual or paradigmatic in a society.”21 Considering disability as difference in the Morte allows for an analysis and critique of the social body of institutionalized knighthood through the bodies deemed deviant from the knightly norm. Despite the lack of a statistical norm in the Middle Ages, notions of “normalcy”—and, consequently, “deviancy”—did exist. As Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has found, national, cultural, and religious communities abjected Others in the process of constructing collective identities; frequently, such communities pointed to corporeal differences as evidence of Otherness. 22 Thus, although there were no medieval equivalents to the terms disabled or disability, there was a concept of difference that marked those with corporeal differences as deviant from a kind of bodily norm; this norm was usually the white, male, able body. The medieval chivalric community, for instance, insisted on an able body. As Ramon Llull’s thirteenth-century Book of the Order of Chivalry notes, “a man lame / or ouer grete or ouer fatte / or that hath ony other euyl disposycioun in his body” is unworthy of reception “in to thordre of chyualrye” and “is not suffysaunt to be a knyght.”23 Llull continues, asserting that no matter a squire’s nobility or wealth, if he is “lame of ony membre,” he “is not dygne ne worthy to be receiued in to thordre of chyvalry.”24 Another popular treatise on the order of knighthood that was influenced by Llull’s text, Geoffroi de Charny’s fourteenth-century The Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry, devotes several chapters to the rigors of knighthood, emphasizing the importance of a strong, able body to worthy knights and pointing out the constant bodily threat knights face from their enemies. “[M]en-at-arms who are worthy of praise” must be “physically strong and skillful,” and

Introduction  5 willing to endure “hardships, pains, discomforts, fears, perils, broken bones, and wounds” as well as death. 25 The range of injuries listed in both Llull’s and Geoffroi’s texts demonstrates that knights were prone to a variety of injuries and illnesses. ­Malory’s knights are no exception. As a result, I discuss an array of bodily states in this study, including wounds, sensory impairments, amputations, leprosy, mental illness, and chronic illness, under the term disability as they match Wendell’s definition of disability as a difference from “what is considered normal or usual or paradigmatic in a society.” Placing these conditions under the umbrella of disability is not to insinuate that they are the same; in contrast, each disability carries with it its own range of symptoms, causes, treatments, and social resonance. One need only look to the vast scholarship on medieval leprosy or mental illness to see how complex the physical, social, and cultural intricacies of a disease or disability can be, and I point out these intricacies as I focus on particular impairments throughout the book, including, for example, lovesickness in Chapter 1. 26 Some of the disabilities I consider here are visible, while others are invisible; some are temporary, while others are permanent; and some share features with illnesses or other diseases or impairments, while others are more clearly categorizable. The boundaries between disease, illness, and disability are blurry. Not all people with disabilities are ill; however, as Wendell points out, “some people with disabilities are sick, diseased, and ill.”27 Calling attention to the “unhealthy disabled,” Wendell argues that scholars of disability must consider not just those with readily identifiable and “predictable” impairments, such as the blind and the deaf, but also those whose disabilities are less defined. 28 Malory’s book features characters with easily definable impairments, such as Lancelot’s injured hand, as well as those with conditions that mark them as the “unhealthy disabled,” such as the many knights suffering lovesickness or love-madness. Despite their differences, these disabilities play a role in the (usually temporary but sometimes permanent) exclusion of a knight from participation in chivalric activities. Despite claims that “disabled knights hardly figure” in medieval romance literature, the Morte features numerous characters with disabilities. 29 Disability is likewise central to the narrative of the Morte. Malory’s book is the most wide-ranging and focused retelling of the Arthurian legend, drawing on multiple sources, including the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Arthurian texts, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, among others.30 Malory carefully reworks his source texts through paraphrasing, direct translation, revisions, omissions, and some original additions to present his own unique recounting of the entire rise and collapse of Arthur’s kingdom, creating a cohesive, although sometimes meandering, narrative. Dorsey A ­ rmstrong explains, “Malory by and large successfully maintains a linear temporal

6 Introduction progression toward a definitive endpoint and marshalls his sources to conform to the movement of the narrative.”31 His manipulation of the sources creates a “hoole book,” as Malory himself describes it, and ­McCarthy asserts that we “must cover the ‘hoole book’ [and] take into account the overall impact of a literary creation for which he is entirely responsible, however little he invented himself.”32 One constant that ties together Malory’s corpus, I contend, is the disabled body. As I will show, disability inaugurates the text’s major story (Uther seduces ­Igrayne out of lovesickness, leading to Arthur’s conception), is essential to defining and maintaining knightly worship, and provides a vehicle through which to demonstrate spiritual singularity. As the narrative progresses, disability becomes increasingly important, and Malory’s major reworking of the “Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” involves bringing (dis)ability to the fore, setting up the Round Table’s inevitable demise. The “linear temporal” drive of the narrative seeks to put back together broken bodies, both physical and social, but ultimately fails. As a result, the disabled body, with its frequent movement from wholeness to fragmentation, emblematizes the social body of chivalry as well as Malory’s book itself.33 Through its representations of various disabilities, the Morte establishes knighthood as an ability/disability system wherein knights must move from one state of ability to the other. This is not to suggest that (dis)ability is a binary; if we imagine disability as a spectrum between total able-bodiedness/able-mindedness and total disablement, ­Malory’s knights, as we shall see, continuously move through this system and spend the bulk of their time in the liminal space in between each pole. Their inability to settle at either pole for an extended period of time demonstrates the illusory nature of each pole and destabilizes the ­normative drives of the text, which seek to rein in the “deviance” of disability through its removal or cure. In their study of disability in literature, David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder discuss literature’s dependence on disability as a way to generate story, mark characters, and lend tangible weight to abstract concepts. They explain, “The very need for a story is called into being when something has gone amiss with the known world, and, thus, the language of a tale seeks to comprehend that which has stepped out of line. In this sense, stories compensate for an unknown or unnatural deviance that begs an explanation.”34 The narrative then seeks to control the deviance through an act of “narrative prostheticization” wherein the “problems” of characters with disabilities are “fixed” through cure, death, or merely discarding the character as a narrative focus.35 Malory’s narrative similarly attempts to “fix” the “problem” of disabled knights most usually through a cure or treatment; however, the immediate need for a knight to demonstrate physical prowess through acts of violence that again put him at risk for injury restarts the process of his movement through the system. In particular, the establishment of

Introduction  7 an ability/disability system of knighthood early in the text anticipates the disruption of that system that will occur at the book’s turning point, the ­ isrupts Grail Quest, a moment where the introduction of the spiritual d the more bodily chivalry that Malory endorses early on. This addition of the spiritual also affects the text’s presentation of disability; while early depictions focus on the physical, disability after the Grail Quest becomes imbued with spiritual dimensions that are demonstrated specifically in the changes Lancelot undergoes during and after his encounter with the Grail. This new definition of disability shatters not only cohesive notions of the physical body of the knight but also the social body to which the knight belongs, demonstrating that, like the perfectly able body, a whole, unbroken Round Table is only ever an illusion.

Disability in the Chivalric Community: Winning Worship through Hardinesse On the surface, the Morte figures ability as the normative center of the chivalric code; as a result, characters with disabilities are often barred from full participation in the chivalric community, particularly in the acts of physical bravery so necessary to the maintenance of knightly identity. For example, the slow-to-heal wound Lancelot receives in a joust impairs his ability to participate in a later fight (1086.1–5).36 In the tale of Sir Gareth, Lancelot physically removes an injured Kay from the field of battle by carrying him upon his shield (299.34–6), while, in the tale of Sir Palomides, Tristram’s wounded thigh, which has confined him to his bed, leaves him unable to participate in a scheduled battle with Palomides. Tristram’s distressed reaction to the disabling effects of his injury demonstrates the importance of physical ability to knightly identity; it is clear that his being barred from participation by his wound is more agonizing than the bloody wound itself: “And than he toke another horse and rode unto Joyus Garde with grete hevynes, more for the promise that he had made unto sir Palomydes to do batayle with hym wythin three dayes aftir [than for ony hurte]” (475.34–7). At the same time, however, wounds incurred on the battlefield serve as markers of identification—both Lancelot and Bors are recognized by others by facial scars (1075.36–7, 1082.34), and the relic of Gawain’s skull retains the mark of his mortal head wound (1232.19)—as well as evidence of knightly bravery, as when Arthur is deemed “so full of knyghthode” for fighting despite being gravely wounded by Accolon (143.11–12). 37 Physical injury is thus integral to proving knightly worth. As a result, the text tends to construe disability as an ambiguous, even liminal, state that threatens even as it sustains the cohesive notion of knighthood that the text endorses. Ideal knighthood—and, indeed, ideal masculinity—as endorsed by the Morte, is determined by the “worship,” or personal honor, that

8 Introduction knights can attain. According to Lisa Robeson, “Worship is the ­adhesive that binds the Round Table; its accomplishment by the greatest knights is a central theme of the narrative.”38 The late medieval chivalric code for knights comprises three branches of virtue: feudal, which includes physical prowess, bravery, and loyalty to one’s lord; courtly, which includes courteous behavior toward other knights and, in particular, ­ladies; and religious, which involves upholding Christian principles. The ­Pentecostal Oath by which Arthur’s knights must swear annually includes these three virtues: the knights vow never to do outerage nothir mourthir, and allwayes to fle treson, and to gyff mercy unto hym that askith mercy, upon payne of forfeiture [of their] worship and lordship of kynge Arthure for evermore; and allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes [socour:] strengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them, uppon payne of dethe. Also, that no man take no batayles in a wrongefull quarell for no love ne for no worldis goodis. (120.17–24) The failure to uphold any of the three virtues will lead to a loss of worship, as the Oath makes clear. As Beverly Kennedy notes, the knight in search of worship “defines honor as social status” as opposed to merely moral or martial virtue.39 The emphasis on social status in Malory’s “worshipful” knights reflects “the increasingly civilized and sophisticated milieu of the late medieval court” within which Malory was writing, which accentuated achieving worship through knightly acts and being known for said acts more so than upholding Christian virtues.40 Due to changes in warfare beginning in the thirteenth century, the office of knighthood was fluctuating during the time of the Morte’s composition. The use of long-distance artillery made the knight on horseback much less ubiquitous. At the same time, however, the ceremonial and courtly aspects of chivalry were experiencing a revival across Europe. By the fifteenth century, chivalric pageantry, like the joust, was common in the court of Edward IV. As a result, the chivalry Malory describes echoes these new ideals, emphasizing the secular orders of knighthood and courtly rituals, and minimizing religious aspects.41 Kennedy explains that, for Malory, “governance is the office of knighthood,” and, as such, he tempers the religious aspects of knighthood with an emphasis on personal worship.42 As Robeson notes, worship is most often won as a result of “success in battle or tournament.”43 The Oath itself condones violence even as it seeks to limit it; unwarranted murder, battle without reason, not showing an opponent mercy when asked to do so, and forceful actions against women are strictly forbidden, but violent acts are, of course, expected of knights, whose main purpose is to defend and protect their lord or king. If knights can best win worship through

Introduction  9 battle, it is clear that physical ability is central to knighthood. The text uses the term hardinesse to describe such physical ability. The Middle English Dictionary defines hardinesse as “bravery, courage, and daring” as well as “audacity” or “rashness.”44 Additionally, hardinesse signifies “physical hardness” or strength.45 To be hardy is to be “strong in battle” and “stout-hearted.”46 Malory’s use of the term frequently aligns the bravery of his knights with physical ability that illustrates their worshipfulness as brave knights are frequently described as “hardy” and praised for their “hardinesse.” For example, Balin’s ability to remove a sword from the Lady of Lyle’s sheath after others fail contributes to his hardiness and worshipfulness. Lanceor, among other knights, holds a grudge against Balin for this act, which has made him “more hardy and more of prowess” than the others (67.12). Despite his beleaguered appearance and lowly manner of dress, Balin reminds the court that physical strength and the worship that it leads to lies within a knight’s body, not in the clothing that covers it: “‘Manhode and worship ys hyd within a mannes person […]. And there fore worship and hardynesse ys nat in araymente’” (63.23–4, 26).

Wounded Masculinity in the Morte Darthur If worship is best achieved through combat, it is certain that physical ability is essential not only to ideal knighthood but also to the ideal masculinity it epitomizes. Laurie Finke and Martin B. Shichtman have argued that the excessive displays of violence in Malory’s text construct “a hegemonic masculinity based on martial prowess” wherein knights enact a “hyper-masculinity” through physical acts that harm the bodies of themselves and others.47 To be able to fight effectively, a knight must exhibit considerable strength, endurance, and skill, and must be able to wield weapons and control a horse, all while defending himself from the blows of another knight or group of knights. Repeatedly, the Morte’s knights must assert their masculinity through such physical feats, the repetition of which indicates the precarious stability of knightly masculinity in the text. Armstrong, whose book explores the integral nature of gender to knightly identity, uses Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to read the knights’ frequent displays of prowess as productive of a set of masculine norms by which all knights are measured. She writes, “In Malory’s text, participation in knightly adventures functions as a citation of masculine behavior”; however, the repetition of such acts throughout the text attests to the untenability of such a stable notion of masculinity.48 Armstrong finds that the narrative seeks to rely on the feminine as the Other by which the masculine defines its identity. ­However, the many alternative performances of gender by both ­female and male characters whose actions subvert traditional gender roles throughout the text threaten any cohesive notion of masculinity.49 In her

10 Introduction study of what she calls the “body chivalric,” Kathleen Coyne Kelly contends that the male body feminized through violence against it renders such a threat.50 Specifically, penetration of the supposedly closed male body through bodily injury aligns it with the supposedly open female body, a body marked by effluvia such as breast milk and menstrual blood that circulating medical theories deemed potentially harmful to male bodies. She writes, “This fantasy of [masculine] intactness is constantly under attack in the Morte Darthur; violence—the spectacle of broken and bloody bodies—repeatedly surfaces in the narrative, only to be resolutely denied under the sign of the feminine.”51 As part of a kind of “institutionalized masculinity,” knights establish themselves as knightly by locating their sameness through an assertion of difference. 52 This difference, as Armstrong rightly notes, is often found in contrast to the feminine nature of female characters. In scenes of combat, however, difference is asserted through physical violence that feminizes the male body by breaking it open. Kenneth Hodges has taken issue with readings like Kelly’s that suggest that a wounded male body is always already feminized. He argues, “Malory does not treat […] wounds as failures to achieve a dream of inviolate masculinity; instead, injuries are integral to masculinity as it is practiced and celebrated” in the text. 53 To be a knight is to willingly subject oneself to the potentiality of injury on a daily basis, and enduring wounds bravely increases a knight’s worship. When Lancelot endures physical injuries during a period of madness, for example, the knights and squires of Castle Corbenic recognize his knightliness through his wounded body: “Whan they sawe so many woundys upon hym, they demed that he had bene a man of worshyp” (822.32–4). Moreover, Hodges notes that wounds teach younger knights how to respond appropriately to their own inevitable injuries. 54 More than just serving practical ends, however, wounds also signify, providing meaningfulness to what might seem to be unnecessary violence by memorializing the combat upon the bodies of those involved. 55 Clearly, wounding others and receiving wounds are necessary to demonstrating a knight’s adherence to the gendered system governing the institution of knighthood; however, the rupturing of the male body of the knight is a feminization of that body even as it shores up masculine knightly identity. Modern disability scholars have explored the complicated and often contradictory relationship between the male disabled body and masculinity. Lenore Manderson and Susan Peake explain, “Since ­[hegemonic] masculinity is defined as able-bodied and active, the disabled man is an oxymoron. Becoming disabled for a man means to ‘cross the fence’ and take on the stigmatizing constructs of the masculine body made feminine and soft.”56 Tom Shakespeare adds, “It can be a particular crisis for the able-bodied man when he loses physical prowess, because so much of his identity is constructed on the basis of strength

Introduction  11 and invulnerability.”57 The crisis of the able-bodied man facing a loss of physical prowess is slightly different for Malory’s knight. Though knights must indeed demonstrate values typical of hegemonic notions of masculinity, they must also embrace the vulnerability typically associated with women. Interestingly, Manderson and Peake’s discussion of the links between modern social notions of gender and ability echoes those found in medieval religious and medical discourses: “Cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity are reinforced by changes in physicality: male disabled bodies are seen to lose hardness, containment, and control, becoming leaky […], indeterminate, liminal and soft.”58 In order to take some semblance of control over such indeterminacy, some men with disabilities turn to traditionally hypermasculine endeavors, including participating in aggressively competitive, even violent sports. They note, “[M]en reconcile gender and disablement by embracing ­conservative masculinity through participation in sport. […]. Sport enables disabled men to join a community of men and to experience their bodies as bodies of agency, movement, and control.”59 In much the same way, Malory’s knights participate in a highly aggressive, highly competitive masculine community that perhaps moderates and even legitimizes the vulnerability and permeability of the knightly body. Ironically, it is their participation in such a community that increases their risk of wounding in the first place. Shakespeare finds that this is not unique to medieval knights. He notes, “Much of what is traditionally associated with masculinity is in fact generative of impairment: fast cars, violence and war, excessive consumption, recklessness and risk, sport, and work, all contribute towards injury and illness.” Replace “fast cars” with “fast horses,” and Shakespeare has accurately described the predilections of the Malorian knight. Throughout the Morte, knights participate in a hypermasculine community that requires acts of violence that make marks upon the body—whether that of the acting knight or his opponent—in order to prove his commitment to the community with one caveat: a knight can only participate in these acts of violence when not disabled by injuries incurred in such acts.

Blood and (Dis)ability: The Liminality of Malorian Knighthood The blood shed through such injuries further blurs the contours of the body chivalric. Both blood and ability are discursively linked to gender in the Middle Ages. As noted elsewhere, discursive notions of gender and disability in male-authored religious and medical texts converge to produce the female body as aberrant from the norm represented by the male body.60 Conflicting notions of the womb and menstruation found in medieval medical treatises that combine biblical and patristic writings that iterate Eve’s inferior physical difference; Aristotelian

12 Introduction views of the female body as a “mutilated” male body; and Galenic or humoral-based understandings of the female body as cold, leaky, and contaminated work together to produce the female body as deviant from the male norm. In this complex intersection of authoritative views, menstrual blood had conflicting properties: it “cleansed” the female body of its contaminants, provided the basis for procreation, and could have curative properties, but it was also dangerous, capable of harming men and producing monstrous births. Peggy McCracken’s detailed study of the gendering of blood in the Middle Ages notes that “the values of men’s blood are always dependent on the values, both positive and negative, associated with women’s blood, and the most prominent form of women’s blood is menstruation, a category that for the Middle Ages includes menstrual blood, the blood of parturition, and any genital bleeding.”61 Notions of men’s and women’s blood are thus interdependent, particularly in combat scenes that involve bloody wounds. Male blood in combat helps to establish social order; it is public and heroic, while female blood is private and a symbol of weakness.62 McCracken thus supports Hodges’s distinct separation between the hypermasculine bleeding body of the knight and the hyperfeminine menstruating woman, but this distinction is not so straightforward. Because women were viewed to have “wounded” male bodies whose marker of difference included menstrual blood, there is no way to sever notions of femaleness and femininity from the broken, bleeding male body. As McCracken herself notes, the image of the heroic wounded knight in chivalric romance reverses the prevailing notions of male and female bodies discussed earlier: But the prominent representation of men’s blood in battles also revises the characterization of gendered bodies in medical and in theological discourses, where the idealized male body is usually described as sealed, intact, and conservative; by contrast, the female body is unruly, uncontained, and permeable. […]. [T]he male body [of chivalric romance] is permeable, promiscuous in its bleeding.63 The permeability of the Malorian knight’s body paradoxically represents ideal masculinity, which, according to medieval authorities, should be impermeable. Ideal knighthood, then, depends upon an oscillation between the able body, which we might read as “masculine,” and the disabled body, which we might read as “feminine.” Such an oscillation reveals the precarious nature of knightly masculinity and its reliance upon bodily difference; the ideal knight must assume a feminized status through injury to his body and then return to a masculine status through the restoration of that body in order to prove and maintain his “worshipfulness.” Because the Malorian knight exists in a constant alternation between ability, or wholeness, and disability, or fragmentation, it is safe to say that

Introduction  13 the knightly position is a liminal one. In A Social History of ­Disability in the Middle Ages, Irina Metzler uses Victor Turner’s anthropological study of liminality as a way to discuss medieval disability. Regarding medieval Hippocratic notions of impairment in particular, Metzler finds that medical authorities do not label the impaired body as ill or healthy, thus placing it in a liminal position.64 Metzler’s considered use of the term liminal clearly differentiates it from the marginal. While the marginal signifies being outside of a limit or border, the liminal signifies a state of being in-between limits or borders—between “healthy or ill, alive or dead, male or female.”65 Though Metzler finds that the “binary schemes” of courtly romance generally omit the liminal state of disability and focus instead on the victories or deaths of knights,66 Malory’s wounded knights clearly inhabit this in-between space; their wounds are requisite to their status as knights, but they also disable them from the acts needed to earn worship. The knight’s bleeding wounds add to his liminal state. Due to its status as simultaneously inside and outside the contours of the body, blood is itself a liminal fluid that breaches and demarcates boundaries. Mary Douglas’s study of the fears of pollution among social groups finds that bodily fluids are regulated by taboos in an effort to reinforce the boundaries they violate when excreted from the body.67 Caroline Walker ­Bynum notes that the uses of blood in late-medieval images and practices of piety similarly reveal its ambiguity: “Whole and alive, [blood] is also divided and changed. A sign of death, it breaks away from the body, which it breaches and transgresses. In contrast to body, […] blood erupts across boundaries. […]. In the process, it violates, although its release can also cure and cleanse.”68 Lynch defines blood on the battlefield as “the basic currency of fights and quests.”69 It demonstrates a knight’s hardiness and ensures his worshipful status, even as it threatens to dismantle them, demonstrating that both blood and the impairments from which it stems are central to Malory’s text. Seriously wounded knights, though often worthy of worship, are thoroughly disabled by their injuries. If part of the adherence to the institution of knighthood requires participation in combat, quest, or other physical endeavors, then the inability to participate in such activities prohibits the knight from fulfilling his knightly duties. I cite earlier the example of Tristram, whose grievous wounds prohibit his ability to attend a scheduled fight with Palomides. Similarly, in the “Tale of Sir Garth of Orkney,” Gareth makes clear that physical injuries, though part of being a knight, hinder knights from full participation in their duties. After recovering from a thigh wound incurred from an unnamed knight during a thwarted attempt to sleep with Lyonesse, Gareth again tries to complete his rendezvous. His “olde wounde,” we are told, bursts open during the ensuing fight with the same unnamed knight (207.7). His wound, this time, does not heal so easily, and he has still not recovered

14 Introduction when Lyonesse arranges a tournament with Arthur’s knights. Gareth bemoans his injured state: “‘Alas!’ seyde Gareth, ‘I have bene so wounded with unhappynesse sitthyn I cam into this castell that I shall nat be able to do at that turnement lyke a knyght; for I was never thorowly hole syn I was hurte.’” (211.36–40). In addition to its status as a symbol of emasculation,70 Gareth’s thigh wound is feminizing in its ability to remove him temporarily from the hypermasculine realm of combat so necessary to winning worship. Gareth clearly notes that it is his incomplete body that disallows his participation in the tournament: he is not “able to do at that turnement lyke a knyght” (my emphasis). Gareth thus equates true knighthood with physical ability as his injured body impedes his ability to demonstrate his worthiness of knightly worship. It is particularly apt that Gareth emphasizes physical ability at this moment for he has spent the preceding pages attempting to prove his knightly status based on merit rather than on his noble lineage. Consequently, though bodily injury is part of adhering to the chivalric code, prolonged injury that removes the knight from battle hinders that adherence. Lynch affirms, “Wounds are noble, but to make knights ready to fight again, healings are essential.”71 A knight’s wounds, thus, do not simply signify heroic masculinity; they can also remove the knight from the actions so necessary to proving his worth.

Bodies Broken and Healed: Bodily and Textual Integrity in the Morte Darthur In addition to drawing attention to his body’s ability, Gareth emphasizes the importance of his “hole,” or healed, body to his aptitude to perform like a knight. The preference given to the “hole” body echoes the tenets of the medical model discussed earlier, which situates the disabled body as in need of “correction” through medical intervention. The potential cures for illness and impairment in Malory are much more nuanced, however; treatments might be “medical” in that they involve cleaning, bandaging, and administering ointments or salves to wounds, but they ­ elleas’s may also be magical in nature, as is the case when Nyneve heals P lovesickness with a magic spell, or divine, as we see in Galahad’s miraculous cures. Just as the medical model problematically claims the superiority of the healed body, the Morte’s insistence on healthy knights privileges able-bodiedness, and this seeps into the text’s representation of the Round Table community. An emphasis on whole bodies, be they the individual bodies of knights or the communal body politic, pervades the text, and scholars have long noted the Morte’s preoccupation with wholeness and unification, and its attempts to mitigate threats to that wholeness.72 Repeated instances of departures and returns of knights continuously rupture and suture the Round Table, the unification of which is so important to Arthur, who constantly yearns for his knights

Introduction  15 to be “hole togydirs” (864.5). Jill Mann has explored the importance of the whole body to the entirety of the Morte, noting that the opposition between terms and concepts like “aventure, worship, body, ­departe, hole, togidir, felyship […] form the skeletal structure of [Malory’s] work.”73 As Mann suggests, for Malory, the knightly body in combat with other knightly bodies is a kind of union that results in ruptures that then must be closed. The narrative structure thus follows a repeating pattern, or “choreography,” as Mann calls it, that alternates openings and closings to individual and communal bodies.74 For instance, when the knight leaves for a quest, he ruptures the integrity of the Round Table; he then participates in a union with another knight or groups of knights in battle, said battle results in openings upon the body, and those openings must be healed in order for the knight to continue on, either back to rejoin the Round Table or to join in another act of combat. The narrative then repeats this cycle of breaking bodies and (re)making them whole or prostheticizing them, in Mitchell and Snyder’s sense, as noted earlier. For Malory, then, the integration of his “hoole book” is dependent upon a narrative drive to resolve the tensions created by the broken body, whether individual or communal (1260.16). Lynch notes that the broken social body becomes materialized in the broken body of the knight: “The state of being ‘hole togydirs’ (864/5ff), as Arthur loves his company to be, is a version in the body politic of how the private body is made ‘whole’, i.e., ‘healed’ of its wounds.”75 As we find so often throughout the Morte, (dis)ability is central to the knightly as well as the Malorian corpus. Lambert and Lynch confirm that the wounded body serves as “the paradigm” of the text’s “cycle of openings and closures.”76 As an illustration of this cycle, Mann cites Malory’s doubled use of “departe” when describing the departures of knights: Malory invests with import the double significance of the word ‘departe’ in Middle English; it means both ‘to leave’ and ‘to separate’. The reiteration of this word and its variants lays cumulative stress on this double significance, and this means that we feel the poignancy of separation as an emotional pressure behind even the most routine of knightly departures. It also creates in us a corresponding yearning for that which negates separation, for ‘wholeness’—both the wholeness of the individual person, and the wholeness of the Round Table fellowship.77 To this understanding of Malory’s use of “departe,” we can add a third sense that involves bodily ability: in Middle English, departe was also used to indicate the severing of a body part. For instance, Lanfranc’s fifteenth-­c entury Science of Chirurgie Cirurgie describes “whanne a membre is depertid from pe bodi,” and John Gower discusses the “departed” feet of the monster in his prologue to Confessio Amantis

16 Introduction (c.1390).78 Richard Rolle’s Prik of Conscience (1340) notes that the sinner is “departed haley fra the body of Criste.”79 Though used figuratively here—the sinner is removed from the salvation represented by Christ’s body—Rolle makes clear that the term has material resonance: he goes on to discuss the hopelessness and uselessness of “lymmes” that are “hewed” or ­“cutted fra the body.”80 The triple significance of departe illustrates the enmeshing of separation, union, and the body throughout the Morte, and, thus, reveals the necessity of (dis)ability to knightly and textual integrity. Malory sets up early on in the text a system of knighthood that relies on a repeating pattern of ability/disability: the bodies of knights must be broken, must bleed, and must eventually heal, only to replicate the pattern in a continuous loop. The (dis)abled body of the knight is thus transmitted across and through the text, emblematizing the Morte’s fixation on the wholeness and fragmentations of physical and social bodies. As I will show, this system will ultimately fracture when it attempts to operate within the liminal space of the Grail Quest, finally leading to the inevitable destruction of the Round Table. The chapters that follow will continue to investigate the multifaceted ways in which disability and its causes and cures affect the Morte’s physical and social bodies, turning first to the ways in which women influence the ability/disability system of knighthood. In the book’s opening chapter, “Disability, Lovesickness, and the ­Chivalric Code: Women Healers and Harmers in the Morte,” I argue that women are central to the masculine, able-bodied project of ­Malorian knighthood by analyzing the text’s use of the literary motif of the lovesick knight. Beginning with Uther’s contraction of lovesickness for Igrayne, the Morte demonstrates the gendered dynamics of lovesickness: the female love-object possesses the power to both harm and heal her beloved. This feminine power is a direct result of her ability to enchant men, either through magic or love, and is rooted in the conceptualization of her body as both disabled and disabling. Throughout the book, a network of men disabled by lovesickness remains reliant on an equally important network of women who are both the cause and the cure for their illness. By causing and then healing a knight’s lovesickness, women facilitate—and hinder—his movement through the ability/disability system of knighthood that is necessary to demonstrating worshipfulness. The chapter analyzes the function of lovesickness to the knightliness of Pelleas, Gareth, and Alexander the Orphan, finding that feminine enchantment, disability, and masculine knightly identity operate interdependently throughout the Morte. The ability of women like Nyneve, Lyonesse, Lyonet, and Maledysaunte to influence a knight’s aptitude for worshipfulness subverts standard notions not only of ability but also of gender. Because the women exert power over the actions of knights by incapacitating them, they often assume “masculine” positions over

Introduction  17 the “feminized” knights, and, while the text endorses some instances of gender transgression, as we see in the case of Nyneve, it censures others, ­ organ le Fay. The text’s inconsistent depicas we see in the case of M tions of enchantresses underscore their ambivalent, yet crucial, roles in a knight’s ability to prove his worshipfulness. The second chapter, “‘For whome he wente oute of hys minde’: Women and the Love-madness of Tristram and Lancelot,” continues this exploration of the influence of women on the bodies and minds of knights. Love-madness, a more extreme form of lovesickness, leads to a knight’s complete loss of sanity and, as a result, knightly identity. Like the lovesickness discussed in Chapter 1, love-madness is caused and healed by female enchantment and works to threaten the masculinity of knights through its feminizing symptoms and associations with the female body. Indeed, the Morte tightly links love, madness, and magic in the experiences of the text’s two most famous love-mad knights, ­Tristram and Lancelot. In its analysis of the love-madness of Tristram and Lancelot, this chapter reveals the most extreme way in which a woman can influence a knight’s movement through the ability/disability system of knighthood—the total removal of a knight’s sense of self. While mad, both men alter their appearance, reside outside the boundaries of the court, take on feminine behaviors, associate with social Others, and face exile upon regaining their senses; these experiences signify the figurative and literal liminality of madness. Though both men retain some of the trappings of chivalry during their bouts of madness, their lack of rationality blocks their full reentry into the body chivalric, thus demonstrating that a knight must be of sound mind and body in order to perform knighthood successfully and that women are vital to the loss and recovery of both. “(Dis)abling Sexuality: The Touch of the Queer/Crip in Malory’s Morte” argues that disability’s intervention into the ability/disability system of knighthood unsettles not only the gendered performance but also the compulsory heteronormativity of the Malorian knight. Knights must not only prove their worshipfulness by continually receiving injuries, injuring others, and recovering from injuries but also perform heteronormativity and maintain “proper” relationships with women. However, just as the appearance of disability blurs cohesive notions of ability and gender in some cases, as Chapters 1 and 2 detail, it also blurs the lines between the heteronormative and the queer. This chapter discusses the text’s linking of nonnormative sexuality and disability by closely reading the repeated motif of the thigh wound in the cases of ­Gareth, ­Percival, and Lancelot, using Robert McRuer’s notion of the “queer/crip.” In these examples, the thigh wounds become symbolic castrations that attempt to thwart sexual deviancy. As a result, the disabled body is discursively marked as both sexually transgressive and sexually impotent, thereby embodying the liminality of disability. However, the text also presents

18 Introduction some homoerotic relationships, particularly that between Lavain and Lancelot, in a way that is not punitive or condemnatory. In particular, the act of healing a disabled body functions as an expression of queer desire, creating an interface between bodies that allows for the creation of an alternative community that undermines the compulsorily heteronormative and able-bodied/minded drives of the text. Chapter 4, “Vessels of Blood: (Dis)abled Bodies and the Grail in ­Malory’s ‘Tale of the Sankgreal,’” describes the ways in which the concepts discussed in Chapters 1–3 are tested, redefined, and finally disrupted in book’s turning point, “The Tale of the Sankgreal,” ultimately leading to the inevitable destruction of the Round Table. This chapter notes the ways in which the “unprostheticized” acts of disabling in the earlier “Tale of Balin” resume within the liminal realm of the Grail Quest. The Grail Quest presents an unstable realm wherein the uncharacteristic exploits of knights and ladies; the appearance of supernatural and demonic figures; and the mysterious object of the quest, the Holy Grail, thoroughly unsettle conventional understandings of sex, gender, and ability, and confuse a distinction between chivalry and spirituality. The Grail, as this chapter shows, assumes the position of women in the ability/disability system that Chapters 1 and 2 outline, taking on the power to heal and harm, and extending that power to the tale’s epitome of spiritual chivalry, Galahad. Disability takes on a new resonance here, as the tale closely connects blood and the disabled body, attributing a spiritual significance to wounds that the Morte has hitherto passed over or only briefly mentioned. This chapter analyzes the experiences with disability that involve Lancelot, Percival’s sister, and Galahad as examples of the varied ways in which disability, blood, and knighthood meet within the unstable domain of the Grail Quest. Lancelot, whose encounters with the Grail are mitigated by disability, remains fully grounded in an earthly chivalry that ties even the most spiritual experiences to the body. On the other hand, Percival’s sister, due in part to her transgressive sexuality and gender performance, becomes an intermediary figure who unites the bodily and spiritual in her act of healing. Galahad, the only knight whose body remains physically and sexually intact, encounters disability in ways that fully divide the bodily from the spiritual. The result of the intervention of the spiritual into Malory’s very bodily notion of institutionalized knighthood is a splintered Round Table that will never recover completely. The final chapter, “Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry, and ­I mages ­ uinevere,’” of (Dis)ability in the ‘Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen G examines the fate of Malory’s knights after the Grail Quest. While ­Galahad’s spiritual and bodily perfection do not allow him to remain in the chivalric realm, the bodily spirituality Lancelot demonstrates on the Grail Quest marks him as in and of the world. ­However, Malory continues to emphasize the merging of the bodily and the spiritual in Lancelot’s

Introduction  19 actions. This chapter investigates how the changes that Malory makes to his source texts, his reliance on the imagery of (dis)ability, and his inclusion of the original tale of Sir Urry set up a sequence in which Lancelot endures increasingly serious bodily wounds, followed by his miraculous healing of Urry. Serving as a mirror for Lancelot’s wounded body as well as the splintering body of the Round Table, ­Urry’s body evokes the perpetual vulnerability of the physical bodies of knights and the social institution of chivalry. Although Urry’s body is ultimately healed, the wounds of the Round Table continue to worsen as the new forms of (dis)ability and knighthood crystallized in the “Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” extend into the Morte’s last moments, finally proving that any notion of a stable body—be it social or ­physical—is unsustainable.

1 Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code Women Healers and Harmers in the Morte

It may seem strange for a study of disability and the masculine project of chivalry to begin with a chapter focusing on women. However, the pivotal role of women in the production and maintenance of knightly identity the Morte Darthur is well-documented. Despite often serving as passive objects that cement relationships between men, women actively influence quests, interfere in knightly endeavors, use enchantment to their own advantage, are arbiters of justice and mercy, and wield considerable power over the men in the text.1 In fact, in the first booklength study of the intersections between women, knights, and chivalry in Malory’s text, Dorsey Armstrong asserts that the treatment of women is a central component of not only the chivalric code but also the masculinity it epitomizes. 2 In much the same way that (dis)ability is necessary to the production of knighthood, as I outline in the introduction, women are integral to the masculine project of chivalry. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, attention to the connections between the sociocultural production of femininity, femaleness, and disability are essential to any study of embodied difference. 3 Categories of embodied difference like gender and disability are discursively constructed in similar ways, revealing what Rosemarie Garland Thomson has called the “cultural intertwining of femininity and disability.”4 In this intertwining, women, the disabled, and other marginalized groups “are supposed to be dependent, incomplete, vulnerable, and incompetent” and are represented “either deficient or as profligate.”5 In medieval literature and culture in particular, medical, religious, and literary discourses work together to produce notions of the female body and femininity as both disabled and disabling. Malory’s book exploits these notions in its depictions of interactions between women, knights, and (dis)ability, revealing the importance of women and the feminine to the masculine ability/disability system of chivalry. In this chapter, I will discuss the ways in which gender, disability, and chivalry interact and influence one another throughout the text. By the very nature of their imperfect bodies, I contend, women have the power to harm and even kill men. This power is particularly feminine in that it often intersects with women’s ability to enchant men, either

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  21 through magic or love. At the same time, however, women can cure or protect men using that same power. Their ability to disable and enable men positions them as central to Malory’s ability/disability system of knighthood, and, in particular, Malory has his knights suffer disabilities instigated by interactions with women, including lovesickness, as a vehicle through which to explore that centrality. Indeed, the lovesickness of Uther, caused by Igrayne, opens the book, and the love-madness of Lancelot, caused by Guenevere, closes it. Other examples permeate the book, creating a nexus of men disabled by women and therefore reliant on them for their cure; undergirding this network of disabled men is the equally important network of women who do the harming or healing. It is important to note that women are not always true agents in these interactions as their effects on the bodies of men are not always intentional. In the case of lovesickness, for example, a woman may not even be aware that her image has caused physical and psychological symptoms in a man. As a result, it might be more accurate to view women as instruments of (dis)ability that enable—sometimes consciously and at other times unconsciously—a knight’s interaction with the disabling and healing essential to proving knightly worth. As my discussion will show, the plights of knights like Gareth, Alexander the Orphan, and Pelleas, and the women they encounter, demonstrate the crucial interrelationship between feminine enchantment, disability, and masculine knightly identity operating throughout the Morte.

Love and Magic: Feminine Enchantment in the Morte Though many female characters populate the Morte, only two have clearly demarcated disabilities: the Leprous Lady, who suffers from a leprous-like illness that leaves her castle-bound, and a mute maiden, who leads Percival to sit at the Round Table at the right hand of the Seige Perilous.6 Despite the lack of women with disabilities in the text, women and disability are frequently linked. One way in which women in the Morte are associated with disability is that they serve as curers or healers of disabling injuries or illnesses, making them integral to ­Malory’s ability/disability system of knighthood. The motif of the woman healer is fairly common in medieval romance, and often the woman healer’s abilities stem from her knowledge of both “natural” remedies and magic as well as her gendered social position. Corinne Saunders explains that “the knowledge of remedies, charms and potions is not exclusive to the doctor, but available to others, and is particularly the sphere of those in some way on the margins of society—monks, hermits, women—or those into whose hands marvelous objects with special virtues find their way.”7 As Saunders continues, the literary motif of the female healer likely reflects the number of female medical practitioners operating throughout medieval Europe, including Hildegard of Bingen

22  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code and the legendary female author of the medical treatise known as the Trotula.8 Though the appearance of female healers reflects the existence of women medical practitioners in the Middle Ages, romance most often portrays its healers as practitioners of natural magic in particular, as this practice, which includes the use of “healing or medicinal stones, plants, balms and potions that draw their virtue from nature,” aligns with the genre’s emphasis on and exploitation of the marvelous.9 In addition, the female healers of romance supplement and shape the institution of knighthood: their ability to heal knights and to harm them facilitates the knights’ participation in chivalry, and, by extension, the institution’s ability/­disability system that I describe in the introduction. Geraldine Heng posits that women are not merely appendages to romance texts like Malory’s Morte: in particular, their use of enchantment allows for a fuller understanding of the male chivalric community, ­creating a “feminine subtext” beneath the “masculine” surface narrative.10 In ­Malory’s text, Heng finds that this “submerged second narrative” surfaces through the trope of the female enchanter and grants her a specifically feminine power to alter or strengthen not only the body of the knight but also notions of knightly masculinity.11 While on the most literal level, the trope of enchantment simply signifies magic, in a romance text like Malory’s Morte, it also refers to courtly love, and, as Saunders notes, love magic is “[t]he most problematic form of ‘magyk natureel’” in that it has the ability to harm or heal.12 Through the enchantment of both magic and love, women can influence the actions and bodily ability of men, consequently employing the bodies of knights for their own ends. When not protecting the court from outside threats, knights participate in adventures or embark on quests that are almost always initiated by women either through magic spells and objects or through love. As a result, women who are the love-objects of knights become associated with enchantment as do those who practice magic. The double nature of enchantment thus aligns women of the court, like Guenevere, with sorceresses, like Morgan le Fay. ­I ndeed, the Morte explicitly associates Guenevere with magic when an unnamed damsel divulges to Lancelot that Guenevere “hath ordeyned by enchauntemente that ye shall never love none other but hir, nother none other damesell ne lady shall rejoyce you” (270.24–5).13 Both in their literal acts of magic and in their “feminine wiles,” which “enchant” men, the women of the text participate in the discourse of enchantment, a discourse that Heng maintains is purely feminine: “While only one man, Merlin, is decisively associated with the practice of sorcery, the reference of magic to women is almost casual, reflexive; even nameless figures who make the briefest of appearances may possess magical objects and spells, and work enchantment: it is a language depicted by the text as being ubiquitously familiar to women.”14 In the Morte, then, enchantment, which includes both acts of magic and acts of courtly love that women work in the text,

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  23 communicates a feminine subtext that can uphold and even disrupt the decidedly masculine, able-bodied surface narrative of the text. Malory’s expansive text brings various forms of magic and the supernatural into the human realm of Arthur and his knights; natural magic, black magic, or “nigromancy,” and Christian miracle are all present in the Morte and reflect late medieval English cultural notions of the magical and marvelous. Saunders explains Malory creates a legendary, half-familiar landscape where the marvellous is possible, where magic arts may be inherited or learned, and where the supernatural may intervene. In the course of the rise and fall of Arthur and his court, the magic of human and otherworld, divine and demonic interweave, and natural magic, enchantment, and ‘nigromancy’ are treated credibly, as playing important roles in the shaping of destiny. The Morte reflects ambivalent and enduring cultural attitudes to magic as well as romance conventions of the supernatural.15 Saunders traces an interesting progression of magic in the text. Malory begins with an emphasis on prophetic magic worked in dreams and through the powers of Merlin. After Nyneve traps Merlin and effectively removes him from the text, the magic of female enchantresses takes center stage. Here, we see the work of sorceresses like Morgan le Fay, practitioners of natural magic like Isode and her mother, and the healing powers of Lyonet. The Grail Quest then brings Christian and demonic notions of the supernatural to the fore, where we see acts of miraculous healing by Percival’s sister and Galahad, which I discuss at length in Chapter 4, and sexual temptation wrought by mysterious, demonic female figures. The book’s final episodes recall the sense of destiny that inaugurates the text, thus “weaving together different strands of magic and the supernatural in the narrative of the fall of Arthur and the Round Table.”16 Saunders’s “second stage” of magic features the female enchantresses that heal injured knights throughout the text, and we see a great many of these female healers in the “Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones”: namely, the two Isodes. La Beale Isode, or Isode the Fair, Malory informs us, is “a noble surgeon,” and she is able to put her knowledge to use by finding the poison “in the bottom of [Tristram’s] wounde” and healing “hym in a whyle” (385.4, 5). Isode succeeds where a great number of other medical authorities have failed: King Mark “lette sende for all maner of lechis and surgeons, bothe unto men and women, and there was none that wolde behote hym the lyff” (384.5–7). Later, when Isode the Fair is unable to help Tristram after he is again injured by a poisoned weapon, she sends him to another woman for help, Isode le Blaunche Maynes, or Isode the White Hands. In addition to the doubling of the women’s

24  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code names, the scenes are almost identical; each begins with an Isode healing Tristram of a poisoned wound and ends with his falling in love with her, thus knitting together love-magic, the feminine, and healing power. Daniel McGuiness has noted the chapter’s use of the women as frames that highlight their particular healing abilities over others: “each [woman] is the only cure for Tristram’s particular hurts. This enveloping and curious occupational frame device is enhanced by the contrast of Sir Marhalte’s death at the hands of bad leeches, a fact that is brought up at the beginning and near the end” of the tale.17 Moreover, Malory deems each woman a surgeon: Isode the Fair is, of course, called “a noble surgeon,” and, as McGuiness notes, Isode the White Hands and surgeon share the same etymological root: kheir or hand.18

The Gendered Dynamics of Lovesickness: The Disabled and Disabling Female Body In addition to presenting women as healers of the disabilities of men, the Morte also positions them as channels through which men incur those disabilities. One recurrent way in which women harm men in the text, albeit unintentionally, is through lovesickness, a condition “caused” by the sight of a beautiful woman. This is not to suggest that Malory’s women consciously trigger lovesickness in men; however, the text does follow the common trope of lovesickness found in medieval literature, wherein a man, upon catching sight of a beautiful woman is “wounded” with the condition. In the Middle Ages, the notion of love as a wound is common in literature, especially within the framework of courtly love as writers frequently allude to Cupid’s dart piercing the flesh of the lover. For instance, in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Amans contracts lovesickness after “[a] firy Dart” thrown by Cupid “thrugh [Amans’s] herte rote.”19 Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus is similarly “thorugh shoten and thorugh-darted” when he looks upon Criseyde, and he notes, “so soore hath she me wounded […] with lokyng of hire eyen.”20 In addition to wounding the lover, however, love also held healing properties in medieval literature. Marie de France’s Guigemar, for example, offers an extended meditation on the wounding and healing properties of love: she asserts, “love is a wound in the body, and yet nothing appears on the outside” [Amurs est plaie dedenz corps/e si ne piert niënt defors]. ­Marie illustrates the ambivalent nature of love in the relationship between Guigemar and his beloved, for the initial sight of the beloved both has “wounded him so badly” [l’a si nafré], but, when she returns her love to him, he recovers from his illness. 21 Laine Doggett has found that medieval romances that feature love and marriage often stress love’s healing power, particularly when it is wielded by women with empirical ­knowledge of love-magic. 22 Malory employs the motif of lovesickness throughout his book; as I note earlier, the text begins

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  25 with Uther’s lovesickness, while it ends with Lancelot’s fatal experience with love-madness. The examples of lovesickness in the Morte reflect both medical and literary notions of the condition and demonstrate the nexus through which women, knights, and disability intersect and interact with ­Malory’s unique representation of chivalry. Before discussing the medico-literary understanding of lovesickness, I will first discuss the first example of lovesickness in the Morte in order to establish how the book positions the disease in relationship to women and the chivalric community. Uther’s lovesickness, which results in Arthur’s conception, sets up the pattern of the illness that will repeat throughout the text and echoes the Morte’s overall preoccupation with wholeness and fragmentation.23 After coming into contact with Igrayne, the wife of a neighboring duke, Uther is overcome with desire for her and has plans to seduce her while she and her husband are visiting the king. Unwilling to submit to his demands, Igrayne and the duke leave the castle, leading Uther to wage war against the duke. The text positions the “fayre” Igrayne as the sole cause of Uther’s disabling illness. The narrator explains that “for pure angre and love of fayr Igrayne the kyng Uther fell seke” (8.8–9), while the king himself affirms, “[F]or love of fayre Igrayne […] I may not be hool” (8.12). The emphasis on Igrayne’s “fayreness” demonstrates that her physical appearance in addition to Uther’s sight of it are the direct causes the king’s illness, while his desire to be “hool” echoes the series of openings and closures that pervade the Morte. 24 Though various medical authors offer treatments for the disease, the ultimate cure for lovesickness, according to medical authorities, is sexual intercourse with the lover’s object of desire. 25 As a result, Uther’s dire physical reactions to Igrayne cause him to seek desperate measures from Merlin, who facilitates Uther’s union with Igrayne by placing him under a spell that makes him resemble the duke. Uther’s night with Igrayne is essential to Malory’s text, for it initiates King ­A rthur’s life, thus producing the narrative that leads up to his death. It also demonstrates how essential disability and its cure are to the book. Indeed, Malory’s titular character is a product of an attempt to cure a disability. In addition to leading to Arthur’s conception, the union restores Uther’s health for two years; however, the lovesickness he incurs from Igrayne sets off a series of illnesses that lead up to his death and A ­ rthur’s resultant crowning. Two years after recovering from lovesickness, he is stricken with “a grete maladye” of unknown origin (11.17–18). This new illness incapacitates Uther so much that he must be carried to his final battle upon a horse-litter. Merlin emphasizes the necessity of the king’s physical presence to his men’s victory on the battlefield: “‘Sir,’ said Merlyn, ‘ye may not lye so as ye doo, for ye must to the feld, though ye ryde on a hors-lyttar. For ye shall never have the better of your enemyes, but yf your persone be ther, and thenne shall ye have the vyctory’” (11.21–4).

26  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code The need for Uther’s presence highlights the importance the text places on physical ability. Just like a disabled knight, Uther cannot complete his kingly duties when bedridden, but, as Merlin notes, it is better to appear before his opponents disabled than not to appear at all. In addition to demonstrating a medieval example of accessibility technology, 26 Uther’s entrance to the field upon a horse-litter illustrates the ability/disability system of institutionalized knighthood discussed in the introduction: in addition to injuring enemies, a knight must endure and then recover from his own injuries in order to gain worship, thus placing him in a liminal state that alternates able-bodiedness and disability in a constant loop. The scene is a crystallization of this loop: incapacitated upon the horse-litter, Uther is carried onto the battlefield, the site upon which most knights receive and dole out bodily violence. Disability remains central to the narrative by marking the passing of the crown from Uther to Arthur. After returning victorious from his final battle, Uther’s condition deteriorates, rendering him mute for three days: “And thenne he fyll passynge sore seke, so that thre dayes and thre nyghtes he was specheles” (11.33–4). His temporary muteness is resolved when Merlin—with help from God—“make[s] hym to speke” before the barons by inquiring about Arthur’s assumption of the throne (11.38). His miraculous ability to speak allows him to publicly acknowledge ­A rthur’s right to the crown just before his death. 27 Uther’s lovesickness and resultant experiences with disability not only illustrate the centrality of disability to the Morte’s vision of masculine knighthood, as well as its overall structure, narrative, and thematic explorations, but also demonstrate the ambivalent yet necessary roles women play in them. Women facilitate and extend a knight’s movement between disability and ability, but they can also frustrate and delay that movement, keeping knights from full participation in the body chivalric. The “harming” of a man’s body through the contraction of lovesickness from a beautiful woman becomes a pattern that repeats with some variation throughout the text. Within the larger category of disability, lovesickness perhaps fits best under the label of a chronic illness with disabling symptoms. Chronic illnesses, according to Susan Wendell, are “transitory and unpredictable” conditions that result in “fluctuating abilities and limitations” and “cannot reliably be cured.”28 As the example of Uther shows, ­medieval lovesickness was a disease with varied and debilitating symptoms. Such symptoms include loss of appetite, inability to sleep, and weakness, which, if left untreated, could result in blindness, madness, and even death. Because of the unpredictability of possible symptoms, prescribed treatments ran the gamut from dietary changes to baths to music therapy to sexual intercourse. Medieval medical notions of lovesickness were shaped by eleventh-century translations of Constantine the African’s ­Viaticum and its glosses as well as the thirteenth-century translation of Avicenna’s Canon medicinae. In Mary Frances Wack’s translation of the

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  27 Viaticum, Constantine describes sufferers of lovesickness thusly: “Their eyelids are heavy [and] their color yellowish, this is from the motion of heat which follows upon sleeplessness. Their pulse grows hard and does not […] keep the beat as it should.”29 These symptoms are taken up in literature that follows a tradition begun by Ovidian representations of lovesick paramours. A convention shared by both physicians and poets is the contraction of lovesickness through the sight of a love-object, which, after passing through the faculties of the brain, causes incessant thoughts of the love-object and finally exerts control over the lover’s body, mind, and soul, resulting in physical and emotional disturbances. Uther’s contraction of the illness after the sight of the “fayre Igrayne” illustrates this process. The act of looking is thus essential to contracting lovesickness, so much so that Andreas Capellanus’s Art of Courtly love insists that physical blindness is an impediment to love since a blind person would not be able to view the love-object. 30 Literary depictions of the process frequently demonstrate what Julie Singer deems “the love-imprint” or the image of the love-object that becomes imprinted upon the lover’s heart. 31 Literary depictions of the love-imprint process reflect the conflicting but coexisting theories of vision called intromission and extramission, which position the eyes as receivers and emitters of light, respectively. 32 As an intromissive act, the love-imprint would be caused by the lover’s eyes sending out rays to view the beloved, while, as an extramissive act, the beloved’s eyes would emit rays that would wound the lover’s heart. Singer has noted that the contraction of lovesickness by a male lover in romance most often features “intromissive language” in its depiction, positioning the beloved as the passive object of his gaze.33 Molly Martin, however, has noted that the “bidirectionality” of the intromissive gaze can also render the male lover passive and feminine as the image of the beloved moves into the lover’s eye and then affects the brain.34 She explains, “The male viewer, the supposed subject of the gaze becomes an object of his very own gaze. […]. This reversal, or even collapse of the gaze seems particularly suited to the analysis of medieval romance literature, in which the image so often disempowers those who look.”35 The knights I discuss here are similarly disempowered by the contraction of lovesickness, despite being active gazers upon their love-objects. In the Middle Ages, lovesickness was thought to affect men more often than women, though there were exceptions, as we see in Malory when Faramon’s daughter, Elaine of Astolat, Ettarde, and perhaps the sorceress Hallewes die from symptoms of the disease.36 Although the disease is called variations of amor eroes and amor heros (the aspirated Latin for eros) by some writers, others such as Johannes Afflacius alter eros to heroes, providing the commonplace name amor heroes. Wack explains that Afflacius “understood heros not only (if at all as) an aspirated form of eros, but also in its general meaning ‘hero, lord, baron.’”37

28  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code The association of the condition with noblemen becomes conventional, as a result, by the thirteenth century, and the medical and literary focus of the disease shifts onto men. Wack has found that medical treatises focused more on treatments for men who were suffering lovesickness because “men’s lovesickness needed explanation and cure because it made them ‘other.’ Its signs and symptoms feminized them, separated them from normal masculine ways of behaving.”38 Uther’s behavior deviates from that which is considered normal masculine conduct for a king or a knight. Vern Bullough notes that, because the symptoms of lovesickness began in the brain, “it was primarily a disease of men, rather than women, and that men who fell in love were, in a sense, getting a ­‘feminine’ disease.”39 Medieval notions about the disabled and disabling effects of the female body on the male body undergird the categorization of lovesickness as a male disease that evokes feminine symptoms. As noted elsewhere, notions of femaleness, femininity, and disability are intertwined in medieval authoritative discourse; these discourses establish a female body’s difference, describe it using the language of disability, and present it as disabling to other bodies, particularly those of men.40 Medieval understandings of the female body reflect the Aristotelian hierarchical view of the female body as inferior to a male norm. Classical humoral-based medicine, which focuses on the hot and dry nature of men’s bodies and the cold and wet nature of women’s bodies, coupled with biblical and religious writings that link the supposed sinful and fleshly nature of the female body to its “inferior” physical differences produce the female body as disabled.41 Primarily, the womb and the act of menstruation situate the female body as deviant from the male norm. Conflicting theories of the womb situate it as active or passive; Aristotle argues that the womb provides the matter for offspring and is thus passive, while the sperm provides the form and is thus active. 42 Galen’s “two-seed” theory, however, specifies that both male and female seed are needed for conception to take place, thus granting the womb some agency. Some authorities describe the womb as “animal-like” and note its ability to move about the body and cause physical and mental distress, while others emphasize its weak qualities.43 Likewise, menstrual fluid possessed contradictory qualities. For some, it was contaminated and contaminating, while others noted its productive and fruitful properties. While most early authorities do not disparage menstrual fluid, they do point out its “imperfect” qualities, granting it a “cleansing” function; because the female body was colder and wetter, it had a need to purge its wastes. Pliny’s description of menstrual fluid as a kind of poison that can wither crops and madden dogs is later reiterated by Isidore of Seville and the unknown author of Secrets of Women (De secretis mulierum).44 Biblical representations of menstruation as a punishment and source of uncleanliness augment these misogynistic views.45 In addition to describing differences between male and female bodies, medieval medical and religious texts

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  29 also discuss the female body in terms of disability. Aristotle claims that the female body is “less thoroughly concocted” than the male body and even claims “that the female is, as it were, a mutilated male.”46 ­Galen also points out the imperfections of the female body, noting that “the man is more perfect than the woman” and also describing her reproductive organs as “mutilated.”47 This language presents the female body as a deformity of the male body and, consequently, reveals the shared discursive processes by which female and disabled bodies become linked. As a result, the female body is presented as disabled, while the disabled body, regardless of gender or sex, is feminized. The notion of the female body as both different and disabled contribute to the widespread belief in its ability to disable others, particularly men. The very sight of a woman’s body, as I note earlier, is enough to instigate symptoms of lovesickness due to the common understanding of a strong link between the eyes, the brain, and erotic passion. Although medical authorities present sexual intercourse with the beloved as a suitable treatment from the lovesickness she has caused, they also conflictingly specify that sexual engagement with her body could cause detrimental physical effects. These physical effects reiterate the link shown between the female body, erotic love, and blindness in medieval understandings of lovesickness. According to medical authorities, the emission of semen depletes a man’s moisture, specifically spiritus, an element vital to the eyes and proper vision. Aging naturally reduces this moisture in men, but, because the body uses spiritus to maintain an erection, assist ejaculation, and create semen, excessive participation in sexual intercourse could accelerate this loss. Carole Everest explains, In clearly delineating the intricate connections between the eyes and the production of semen, medical texts suggest that blindness can indicate a serious depletion of both natural moisture and spiritus due to intemperate sexual activity. When exacerbated by the normal losses attendant upon old age, such a diminution can become life-threatening. Coitus constitutes a danger even to the young and fit, excessive sexuality always leading to disability or death […] and is more dangerous for the elderly and infirm.48 According to Avicenna, the imbalance of spiritus can also occur when the lover first catches sight of the beloved and directly affects the estimative faculty, “the one that makes ‘instinctive’ judgments about what is to be pursed and avoided,” and the imaginative faculty or the faculty that records visual information and transfers it to the estimative faculty.49 Upon the sight of the love-object, the estimative faculty is taxed: Because the estimative faculty is working too hard, innate heat and spiritus rush to the middle cerebral ventricle where the faculty resides, leaving the first ventricle, the site of the imaginative faculty,

30  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code too cold and dry—melancholic, in fact. This produces a ‘bad complexion’ or balance of humors that in turn affects the imaginative faculty’s operation: the image aheres abnormally strongly on the “screen,” so to speak, of the first ventricle [and] becomes fixated on the image.50 Because lovesickness entered the body through the eyes, the eyes themselves could endure symptoms ranging from dryness to enlargement to even blindness, all brought on by the depletion of spiritus.51 In addition to such conditions of the eye, one concerning and feminizing symptom of lovesickness is the lover’s loss of rational thought, as we see when Alexander loses track of his horse after spying Alys, which I discuss at length later. Patristic writers like Jerome link a ­woman’s perceived sexual excess to a man’s loss of reason, noting “woman’s love in general is accused of ever being insatiable; […] it enervates a man’s mind and engrosses all thought except for the passion which it feels.”52 When involved in the contraction of lovesickness, a woman is also deemed capable of causing a man to act irrationally. Medical authorities stipulate that the image of the beloved (usually female) causes a dysfunction in the estimative faculty of the (usually male) brain, thus causing the brain to determine illogically that the beloved is superior to all others and thereby demonstrating unreason. Peter of Spain describes this as a ­“failure” of the brain: “But a failure or damaging of estimative [faculty], which judges one thing to be superior to all others, is the reason why lovesickness is a disease and a suffering of the brain itself.”53 After contracting this disease of the brain, the male lover acts helplessly, can lose the ability to articulate thoughts, and laughs and cries at inappropriate moments, all actions that are associated with a lack of reason, and, as Wack notes, “are corporeal signs associated with the feminine,” and I will discuss further this association of madness and feminization in Chapter 2.54 While lovesick, a man is “metaphorically assimilated to the unattained object of his desire, yet in the male lover this ‘feminine’ state signifies pathology.”55 The linking of the feminine to disability or disease through lovesickness reflects the discursive representation of the female body as disabled and disabling described earlier. Throughout the Morte, Malory employs these medieval notions of the dangerous female body through the vehicle of lovesickness. Knights affected by lovesickness caused by women take on feminine qualities that temporarily remove them from the chivalric realm, both physically and mentally.

Subverting the Gendered Dynamics of Lovesickness: Malory’s Nyneve After Uther’s encounter with Igrayne, the next extended example of a man’s debilitating lovesickness occurs in the chapter “Gawain, Ywain,

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  31 and Marhalt.” This example, while it offers a classic depiction of the detrimental effects a woman may have on a man’s body, also subverts the usual dynamics established by the Uther-Igrayne pattern, namely because the woman involved, Nyneve, causes lovesickness first through the enchantment of love and next through the use of love-magic while also distributing and withholding a cure based on her personal whim. After the three titular knights have departed on their separate quests, Gawain and his accompanying damsel encounter Pelleas, a knight whose love has gone unrequited by Ettarde. Pelleas is “the fayreste knyght and the semelyest man that ever they sawe” (164.2–3); however, “he made the grettyst dole that ever man made” (164.3). The narrator emphasizes the knight’s melancholy state, calling Pelleas “wofull,” “dolorous,” and “dolefull” (164.15, 17, 24). Pelleas is the textbook lovesick knight. In addition to melancholia, the knight suffers obsessive thoughts, ­insomnia, and general physical malaise. The knight’s unhappy, feeble state is in stark contrast to his usual behavior as he has the reputation of being an adept fighter. A knight tells Gawain that Pelleas “is the beste knyght” and “the moste man of prouesse” (166.8–9). In fact, he has just won a three-day joust, the prize for which was the golden bracelet he attempted to give Ettarde, “the fayryste lady” he saw at the tournament (166.18). Ettarde even admits to Pelleas’s superior physical ability, calling him “a passynge good knyght of his body” (169.11–12). Despite his physical prowess, however, Ettarde “hate[s] hym moste” and sends her knights out to humiliate him by tying him to a horse’s tail or belly and bringing him back to her so that she can verbally assault him. Unwilling or perhaps unable to “fight with [her knights] to the uttirmost,” Pelleas allows the abuse to continue (167.30). He acknowledges that his lovesickness impedes his knightly duties: “Wherefore I loved hir nat so sore I had lever daye an hondred tymes, and I myght dye so ofte, rather than I wolde suffir that dispyte” (167.30–3). Despite repeated rejection from Ettarde, Pelleas is so smitten that he allows himself to be captured by her knights weekly just so he might have the opportunity to catch sight of her. These small glimpses of her, Pelleas explains, are what have kept him alive this long; without them he would have “bene ded so long ar this tyme” (168.16–17), thus demonstrating that the sight of one’s beloved can be both harmful and healing. Unable to go as far as Uther does, Pelleas will settle for being her prisoner just so he can see her daily, but Ettarde will not agree. When Gawain fails to uphold his promise to win Ettarde’s love for ­Pelleas, taking her instead for himself, Pelleas’s condition worsens. ­Looking for Gawain, Pelleas stumbles upon the lovers in bed together: “And whan he sawe that, his hert well-nyghe braste for sorow” (170.15–16). Again, sight is to blame for his weakening physiological and emotional states. While literary depictions of the love-imprint reiterate that what the eye sees affects the heart, medical depictions of the

32  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code disease are more nuanced, noting that the heart is affected because of the interdependent relationship between the brain and the heart. The emotions of the heart, the seat of the affective faculty, influence and are influenced by the perceptions of the imaginative and estimative faculties. Wack explains that “the genesis of emotion depends on perception and the workings of the imaginative and estimative faculties, and since emotion in turn disturbs perception and judgment, the virtus affectiva ­[affective faculty] in its workings is closer to the brain. The emotions then ‘return’ to their source, the heart, which also the origin of emotion.”56 Pelleas’s bursting heart at the sight of Gawain and Ettarde’s betrayal illustrates this convention. Once the cure for his lovesickness—the ability to be with the object of his desire—disappears, Pelleas almost succumbs to his illness.57 He tells his knights, “I woll go unto my bedde and never aryse tyll I be dede” (170.37–171.1). His last wishes emphasize the role the sight of Ettarde has had in his illness and impending death: “And whan that I am dede, I charge you that ye take the herte oute of my body and bere hit betwyxte two sylver dysshes and telle her how I sawe hir lye wyth that false knyght sir Gawayne” (171.1–4). By gifting Ettarde his irreparably damaged heart and commanding his knights to remind her of what he “sawe,” Pelleas’s final instructions draw attention to the role of vision in the love-imprint process. Moreover, the fact that he bequeaths his heart to Ettarde and not Gawain, or even the couple together, emphasizes the gendered dynamics of lovesickness: the blame for his illness and death solely lies with Ettarde. Malory’s portrayal of Pelleas’s illness closely follows the pattern established by Uther’s encounter with Igrayne: a knight contracts lovesickness from a beautiful woman and suffers debilitating and feminizing physical and emotional symptoms. If the tale were to follow the Uther-Igrayne pattern, Pelleas would (possibly through magic of some kind) unite with Ettarde, and emerge from the union cured. Malory, however, departs from the pattern in ways that expose the ambivalent gendered dynamics of lovesickness by adding an original ending: Pelleas’s rescue by Nyneve, the chief Lady of the Lake. Up to this point, Nyneve has appeared twice in Malory’s text in somewhat conflicting depictions, first as the damsel in need of rescue during the celebration of Arthur and Guenevere’s wedding (103.4–5), and next as the enchantress who, in order to protect herself from Merlin’s sexual advances, imprisons the sorcerer under a large stone (126.21–7). Additionally, she personally protects Arthur, foiling two separate plans of Morgan le Fay’s meant to kill Arthur and alerting the king to a threat from the sorceress Annowre. The critical response to Nyneve has been equally ambiguous, with scholars admonishing her deceptive nature or praising her support of the Arthurian court. She has been labeled anti-feminine, anti-patriarchal, chivalric, and sovereign. 58 And, truly, Malory’s Nyneve escapes easy categorization due to her varied roles within the Morte. Throughout, Nyneve is decidedly different

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  33 than her counterpart in Malory’s source texts as he offers a more moderate view of her role in Merlin’s entombment and expands her role, making her a supporter and protector of not only Pelleas but of ­A rthur himself. While in Malory’s French source text, La Suite du Merlin, ­Gawain repents his betrayal and persuades Ettarde to marry Pelleas, no such reconciliation between the knights or the would-be lovers occurs. 59 Instead, when Nyneve, the Lady of Lake, learns of Pelleas’s imminent death, she vows to heal Pelleas and punish Ettarde for her role in it. Interestingly, Malory’s Nyneve falls victim to lovesickness herself when she gazes upon Pelleas, for “whan she sye hym lye on his bedde she thought she sawe never so lykly a knyght” (171.28–30). While already feminized due to the physical and mental toll of his illness, here, Pelleas is further feminized as the literally passive love-object when Nyneve actively ogles his body as it lies incapacitated before her. As noted earlier, lovesickness could affect women, as we see when Elaine of Astolat dies for the love of Lancelot. Nyneve, however, experiences the illness differently than Elaine. Instead of succumbing to it, she uses magic to cure not only Pelleas but also herself. After placing Pelleas under a sleeping spell and curing his lovesickness, she brings Ettarde before him, rebukes her for his “murther,” and throws “such an inchauntement uppon hir that she loved hym so sore that well-nyghe she nere oute of hir mynde” (172.2–4). Unable to unite with her object of desire, Ettarde dies of her condition. Nyneve clearly intends Ettarde’s lovesickness to serve as a punishment for her treatment of Pelleas, and, although a harsh fate, modern readers often react to it as reasonable and fair. Sue Ellen Holbrook calls it “just,” and Kenneth Hodges views it as “a satisfactory ending.”60 Holbrook explains that Nyneve finds Ettarde guilty of betraying the strictures of chivalric love, wherein the beloved should accept the advances of the lover provided he excels in his performance of chivalry, as Pelleas has proven with his tournament victory.61 Amy Kaufman argues that she “effectively murder[s]” the stereotype of the passive love-object represented by Ettarde.62 As I have noted elsewhere, the threat or use of bodily violence as a pedagogical or punitive tool is common in medieval literature that punishes transgressive women. Anna Dronzek’s study of the gendered rhetoric of conduct literature notes that medical and religious notions of the female body affect the ways in which authors of conduct manuals address women. She finds that those texts directed toward women emphasize experience and the body, while those written for boys and men stress abstract concepts and the intellect. As a result, conduct manuals for women frequently utilize the threat of corporeal harm.63 Other popular literary texts also use bodily harm to punish unruly women. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath famously incurs deafness after being struck by her husband, the wife in Marie de France’s Bisclavret has her nose torn off, Gwenore of Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal is blinded by a

34  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code fairy maiden, and Cresseid of Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid is punished with leprosy.64 All four women are sexually transgressive characters whose actions threaten male characters, and each text attempts to contain the threat of a woman’s excess through physical violence. As a result, bodily deviance attempts to limit or normalize the original deviance of the female body. In striking her with the disabling condition of lovesickness, Nyneve seeks to control Ettarde’s deviant behavior toward Pelleas. Nyneve, in fact, calls the punishment “the ryghteuouse jugemente of God” (172.8). By categorizing the illness as a divine punishment, Nyneve emphasizes that Ettarde’s condition is a visible, physical indicator of her inward sinfulness and positions herself as a kind of superhuman judge. She later instructs Pelleas to “[t]hank [her]” for his recovery, taking full responsibility for the act and displacing the Christian underpinnings of the punishment (172.25). Because the condition leads to Ettarde’s death, ­Ettarde’s “feminine” unruliness disappears from the tale and foregrounds Nyneve’s chivalric behavior, which we might identify as knightly, even “masculine.”65 Simultaneously, Nyneve’s marriage to Pelleas cures her own lovesickness, which inverts the example of Uther’s cure after marrying Igrayne and further emphasizes Nyneve’s masculinity. Indeed, as Kaufman notes, Nyneve’s actions are a “complete reversal of the usual gendering of power,” that render Pelleas a “subject” and Nyeneve “his sovereign.”66 Though Nyneve often takes on a masculine power position throughout the tale, particularly in her treatment of Merlin and her protection of Arthur, her role as judge and enforcer of the law might be, as Kristin Bovaird-Abbo asserts, her “most masculine” act.67 Like Tryamour, the fairy maiden of Sir Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal, who proves Launfal’s innocence to the Arthurian court and blinds the deceitful Gwenore, Nyneve passes judgment and punishment upon the body of another woman deemed “deviant.”68 In Chestre’s tale, Tryamour is situated as a supernatural other to the human court of Artour’s realm. Likewise, Nyneve’s status as an enchantress positions her as outside the human court of chivalry within which Malory’s knights are working. As Helen Cooper has found, fairy figures like Nyneve, because of their supernatural status, “can act as arbiters of justice when its human forms fail.”69 In contrast to Gawain’s inability to bring justice to Pelleas’s plight, Nyneve’s successful role as a minister of justice overtly critiques the limits of the human court of chivalry, while also working within its parameters. If the “law” of courtly love stipulates that the unrequited lover die of lovesickness when unable to unite with his or her beloved, as we see with Elaine of Astolat, then Nyneve here uses magic to uphold those strictures, while also providing a subtle critique of them. Nyneve, as a result, silences Ettarde within the same confines that situate her femaleness as deviant, while simultaneously creating new lines within which to define her own active female desire.

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  35 Nyneve’s continued critique of the courtly realm allows for an emphasis on female desire, thus providing an alternative to the male-­oriented code of chivalry. Hodges notes that part of her ability to offer such an alternative lies in the ambiguous nature of the love she shares with ­Pelleas. Though Nyneve first notes that God is behind Ettarde’s punishment and, therefore, the new couple’s love for one another (172.8), she later commands Pelleas to thank her for his cure from lovesickness (172.25). Hodges notes, Her distinction between what is due to God and what is due to her may mark a moral distinction: it is necessary for justice that Ettarde be punished for her torture of Pelleas but not that Pelleas stop loving her. Nyneve’s treatment of Ettarde represent[s] Nyneve’s sense of what God’s justice should be, while her behavior to Pelleas is motivated by her own desire. However, the general confusion of precisely what mix of psychology, magic, and miracle changes the lovers emphasizes the mystery and power of private emotion: love cannot be reduced to a predictable response to public display, even a sorceress’s spells. 70 As an agent of justice, Nyneve obtains the object of her desire and upholds chivalric values, while also redefining them to allow for the expression of female desire like her own. Just as Malory endorses Nyneve’s role as a magistrate who challenges and improves upon the level of justice meted out by the human court when she appears later in “The Poisoned Apple” to acquit Guenevere after she is accused falsely of poisoning Sir Patrice (1059.11–20), he also emphasizes his validation of her marriage—and by extension her erotic desires—by referring to the spouses in tandem throughout the rest of the book. Nyneve’s desire for Pelleas is endorsed as productive and enduring, thus offsetting the infidelity emblematized by Lancelot and Guenevere. In “The Poisoned Apple,” Malory refers to Nyneve as “the Damesell of the Lake that hyght Nynyve, whych wedded the good knyght sir Pelleas” (1059.11–12), and “The Healing of Sir Urry” mentions their union when Pelleas’s name is listed as one of many who has attempted to heal the injured knight (1150.19–23). Lastly, Nyneve is among the women who sail away with Arthur after he receives his mortal wound, where Malory again mentions her marriage to Pelleas: “Also ther was dame Nynyve, the chyff lady of the laake, whych has wedded sir Pellyas, the good knyght” (1242.9–10). Her appearance in two of these episodes involve moments of healing and disabling, further underscoring Nyneve’s association with the power to cure or harm. The plot of “The Healing of Sir Urry,” of course, centers on Lancelot’s miraculous cure of Urry’s wounds, which I discuss at length in Chapter 5. Pelleas, as I note earlier, is among the group of knights who have attempted but failed to heal the knight. The reference to Nyneve, notably, focuses on her role in curing Pelleas. Malory lists

36  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code “sir Pelleas that loved the lady Ettarde (and he had dyed for her sake, had nat bene one of the ladyes of the lake whos name was dame Nynyve; and she wedde sir Pelleas, and she saved hym ever aftir, that he was never slayned by her dayes; and he was a full noble knyght)” (1150.18–23). Malory here emphasizes the potentially dire consequences of ­Pelleas’s near-fatal bout with lovesickness, while the seemingly superfluous mention of Ettarde draws attention to her part in his contraction of the illness. Women like Ettarde, Malory implies, can disable men. At the same time, however, Malory gives full responsibility for Pelleas’s cure to Nyneve, going so far as to suggest that it is she that protects him from bodily harm for the rest of his life. Women, too, are the healers of men. In “The Day of Destiny,” Nyneve appears upon a ship with Morgan le Fay, the queen of North Galis, and the Queen of the Wastelands in order to, according to Arthur himself, sail “into the vale of Avylyon to hele me of my grevous wounde” (1240.33–4), and, of the four women aboard the ship, Nyneve is the only one Malory discusses at length. While Malory is careful to leave open the unlikely possibility that Arthur may be healed by the women, he is clear in his assertion of Nyneve’s power to cure and protect: “And theys dame Nynyve wolde never suffir sir Pelleas to be in no place where he shulde be in daungere of hys lyff, and so he lyved unto the uttermuste of hys dayes with her in grete reste” (1242.11–14). Her presence among these women, however, also underscores the ambivalent power of such enchantresses as practitioners of both white and black magic, both harmers and healers, comprise the group. In placing this combination of women together, Malory effectively illustrates the ambiguous relationship between women and disabled knights in the Morte. In the episode of Pelleas and Ettarde, a knight’s lovesickness for a woman removes him from the chivalric body: Pelleas is unable to participate in any acts of physical prowess while pining for Ettarde. His healing by Nyneve, one presumes, should bring him back into the institution of knighthood. However, that does not seem to be the case for Pelleas. Though the text does mention him in the sections discussed earlier, it does not detail Pelleas’s participation in any quests or battles, save for his failed attempt to heal Sir Urry. His marriage to Nyneve, though sanctioned by Malory, effectively removes him from the system of knighthood, a fate that will be recalled later when other knights suffering from lovesickness, such as Gareth and Alexander, marry their paramours and disappear from the text. Malory makes clear that it is Nyneve who impedes her husband: Nyneve “wolde never suffir sir Pelleas to be in no place where he shulde be in daungere of hys lyff” (1242.11–12). Thus, though the episode depicts and even promotes female desire, the presence of both Ettarde and Nyneve makes clear the dangers inherent in it. Interactions with both women effectively remove a knight from the institution of knighthood, one by damaging his body through the enchantment of love and the other by curing it through the use of magic.

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  37 Instead of returning to his knightly identity after his cure, Pelleas remains a feminized figure, the object of Nyneve’s desire. Nyneve’s strong female desire subverts not only the “usual gendering of power” in the relationship between a knight and his lady but also the ability/disability system of knighthood that Malory establishes.71 The tale of Pelleas and Ettarde thus effectively demonstrates the sometimes disruptive ways in which women’s bodies and female power intersect with male bodies and knighthood.

Disability and the Feminine in “Sir Gareth” After the death of Ettarde and the marriage of Pelleas to Nyneve, the next extended discussion of male lovesickness and the women involved occurs in “Sir Gareth of Orkeney.” Following “Sir Gareth” is the “Book of Sir Tristram,” which features numerous lovesick men in tales that interrelate, build upon one another, and extend their shared themes. One of the most important themes that tales like that of Sir Gareth, La Cote Male Tayle, and Alexander the Orphan engage is how a knight demonstrates his worshipfulness through his physical acts instead of with his name or lineage. Armstrong brings together the two sections in her examination of gender and the chivalric community, noting that, despite the differences between the two books, both feature “average” knights who attempt to perform the principles of the chivalric code, thereby setting it into relief while also exposing its contradictions. She notes, “In the ‘Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkeney’ and the ‘Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones,’ Malory expands his definition of knighthood, effectively testing the limits of the possibilities for knightly behavior in the secular chivalric world.”72 Armstrong’s study specifically examines the ways in which both tales “refine and develop the ideal of courtly gender identity” and its bearing on the chivalric code.73 In addition to revealing the contradictory ways in which gender and chivalry intersect in Malory, an examination of these two books in tandem reveals the contradictory ways in which women influence the ability/disability system upon which the ­chivalric project rests and interweaves the importance of healing and harming through love and magic, which the text conceptualizes as feminine, to the masculine ideal of knighthood. Notably, many of the knights who define and test the definitions of knighthood in these sections do so by enduring and healing from disabling conditions that are marked by the feminine in some way. Just prior the “Tristram,” “Sir Gareth of Orkeney” features two women healers that perhaps prefigure the two Isodes, sisters Lyonesse and Lyonet. Both Lyonesse and Lyonet have and use healing powers in their interactions with Gareth, Arthur’s nephew, who has been living in disguise as a kitchen knave and going by the derisive nickname ­B eawmaynes, or “Fair Hands,” given to him by Kay. Catherine Batt has

38  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code noted that Gareth’s nickname as well as the text’s multiple references to his hands draw attention to the parts of his body through which he will attempt to “wynne worshyp worshipfully” (321.7) and emphasize the importance of physical ability to his assertion of knightly identity.74 ­Gareth is intent upon proving his worshipfulness not through his lineage, but through his actions, but he also views “others’ bodies as the way to proving his valor.”75 Lyonet and Lyonesse facilitate this goal with varying roles; while Lyonet uses magic and language to spur ­Gareth to publicly prove his worship, Lyonesse’s power emanates from her very visage.76 When Gareth gazes upon her as she sits at her window, he is compelled to fight the Red Knight for her: “‘[S]he sbesemyth afarre the fayryst lady that ever I lokyd uppon, and truly,’ he seyde, ‘I aske no better quarell than now for to do batayle, for truly she shall be my lady and for hir woll I fyght’” (321.26–9). His immediate love for ­Lyonesse, a common courtly love trope, spurs Gareth to action so that he can begin to complete the kind of acts necessary to his assumption of knightly identity. However, he first experiences a kind of paralysis after looking upon her, becoming momentarily incapacitated until the Red Knight brings him back to the task at hand; he commands Gareth, “leve thy beholdyng and loke on me” (321.35). It appears at first that Gareth’s paralysis may be a symptom of lovesickness. Gareth’s incapacitation, however, is temporary, for he is soon able to fiercely battle the Red Knight into the evening. In fact, Lyonesse’s image seems to have the opposite effect on him, leading him to fight more courageously instead of weakening his body. When he looks upon Lyonesse’s face a second time, “his herte waxed light and joly,” and he feels a renewed desire to fight (323.34–5).77 His gaze upon Lyonesse, thus, provides Gareth with the incentive to complete the acts of physical prowess necessary to earning worship. Lyonesse’s dramatic effect on Gareth continues when he sees her up close later that day and develops more serious symptoms of lovesickness: “And the more he loked on her, the more he brenned in love, that he passed hymself farre in his reson. And forth towards nyght they yode unto souper, and sir Gareth myght nat ete, for his love was so hoote that he wyst nat where he was” (331.22–6). Luckily for Gareth, his beloved reciprocates his romantic feelings, and the two agree to meet one another in order to consummate their relationship, an act that should cure his condition. Lyonesse’s body, thus, is both the source and cure of his lovesickness. Before that consummation can occur, Gareth must prove his worthiness to Lyonet, whose similarly contradictory power over Gareth’s body stems not from the enchantment of love but from her knowledge of magic. After she watches Gareth defeat the Red Knight, Lyonet is unhappy that her unmarried sister intends to spend the night with Gareth. As a solution, Lyonet enchants an armed knight and sends him to disrupt the would-be lovers. Gareth is twice injured by

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  39 the knight—“thorow the thycke of the thigh” (333.31)—and Lyonesse helps to staunch the bleeding. Both times, Gareth beheads the knight in self-defense, and both times, Lyonet incredibly heals not Gareth but the enemy knight by rubbing “an oyntemente” upon the severed head and setting it upon the body (334.22). The second healing of the beheaded knight is the most inconceivable, for Gareth has chopped the knight’s head into “an hondred pecis” and tossed it out the window (335.19). ­Lyonet, however, “fette all the gobbettis of hede that sir Gareth had throwe oute at the wyndow, and there she anoynted hit as she dud tofore, and put them on the body in the syght of hem all” (335.31–3). Lyonet’s healings of the knight work in tandem with the insults she has hurled at Gareth throughout the tale and demonstrate the importance of the feminine and its ability to harm or heal to masculine expressions of knighthood. Since their first meeting, Lyonet has berated Gareth, calling attention to his modest beginnings as a kitchen knave and refusing to congratulate him or express gratitude for his various victories over his opponents throughout their quest.78 Like Lyonesse’s visage, these rebukes cause Gareth to fight harder and thus earn greater worship. As Armstrong explains, “Every time [Gareth] successfully counters ­[Lyonet’s] disdain with victory in a contest of knightly ability, he enhances and solidifies his reputation.”79 Gareth himself recognizes the power Lyonet’s insults have on his prowess: “[T]he mysseyyng that ye mysseyde me in batayle furthered me much and causes me to thynke to shew and preve myselffe at the ende” (313.3–5). Likewise, Lyonet devises the plan with the enchanted knight, she explains, as a way to facilitate Gareth’s worshipfulness: “‘My lorde sir Gareth, seyde Lyonett, ‘all that I have done I woll avowe hit, and all shall be for your worshyp and us all’” (334.32–4). She repeats this explanation almost verbatim after healing the knight the second time. Just as her insults compel ­Gareth to participate in combat and thus prove his knightly worth, the dispatch of the enchanted knight at her command and her subsequent healings of him force Gareth to defend himself and, as a result, acquire a wound that temporarily removes him from his knightly duties. This emasculating wound perhaps signals Gareth’s sexual temptation, but the text offers no direct moralization of it, instead focusing on the ways in which it removes Gareth from the body chivalric. Gareth bemoans his wounded state, complaining that it is keeping him from participating in a tournament: “I have bene so sore wounded with unhappynesse sitthyn I cam into this castle that I shall nat be able to do at that turnemente lyke a knyght; for I was never thorowly hole syn I was hurte” (342.12–15). ­Despite attempts by Lyonesse and other healers to treat his wound, ­Gareth’s injury continues to plague him. Lyonet, whose enchantment has caused the wound, is the only one with the power to restore him, and she eventually does, using “an oynemente and salve” that cause him to be as “freyshe” and “lusty as he was tho” (342.19, 20–1), and he is able

40  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code to continue to perform “lyke a knyght,” until his marriage to Lyonesse removes him from the chivalric community. Once he is healed of his wound, Gareth is ready to participate in the tournament and publicly prove his worthiness for Lyonesse’s hand, which will lead to the cure of his lovesickness. Lyonesse’s magic ring adds to the episode’s representation of women as sources of healing and harm. The ring, Lyonesse explains, will not only disguise Gareth’s identity, allowing him to prove his worshipfulness through his actions, but will also protect the wearer from bodily harm: “And the vertu of my ringe is this: that that is grene woll turne rede, and that that is blewe woll turne whyghte, and that that is whyght woll turn in likeness to blew; and so hit woll do of all maner of coloures; also who that beryth this rynge shall lose no blood” (245.18–23). The ring, in addition, augments ­Lyonesse’s “beawté muche more than hit is” (345.17–18). Lyonesse’s power to enchant using magic, thus, is tied to her ability to enchant through her beauty, proving that love and magic are intimately connected in ­Malory’s book; Lyonesse herself confirms this when she hands over the ring: “And for grete love I woll gyff you this rynge” (345.23–4). Lyonesse’s exceptional beauty, which she confesses is dependent upon her ring, is both what causes Gareth’s lovesickness and increases his strength in his battle with the Red Knight. Alternately, her ring, which is tied to her beauty, allows Gareth to publicly prove his knightliness without suffering bodily harm during the tournament. This episode, consequently, demonstrates the influence female enchanters—whose power may both disable and enable a knight—have on the construction of masculine knightly identity throughout the Morte.80 In “Sir Gareth,” as in the Tristram section, two sisters with very similar names use both enchantment and medical knowledge to heal a knight’s repeated injuries. As Daniel McGuiness has noted, their placement just before “Tristram,” whose titular knight perhaps suffers the greatest numbers of illnesses and wounds of the entire Morte, is apt, for its “exclusively female surgeonings […] are well placed as preparations for” the two Isodes.81 Scholars have long commented on the commonalities between the tales of Gareth and Tristram, noting that the successive tales explore similar stories of a knight’s development. Larry Benson writes that the Tristram section presents “the proof-of-knighthood theme that we examined in Gareth, and in its broadest outline Tristram’s early career is quite similar to Gareth’s. […]. The sympathetic reader can hardly miss this since he comes to Sir Tristram immediately after reading Gareth (and the intercalated story of ‘La Cote Mal Tayle’ serves as a further reminder of this thematic pattern).”82 This thematic pattern is picked up and rewoven into not only the story of La Cote Male Tayle but also that of Alexander the Orphan. All four knights are variations on the Fair Unknown motif, working their ways into the center of the chivalric community from its margins through the repeated successful performance of knighthood.83

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  41 Armstrong has focused especially on the ways in which these tales present the feminine as integral but also threatening to the maintenance of knightly masculinity. She writes, “The examples of Sir Gareth, La Cote Male Tayle, and Alexander the Orphan all demonstrate convincingly the double-edged sword that is the feminine in the Morte Darthur. Critical to the formation and maintenance of knightly identity, the feminine also has the power to undo the very identities it is instrumental in constructing and supporting.”84 These tales also show, I argue, that an essential component of that knightly identity is experiencing and then recovering from disabling injuries and that encounters with women facilitate those experiences. As Felicity Riddy has noted, the interrelationship of the tales “repeats the ideas of wholeness and division.”85 The breaking and healing of the bodies of the knights at the behest of women illustrate this repetition.

Morgan le Fay in “Alexander the Orphan” The example of Gareth illustrates knighthood’s dependence upon physical ability as well as a movement between ability and disability and demonstrates some ways in which women might influence or facilitate that movement. “Alexander the Orphan” operates similarly, but shows the more direct—and sometimes negative—ways in which women influence the (dis)ability of knights. Again, the text presents readers with another Fair Unknown who is seeking to avenge his father’s death. ­A lexander, like La Cote, carries with him a piece of his father’s bloody clothing, in his case, the shirt his father was wearing when he was murdered by King Mark, Alexander’s uncle, foreshadowing the blood ­A lexander will later spill. Additionally, Alexander’s ability to prove his knightly prowess will entail an intersection with the feminine. The feminine presence in Alexander’s tale is Morgan le Fay, and, as Armstrong has noted, “Morgan mostly hinders—rather than helps Alexander’s knightly development and progress. Alexander’s narrative provides an important corollary to La Cote’s, compellingly demonstrating how the feminine not only helps construct and maintain knightly identities, but also poses the greatest threat to them.”86 Morgan’s interventions in ­A lexander’s narrative also pose the greatest threat to his bodily integrity as she is the direct cause and cure of his disabling wounds. Saunders notes that Morgan most fully personifies the dangerous qualities of magic in the Morte.87 Malory calls her a “false sorseres and wycche” and explains that she “was put to schole in a nunnery, and ther she lerned so moche that she was a grete clerke of nygromancye” or black magic (34.430; 2.10). Saunders explains that Morgan’s “learned and human” arts are perhaps more dangerous than those of Merlin, despite the story that he was “begotyn of a fende” (13.149).88 She writes, “Whereas ­Merlin is a force for good, Morgan, like Mordred, is the inverse, her arts of

42  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code illusion and shape-shifting characterized by the deception, jealousy and betrayal that Malory seems to place as fundamental to ‘nigromancy’.”89 ­However, it is difficult to deem Malory’s Morgan solely destructive as she does heal knights, including Alexander. Morgan comes into contact with Alexander through the written ­request of King Mark. King Mark has just been informed that his nephew, whom he ordered to be murdered, is still alive, has now become a knight, and is seeking revenge for his father’s death. Hoping to slay him first, Mark writes letters to Morgan and the queen of North Wales asking them to send out a network of enchantresses and knights to capture Alexander.90 When Alexander’s reputation as a powerful fighter gets to Morgan, she sends a damsel to arrange a contest with one of her knights, Sir Malegryne. While engaging in battle, Malegryne wounds Alexander “so wondirly sore that hit was mervayle that ever he myght stonde, for he had bled so muche” (640.31–3). Although he is eventually able to defeat Malegryne, Alexander’s wounds are so dire that he is unable to mount his horse. Morgan, who has been watching the battle, places him in a horse-litter and carries him to safety. The wounds are grave: “he had no foote to stande uppon the erthe; for he had sixtene grete woundis, and in especiall one of them was lyke to be his deth” (642.1–3). Luckily, ­Morgan is a skilled practitioner of both magic and medicine: “Than queen Morgan le Fay serched his woundis and gaff hym suche an oynement that he sholde have dyed. And so on the morne whan she cam to hym agayne, he complayned hym sore. And than she put another oynemente uppon hym, and than he was oute of his payne” (642.4–8). She later gives him a potion that causes him to sleep for three days and three nights, during which time she moves him, again via horse-litter, to her own castle. There, she asks Alexander if he would like to be made “hole” (642.35). His response is matterof-fact and demonstrates the importance of an able body to a knight like Alexander: “Madame, who wolde be syke and he myght be hole?” (642.36). Tellingly, Alexander’s response does not appear in Malory’s source text, the French Prose Tristan. Malory’s emphasis on “holeness/ sykeness” falls in line with the Morte’s unique desire to privilege ability over disability and wholeness over fragmentation, while also acknowledging the ways in which these binaries are interdependent; one cannot desire “holeness” if one has not experienced “sykeness.”91 Morgan promises to heal him, provided that he remain in her castle for a year and a day. He agrees to the vow and is “sone hole” (643.5). His oath to remain her prisoner shows how dependent he is on Morgan; without a “whole” body, he is unable to participate in the institution of knighthood. Generally such a healing of the body would facilitate a knight’s reentry into the chivalric community; however, Morgan does not allow him to leave her castle, hoping to use his body “for to do hir pleasure whan hit lykyth hir” (643.21–2). Now a prisoner, Alexander is unable

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  43 to participate in the acts of chivalry needed to maintain his identity as a knight, particularly seeking vengeance for the death of his father. Thus, once he is again able-bodied, Alexander immediately “repented hym of his othe, for he myght nat be revenged uppon kynge Marke” (643.5–6). To be an able-bodied knight who is unable to perform such duties renders him ineffective; despite being able-bodied, Alexander is perhaps at his most disabled after he is healed. Morgan’s act of healing, thus, is a hindrance to Alexander’s worshipfulness. Because Morgan wields the power to heal over Alexander’s wounded body, she effectively controls his body for her own gains, thereby emasculating him and placing him in a feminized position. Saunders notes that medieval enchantresses commonly use their magic in order to possess the bodies of men and that the “Tristram” sections of Malory feature several of Morgan’s attempts to control knights, including Lancelot, Tristram, and Alexander.92 Although dependent on Morgan for his recovery, Alexander actively resists her attempts to possess his body physically and sexually. In fact, Alexander is so desperate to regain possession of his own body that he asserts, “For I had levir kut away my hangers than I wolde do her ony suche pleasure!” (643.24–5). By choosing the amputation of his testicles over remaining Morgan’s prisoner, Alexander reveals that he would re-disable his body in order to gain the freedom needed to reenter the knightly realm of combat; he would choose to be “syke” over being “hole.” He also, importantly, chooses a physical emasculation over his situational emasculation as Morgan’s prisoner. ­A lexander’s interaction with Morgan thus upsets the usual pattern by which the feminine comes into contact with knightly ­masculinity in ways similar to Nyneve’s episode with Pelleas. However, unlike ­Malory’s validation of Nyneve’s desire for Pelleas, he condemns Morgan le Fay’s desire as so unthinkable that Alexander would rather suffer the loss of his testicles than be her lover. Whereas other women like Lyonet and the two Isoldes encourage and/or cause knights to be wounded and then actively heal them in order to facilitate their return to the masculine physical acts necessary to winning worship, Morgan harms and then heals Alexander in order to remove him from those acts for her own personal gain. Alexander spends the bulk of the rest of the narrative in a feminized position. Though he escapes from Morgan with a “hole” body, it is through the maneuverings of another damsel that he regains his freedom. It then seems as if Alexander has successfully reentered the masculine realm of knighthood as he immediately puts on a victorious performance at a tournament. His performance is so extraordinary that it leads him to win the love of his future wife, La Beal Alys. His love for his lady, however, proves to be his undoing as it distracts him from participating in the knightly acts needed to win worship; when Alexander looks upon Alys while he is on the battlefield, he is struck

44  Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code with lovesickness: “than was he so enamered uppon her that he wyst ­ ordred nat whether he were on horsebacke other on foote” (647.5–7). M notices that “Alysaundir was so afonned uppon his lady,” so he takes Alexander’s horse by the bridle and haphazardly leads about the distracted knight and his horse (647.7). The sight of Alys has disabled ­A lexander, effectively removing him from winning worship while on the field of battle. Martin asserts that this moment “certainly appears to be the most physical and public loss of both masculine ability and masculine identity that Malory depicts on the battleground,” while ­William Fitzhenry comments on the scene’s portrayal of “the humorously debilitating effects of contact with the feminine realm.”93 In an instant, Alexander again “become[s] ­helpless and passive, a position usually occupied by the feminine,” as Armstrong finds.94 In contrast to Gareth’s increased strength at his first sight of Lyonesse, we might read ­A lexander’s loss of senses at the sight of Alys as more akin to Gareth’s second viewing of Lyonesse, which impairs his reason and his bodily control. Alys, thus, here becomes a disabling force for Alexander, and the damsel that earlier rescued him from Morgan must return, helping him to once again retain his masculine status. She does so by grabbing a sword and a shield—the tools requisite to knightly masculinity— mounting a horse, and “threst[ing] unto Alysaundir with all hir myght,” giving “hym suche a buffet that hym thought the fyre flowe oute of his yghen” (647.17–18). Malory’s invocation of Alexander’s eyes draws attention to the role of the sight of Alys in his lovesickness. As Martin claims, “Here, instead of an image effecting a hot, burning love, the fire is seemingly ejected from the eyes.”95 The damsel, thus, attempts to cure ­A lexander’s disability with the weapons of knighthood typically used to cause injury. With this blow to his body, he temporarily regains his wits but soon disappears from his tale, moving with Alys to “their contrey of Benoy” where “by Alis he gate a chylde that hyght Bellengerus le Beuse” (648.2, 5–6). Despite the seemingly happy ending, Malory informs us that ­A lexander never visits King ­A rthur’s court nor avenges his father’s death. Instead, “kynge Marke slew both sir Trystram and sir Alysaunir falsely and felonsly” (648.9–10). Though Alexander is ultimately unsuccessful in consistently maintaining his knightly persona, his interactions with Morgan and Alys demonstrate the ambiguous ways in which woman and their associations with disability can shape and reshape notions of ideal knighthood. Morgan heals Alexander, but removes him from knightly combat; Alys similarly removes Alexander from the world of battle, not by healing him, but by harming his body through the contraction of lovesickness. As the examples of the women in the tales of Sir Gareth, Tristram, and Alexander show, women frequently serve as vehicles through which a knight participates in the ability/disability system of knighthood, which is essential to proving worshipfulness. Women in these tales can be the

Disability, Lovesickness, and the Chivalric Code  45 healers of disabling injuries; at the same time, however, they can also be causers of such injuries, a power rooted in the conceptualization of her body as always already disabled and disabling. This ambivalent status allows women to operate as instruments of (dis)ability that assist knights as they perform the shift—sometimes successfully and other times ­unsuccessfully—from disability to ability that is necessary to winning and keeping knightly worship. The power to enchant, which unites both sorceresses and female love-objects, is integral to a woman’s disabling and enabling force and capable of collapsing clear notions of ability, gender, and desire. The examples of the role of women in the love-madness of Tristram and Lancelot that I examine in the next chapter showcase the extreme effects a woman can have on a man’s body and mind.

2 ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’ Women and the Love-Madness of Tristram and Lancelot This chapter focuses on the bouts of love-madness suffered by Tristram and Lancelot in order to explore what happens when a knight’s lovesickness goes untreated. As Chapter 1 demonstrates, Malory’s use of the literary motif of lovesickness, which temporarily removes knights from the chivalric body until their beloved proffers a cure, reveals the ways in which a woman’s ability to enchant, through magic, love, or a combination of both, is tied to her body’s disabled and disabling qualities. Love-madness, a more extreme condition with debilitating physical and mental symptoms, furthers this link, while also testing the bounds of chivalry beyond its physical limits. As the examples of Tristram and Lancelot show, successful chivalric performance demands more than physical strength and ability; a knight may be able to appear knightly through the repeated execution of physical duties, but true worshipfulness requires the full use of one’s mental faculties as well. While in the throes of love-madness, Tristram and Lancelot alternate between hypermasculine demonstrations of physical strength and hyperfeminine moments of passivity, mental clarity and total lack of sense, and outward displays of civility and animalistic behavior. Despite the movement between disability and ability that the knights experience while love-mad, they are not truly part of the body chivalric until both body and mind are restored. As noted in Chapter 1, the lovesick Fair Unknowns of “Sir Gareth” and the “Tristram” reveal the interdependence of knighthood on an ability/disability system that features encounters with female healers and harmers. Sir Gareth and Alexander the Orphan both test the limits of Malory’s unique formulation of knighthood by contracting and recovering from lovesickness brought about by enchanting women as a way to prove their knightliness without the aid of family or nobility. This testing is continued in the love-madness of Tristram, also a kind of Fair Unknown, and Lancelot, who serves as Malory’s icon of knightliness. Despite multiple examples of mad and lovesick men throughout the Morte, Lancelot and Tristram are deemed the most “wood” by the text itself. Sir Dinadan explains, “‘[F]or in all the world ar nat such two knyghtes that ar so wood as ys sir Launcelot and […]

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  47 sir Trystram!’” (508.4–6). Both men contract madness brought on by their love for their ladies, suffer similar symptoms, and are ultimately healed through the sometimes magical machinations of women. These episodes clearly parallel one another, and Malory keeps them in place while discarding other episodes of Lancelot’s madness that appear in his source texts and lengthening the episode of madness from one month to two years.1 By crystallizing the men’s madness into two corresponding narratives, Malory amplifies the similarities and differences between their experiences, 2 and thereby knits together while also highlighting the illusory qualities of masculinity/femininity, ability/disability, and madness/sanity.

Love and Madness in Medieval Literature As Chapter 1 notes, lovesickness, a disabling chronic illness, could wreak numerous physical effects upon the male body. Emotional disturbances such as anxiety and melancholia could also occur, and, in extreme cases, lovesickness could devolve into the complete loss of sanity. This complete loss of sanity is what differentiates love-madness from lovesickness. Although many of the symptoms of love-madness are similar to those of lovesickness, they exhibit more dramatically and include sometimes aggressive displays, including violence and frenzied behavior, in contrast to the more subdued melancholic characteristics of lovesickness. In addition, in literary depictions of love-madness, knights experience full removal from the courtly realm, often disappearing into the wilderness for weeks or years, whereas a knight experiencing lovesickness simply might sit out of a tournament or lose interest on the battlefield. In classical medical literature, the following progression from love-sickness to madness often occurs thusly: after the love-imprint process has occurred, the lover becomes distracted by thoughts of his beloved, leading to the common symptoms of lovesickness, including anorexia, melancholy, and weakness. “Continued lovesickness,” Judith Silverman Neaman explains, “ends in love-madness, the symptoms of which are: amnesia, rage, suicidal tendencies, homicidal tendencies, insomnia with intermittent somnolence, mania.”3 Love itself is presented as a kind of madness throughout the Middle Ages in both medical and literary discourse. Plato’s Phaedrus famously discusses the madness of love as a divine gift, while other classical writers stress love’s potential to disorient and characterize “love intensified beyond proper measure as a form of madness.”4 Classical medical authorities discuss mania deriving from excessive love and leading to irrationality; Hippocrates, Galen, and their followers claim that love can lead to loss of reason. 5 Because love-madness originates from an excessive love that is lustful in nature, it is particularly linked to sinfulness in both medical and religious descriptions of the disease, thus reflecting the religious model for disability that

48  ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’ operated to some extent in the Middle Ages.6 Penelope Doob cites the numerous examples of heroes driven mad by or for their transgressions in Greek and Roman literature as well as biblical instances linking madness to sin as contributing to this view.7 Neaman suggests that the portrayals of madness in Arthurian romance reflect these medico-religious understandings of the disease and thus present madness as a punishment for the knight’s sinful behavior; however, the “sins” of the knight are not always so clear-cut in romance: “From religion as well as medicine, [the medieval romance] took the notion that the madman was a sinful man” but tempered that depiction by casting the knight’s sin and shame as social instead of purely moral.8 This is particularly true for Malory’s Tristram and Lancelot, two of the most famous literary exemplars of the love-mad knight. The Arthurian tradition of the madman-knight includes Yvain, Tristan, and Lancelot. Chretien de Troyes’s Yvain from Yvain ou le ­Chevalier au Lion probably serves as the model for Tristan found in the Prose Tristan, who, in turn, is an influence on Lancelot in the Prose Lancelot, both sources for Malory’s “Tristram.”9 Despite the fact that these episodes are well-known and often mentioned by scholars, however, they have yet to be studied through the lens of disability studies. Most readings of Malory’s accounts of the madness of Tristram and Lancelot discuss their insanity in passing as one of many similarities that the two knights share, thus demonstrating Malory’s intent to draw parallels between the two. Others read their madness as symbolic of their sexual sins—their adulterous love for Isode and Guenevere, respectively. For example, ­Beverly Kennedy argues that Lancelot’s madness is “a consequence of committing adultery.”10 Neaman discusses the love-madness of ­A rthurian knights at length and agrees that the illness is sometimes reflective of excessive love, but determines that their inability to balance the demands of chivalry is a contributing factor; once cured of love-­madness, she argues, they are better able to perform knighthood.11 Gwenyth Hood offers a more positive reading, arguing that Lancelot’s madness is a symptom of his having to separate from Guenevere, with whom he shares “a mature and partly corrupted form of the love which draws the knights after the Holy Grail.”12 Other scholars focus on the ways in which madness offers a critique of knightly identity. For instance, Fries asserts that madness in the Morte, particularly that of Tristram, is representative of “a burlesque” of knightliness.13 Batt agrees that madness challenges not only conventional notions of masculinity but also narrative structure but finds Lancelot to be the most representative of those challenges.14 Molly Martin finds that madness renders a knight “invisible” and therefore unable to prove his masculine prowess in her exploration of the specularity of Tristram’s and Lancelot’s madness and masculinity.15 These varied readings of the knights’ bouts of insanity reflect the multifaceted ways in which madness was perceived and depicted

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  49 in the Middle Ages, the understanding of which shifted depending on context. Aleksandra Pfau explains that in reference to the Middle Ages, the term madness can encompass “[t]he ideas of ‘not sane,’ ‘foolish,’ ‘mentally ill,’ ‘mentally disturbed,’ and ‘cognitively disabled.’”16 Leigh Ann Craig adds, “‘Madness’ can connote a social or legal experience, a descriptor of bodily function, a behavioral or interactive pattern, a subjective perceptual experience, an ethical judgment, or some combination of these.” The umbrella term “madness,” then, comprises various categories, including medical diagnoses, legal classifications, and even religious judgments, like demonic possession, throughout the Middle Ages.17 While medical and literary contexts might stress physical and moral behaviors of the mad, legal contexts tend to emphasize concerns about “issues of responsibility and accountability” or “capacity and incapacity.”18 Doob finds that medical discourse most frequently attributes a physiological cause to madness, often characterized as an excess or imbalance of humors, while literature tends to assign a moral cause, often characterized as immoderate passion.19 Although Doob stresses the link between madness and sin in all contexts, she does note that romance literature tends to rely more upon “scientific explanations” as causes for madness, leaving the “sin” of the afflicted more implicit. 20 As we will see later, the love-­madness of Malory’s Tristram and Lancelot reflects the nuance of medieval understandings of madness: the causes of their conditions reflect medical and literary notions of the disease, their symptoms are physiological and psychological, their illness renders them incapacitated from knightly duties, and their love-madness indicates a transgression that is more social than religious in nature. In addition to connoting the excessive behavior and/or decisions of the love-mad knight, madness also highlights his feminized state. Like lovesickness, madness is a feminizing condition because of its effects on the ability to think rationally. Laura Jose has found, moreover, that medieval writers frequently discuss the brain and the womb in similar terms and thus produce connections between the female body and madness. Each organ is a gendered location of conception—the brain conceives thought and is thus “masculine,” while the womb conceives children and is thus “feminine”—and both are thought to be influenced by the lunar cycle. As a result, if a man loses rational thought, his brain essentially functions as a kind of womb. Jose explains, “Madness, in fact, actively ­transforms the male body into something approximating the female body. Behaviours exhibited by madmen—uncontrolled gestures, meaningless speech, excessive fear, not to mention irrationality itself—are characteristically feminine.”21 Tristram and Lancelot both perform these feminizing behaviors to some extent throughout their bouts with madness: they swoon dramatically, speak little, leap, and behave erratically. Moreover, as Martin has noted, because madness removes the knights from the field of battle upon which they visually

50  ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’ demonstrate their masculine prowess, they are effectively rendered invisible and thereby incapable of masculine performance. 22 The men’s emasculation is further apparent in the “Tristram”’s depictions of women behaving “madly.” Isode, upon being wrongfully informed of Tristram’s death is so distraught “that she was nyghe oute of hir mynde” (499.7–8). Isode’s grief leads her to contemplate then attempt suicide, before she is thwarted by Mark and then taken to a tower where she “lay longe syke, nyghe at the poynte of dethe” (499.23–4). Isode’s dramatic reaction to Tristram’s “death” mirrors his own time “oute of hys mynde.” Later, Guenevere weeps “as if she were wood” when she discovers Lancelot’s madness, and a nameless maiden who is surprised by Lancelot when he runs into her bed, cries “as she had bene madde” (818.34–5) when she sees Sir Blyaunte beaten and bloody. The behavior of the women throughout these scenes occurs in tandem with that of Lancelot and Tristram and draws into relief the knights’ loss of masculinity. Women and the feminine, consequently, remain central to the Morte’s explorations of madness. Just as in the examples of lovesickness described in Chapter 1, women continue to serve as the catalysts for and cures of love-madness in the Morte, and this ability continues to be bound up with female magic, love, and the conception of the female body as disabled and therefore capable of disabling men. By causing their ­madness, Isode and Guenevere fully feminize Tristram and ­Lancelot, placing them outside the bounds of knightly masculinity. Madness, moreover places the knights in literal and figurative liminal positions. While mad, both knights reside in the forest, outside of the boundaries of the court, and endure literal exiles after their recoveries. Moreover, as madmen, ­Tristram and Lancelot exist on a threshold between humanity and ­beastliness, illness and health, and civility and wildness. In retaining some chivalric behaviors, particularly physical abilities, but lacking their wits, the men also exist between ability and disability, almost in a state that attempts to hold onto both at once. They are, at times, able to complete the physical demands of knighthood, but their lack of reason ultimately bars them from assuming their full identities as knights. Tristram and Lancelot show, therefore, that one must be physically and mentally able in order to participate in Malory’s chivalric order.

The Love-Madness of Tristram Because Tristram’s experience with madness occurs before Lancelot’s, it provides a foundation upon which Malory explores and augments the function of love-madness in defining and testing the ability/disability system of knighthood. Unlike the examples of lovesickness discussed in Chapter 1, a magically provoked lovesickness of Tristram and Isode occurs after the two have already begun to fall in love. Malory explains that Tristram “kyste grete love to La Beale Isode” and she has “grete

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  51 fantasy unto hym” after she heals his envenomed wounds (385.6–7, 9). They later suffer simultaneous lovesickness brought on by the ingestion of a magic potion provided by Isode’s mother that is meant for her daughter to consume upon marrying King Mark. The potion takes the place of the love-imprint process generally featured in literary depictions of the disease, but its effects are similar in that both Tristram and Isode suffer greatly when they are apart. Tristram’s potion-induced lovesickness is intensified when he descends into madness after thinking Isode has betrayed him. Interestingly, Tristram’s bout of madness is preceded by the lovesickness of another knight, Kehydyns, brought on by the sight Isode. Malory affirms, “And as the Freynshe booke makith mension, at the firste tyme that ever sir Kayidins saw La Beall Isode he was so enamered uppon hir that for very pure love he myght never withdraw hit” (493.7–10). After falling in love with Isode, Kehydyns sends her many letters and poems, professing his love for her. True to her identity as “a noble surgeon,” Isode seems to understand the power of ­Kehydyns’s affliction and her role in it, for she has “pité of hys complaynte” and pens a response in the hopes of providing him healing “comforte” (493.14–15). Her attempt at a cure backfires when Tristram discovers the letters and accuses the two of betrayal, ultimately falling into madness in his distress. After fleeing Castle Tintagel, Tristram “made such sorow that he felle downe of hys horse in a sowne, and in such sorow he was inne three dayes and three nyghtes,” ending up “allmoste oute of hys mynde” (495.9–12, 18). A damsel makes numerous attempts to treat Tristram, offering him food and drink and falling into despair when she is unable to “amende hym” (495.24). He ends up spending three months at “the same castell where sir Palomydes and sir Trystramys dyd batayle, when La Beall Isode departed them,” wherein the lady of the castle provides him with food, lodging, and music (495.30–2). During his stay at the castle, he resides in a liminal state between civilization and the wilderness. He immediately “put hys horse from hym and unlaced hys armour,” running into the forest and breaking “downe the treys and bowis,” but he also returns when the lady plays his harp: “anone sir Trystramys wolde com to the harpe and harkyn thereto, and somtyme he wolde harpen hymselff” (496.7–8, 9, 14–16). Though the music seems to pull him back into reason and civilization somewhat, he ultimately throws off all trappings of civilization, removing his clothing and running off into the wilderness. Malory explains that “than was he naked, and waxed leane and poore of fleyshe” (496.19). He ends up joining a community of shepherds, who feed him, “beate hym with roddis” when he misbehaves, and ultimately make “hym lyke a foole” after shearing his hair (496.24). He ends up staying with the shepherds for another six months. Throughout Tristram’s episode of madness, he experiences a progression from an able-bodied and -minded masculine knight who retains

52  ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’ the accouterments of chivalric civilization to a physically and mentally disabled “wood man” who is naked and resides outside of the courtly realm (500.30). The loss of his clothing, particularly his armor, and his residence in the forest visually signify his loss of reason and masculinity. Malory clearly links Tristram’s loss of clothing with his removal from the courtly realm: “Thus sir Trystramys endured there an halff-yere naked, and wolde never com in towne ne village” (497.1–2). Because in medieval thought the brain is the seat of reason and thus the link between the body and the soul, the loss of reason in madness signals the loss of humanity. 23 Tristram’s lack of clothing enhances his characterization as inhuman, feminized, and outside of civilization as clothing and armor visually symbolize both humanity and masculine knightliness. 24 Additionally, his living naked in the woods connects him to the motif of the wild man, whose image appears in literature, art, and architecture throughout the Middle Ages. 25 The literary wild man is perhaps best epitomized by the biblical character Nebuchadnezzar, who lives as a beast in the forest during a period of madness, as we see both T ­ ristram and Lancelot, among other “mad” romance heroes, do. Neaman affirms, “No matter what the cause of insanity in Arthurian romance, all madmen flee to the wilderness. […]. In this bestial estate, he is often called a wild man.” Once in the forest, Neaman continues, “He becomes an unreasoning beast which looks like a man but does not think or act like one.”26 Both Tristram and Lancelot are described as “wylde” by others they encounter. Moreover, the Middle English use of wod/wode/ wood for both “forest” and “madness” further draws attention to the connection between the mad knight of the forest and the wild man. Tristram’s status as a fool among the shepherds, as well as Lancelot’s later treatment as such, also connects to medieval notions of madness. The medieval court fool is an ambiguous figure as courts employed for entertainment both “artificial fools,” or entertainers mimicking the behavior of people with intellectual disabilities, and “natural fools,” or people born with intellectual disabilities. 27 Intellectual disability, a condition we describe today as permanent and can be either congenital or acquired, shares features with madness in medieval medical and patristic understandings of mental illness. As scholars like Eliza Buhrer and Irina Metzler have noted, such discourses recognized what are now viewed as discreet disorders as overlapping categories on a fluid spectrum; as a result madness or lunacy was often considered in terms similar to “foolishness” or intellectual disability. 28 In literature, particularly of the late-medieval era, fools often exhibit behavior indicative of this fluidity as literary fools are depicted as both possessing “unspecific unreason” and as occupying marginalized positions as “social outsiders.”29 ­Malory’s Tristram illustrates this ambivalence. In his state of madness, he is “made lyke a foole,” thus demonstrating that the shepherds perhaps view his lack of reason as evidence that he is a lunatic, a natural fool, an

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  53 outsider, or all three. Additionally, the phrase “made lyke a foole” draws attention to the constructed features of mental and intellectual ability as well as the divide between natural and artificial fools. Tristram’s interactions with an actual court fool, Dagonet, augments his status as an ambivalent figure. While Dagonet and his squires stop to get a drink at a well, Tristram appears and dunks the men into the water to the amusement and laughter of the shepherds. Dagonet, assuming that the shepherds were behind the ruse, rides back to the shepherds and with help from his squires beats them. Tristram reacts to the attack on the shepherds, those “that were wonte to gyff hym mete,” by assailing Dagonet, stealing his sword, and beheading one of the squires (498.14–15). By protecting those who have provided for him, Tristram behaves in a manner that seemingly fits the chivalric code. However, Tristram’s excessively violent actions, though they show that his body retains the knowledge of combat, demonstrate that his mind still lacks reason as after the attack, “sir Trystramys toke his way with the swerde in hys honde, rennynge as he had bene wyld woode” (498.20–1). His later defeat of the giant, Tauleas, serves to further illustrate Tristram’s ability to perform some of the physical acts necessary to achieving knightly worship. However, he remains removed from the chivalric community in that he has not yet regained his senses. It is worth noting here that both of these examples require Tristram to interact with other figures we might consider in terms of disability. As Arthur’s fool, Dagonet, is associated with disability in his very vocation; however, Malory does not depict him as mad or even intellectually disabled, instead portraying him as a kind of clown.30 Dagonet, though, does represent a “disabled” form of knighthood or even a force capable of disabling knighthood. As Gergely Nagy explains, although knighted by King Arthur, Dagonet’s many defeats in combat and constant buffoonery illustrate that he “cannot function properly as a knight” and demonstrate that his “presence in the world of the knight-errant disturbs the balance of that world.”31 As a court fool, Dagonet is a “household knight,” as Kennedy labels him, who functions only inside the court, not on the battlefield. 32 As a result, he is a kind of partial, or even “disabled,” knight in that his limited performance of knighthood hinders his ability to fully participate in the body chivalric, which requires the successful completion of quests and combat outside of the court. His role as a court fool, thus, precludes his ability to perform as a “whole,” or abled, knight; Nagy notes that “he is absolutely unable to fulfill the functions of the knight-errant.”33 Bringing the two “fooles” together in this scene emphasizes the disabilities of both knights, exposing both the mental instability of Tristram and the knightly inability of Dagonet. Likewise, Taleus’s giant body, of course, marks him as physically different. His excessive size and violent nature additionally represent the kind of hypermasculinity that Tristram is unable to maintain in his feminized state. It is not surprising that his

54  ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’ defeat of the giant is what leads King Mark to seek out “the madde man” responsible for killing him as the act seems to signal the beginning of Tristram’s progression back to physical health, sanity, and finally his masculine identity as a knight (500.29). In his mad state, consequently, Tristram’s chivalry is tempered by disability consistently; instead of moving from one state to the other, as institutionalized knighthood requires, Tristram seems to maintain aspects of both at once, all the while remaining outside of reason and civilization and thus the code of chivalry altogether. Tristram’s figurative residence outside of reason and civilization in madness is made material when King Mark exiles him from the court and from Isode. This occurs after Tristram recovers his wits and, in the process, his identity as a knight. At first, he is able to stay at the castle unknown: the treatment provided by King Mark’s knights has “brought hym well to hys remembraunce” (501.9–10), but “there was no creature that knew sir Trystramys nothir what maner man he was” (501.10–11). The earlier rumor of Tristram’s death aids his ability to remain anonymous while in the court, and his presumed death serves as a metaphor for the knightly identity that he loses while mad. His identity is revealed, however, when “a lytyll brachett” (501.27) recognizes him, leading Mark to send him into exile.34 It is through this exile that he will travel to King Arthur’s court and become a Round Table knight, thus joining the very pinnacle of the institutionalized knighthood Malory endorses and that Tristram’s madness has barred him from reentering. Isode facilitates this movement by being the source of both his madness, which functions as a figurative exile from the court and his identity, and his literal exile from the court. On the surface, the direct cause of Tristram’s madness seems to be shared by both Kehydyns and Isode. But, in multiple moments in the text, a desire on the part of the male characters to place the blame most squarely upon Isode arises. Palomides bemoans the fact that “ever so noble a knyght sholde be so myscheved for the love of a lady” (497.6–8), and Tristram himself declares that he has suffered “much angur and daunger […] for [her] love” (502.21). Additionally, the presence of a network of lovesick knights within the chapter reminds readers of the women who instigate the illness. Isode, it seems, is particularly threatening to the bodies and minds of men, for, in addition to Kehydyns, Palomides also incurs symptoms of lovesickness upon seeing her. In “King Mark,” Dynadan and Mark overhear Palomides complaining to himself about his unmanageable love for Isode: “A, fayre lady, why love I the? For thou arte fayryst of all othir and as yet shewdyst thou never love to me nother bounté. Pardé, and ye, alas! muste I love the. And I may nat blame the, fayre lady, for myne eyen caused me [this sorowe]” (592.4–7). Although Palomides places the blame on his eyes and not Isode, the medico-literary understanding of lovesickness asserts that the visual image provokes the physical and mental anguish of the disease. Tellingly,

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  55 these two knights, united by their lovesickness, join together to seek out Tristram: Than a lytyll before that tyme La Beall Isode had commanded sir Kayhydyus oute of the contrey of Cornwayle. So sir Keyhydyns departed with a dolerous harte, and by aventure mette with sir Palomydes, and they felyshyppyd togydirs, an aythir complayned to other of there hote love that they loved La Beall Isode. ‘Now lat us,’ seyde sir Palomydes, ‘seke sir Trystramys that lovyth her as well as we and let us preve whether we may recover hym.’ (497.10–18) This fellowship of misfit knights evokes Malory’s larger concerns with ­ epartures and reunions. Both Kehydyns and Palomides are outsiders; d both are lovesick, and Kehydyns has been exiled from Cornwall by Isode, while Palomides is further marginalized due to his Saracen status.35 ­“Togydirs,” however, they find “felyshypp” and decide to look for ­Tristram, another “outsider,” and make him “whole.”36 Later in the chapter, another victim of lovesickness is recalled: Sir Matto le B ­ reune. While King Mark and his court are under the false impression that ­Tristram has died, Dagonet mentions his encounter with “‘a foole n ­ aked” in the forest (498.26). King Mark replies matter-of-factly, “[T]hat ys sir Matto le Breune that felle oute of hys wytte because he loste hys lady, for whan sir Gaherys smote downe sir Matto and wan hys lady of hym, never syns was he in hys mynde, and that was grete pité, for he was a good knyght” (498.28–32). By mistaking Tristram for Sir Matto, King Mark draws attention to the presence of love-mad knights and emphasizes the role of women like Isode in the contraction of the illness, which has real power to remove knights from the institution of knighthood. Moreover, Malory reveals that Kehydyns’s lovesickness is fatal: “And at the laste, as ye shall hyre or the booke be ended, sir K ­ eyhydyns dyed for the love of Isode” (493.10–11). Although more an instrument of (dis)ability than a true agent, as she does not intentionally harm the knights, Isode is depicted as both a “noble surgeon” and a destroyer of men in the “­Tristram” sections.

The Love-Madness of Lancelot Lancelot’s experience with madness makes him part of this web of lovesick knights. The cause of his madness is complicated, and the events that lead to his madness begin with his being tricked by Dame Brusen into spending the night with Elaine, a night that leads to the conception of Galahad. When Elaine desires to spend a second night with Lancelot, Dame Brusen again misleads Lancelot, bringing him to Elaine’s bed under the guise that she is taking him to Guenevere. Guenevere, of course, discovers the lovers and rebukes Lancelot, commanding him to leave the court at once. Lancelot, bearing only his nightshirt and sword, takes

56  ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’ “suche an hartley sorow at her wordys that he [falls] downe to the floure in a sowne” (805.31–806.1). When he later revives, he leaps out the window and runs away “as wylde as ever was man,” disappearing for two years (806.6–7). Like Tristram, Lancelot enters into his madness after falling into a “sowne” caused by what he perceives to be the betrayal of his lady. Lancelot, too, runs away from the court half-naked and into the forest, his lack of knightly armor and residence in the forest appropriately signifying his loss of reason and “wild” behavior. Outside of the court, Lancelot runs “wylde woode frome place to place,” living on what little food and water “as he myght gete” (817.24, 25). He, also like Tristram, finally comes upon men who provide him some kind of community, Sir Blyaunte and his dwarf. In their company, Lancelot is provided with food, drink, and shelter. While in his state of madness, Lancelot, like Tristram, retains some chivalric elements; thus, knighthood is again associated with disability, but his lack of reason bars him from full chivalric participation. When Blyaunte’s dwarf finds Lancelot, the knight has happened upon a pavilion by which he finds two swords, two spears, and a white shield hanging from a tree. In a kind of frenzy, Lancelot grabs a sword and begins striking the shield violently: “And than he laysshed at the shylde, that all the medow range of the dyntys, that he gaff such a noyse as ten kyghtes hadde fought togydyrs” (818.2–4). Lancelot’s handling of the sword demonstrates that he retains some knowledge of combat, but his frenzied actions appear, well, mad and echo Tristram’s earlier excessive acts of violence. One can just imagine the sight of a half-naked knight flailing at an imagined enemy. In fact, his actions lead Blyaunte’s dwarf to try to knock the sword from his hands, and Blyaunte agrees that a man “oute of hys wytte” should not handle a weapon, shouting at Lancelot, “Good man, ley downe that swerde! For as mesemyth thou haddyst more need of a slepe and of warme clothis than to welde that swerde” (818.14–16). Lancelot is able to get the upper hand, however, and he strikes Sir Blyaunte, knocking him to the ground and demonstrating that he still maintains his renowned physical strength despite his loss of reason. Regardless of his physical ability, Lancelot’s madness blocks him from full participation in the institution of knighthood. Indeed, because of his mental illness, neither the dwarf nor Blyaunte attempt to retaliate. The dwarf even reminds Blyaunte, “[H]it is nat youre worshyp to hurte hym, for he ys a man oute of his wytte,” and Blyaunte agrees, vowing, “harme woll I none do hym” (819.4–7). The dwarf recognizes the mad knight’s chivalric qualities, even positing “that he resembelyth muche unto sir Launcelot,” and acknowledges that his madness is not congenital or caused by sin: “doute ye nat he hath bene a man of grete worshyp, and for som hartely sorow that he hath takyn he ys fallyn madde” (819.7–8, 5–7).37 Consequently, Blyaunte and his dwarf take the knight by horse-litter to their castle.

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  57 Lancelot’s stay with Blyaunte and his dwarf mirrors that of Tristram’s with the shepherds. Like the shepherds, the two men treat Lancelot with some compassion; they feed him and bring “hym agayne to hys strengthe and fayrenesse,” but they also restrain his limbs with chains, which recalls the beatings Tristram receives from the shepherds (819.26–7). Such physical treatment of the mad was common and was thought to benefit, not punish the afflicted. Bartholomeus Anglicus promotes the use of restraints for some patients in his encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum, explaining that the practice, when done carefully, maintains the safety of both the mad and those around them. 38 Pfau notes that, because restraints kept both the mad person and his community safe, the act of restraining and surveilling was thought to be the responsibility of the community at large. 39 The flogging such as that experienced by ­Tristram, Doob adds, “was thought to be useful to the patient,” noting that both Hippocrates and Barthololmeus assert that physical pain can ease mental anguish and may temper self-destructive behaviors.40 Despite his legally and medically sound decision to bind Lancelot, Sir ­Blyaunte later comes to regret his decision after Lancelot injures his hands in an attempt to protect him, adding a physically disabling injury to his mental instability. Afterwards, Blyaunte asserts that they “bynde hym no more, for he ys happy and gracyous” (820.31–2). Lancelot seems aware that his guardians have shown him compassion when he fights to protect ­Blyaunte from two knights, and his physical act of protection again demonstrates that he maintains a measure of his previous chivalric self despite his madness: “And whan sir Launcelot saw that, yet as woode as he was he was sory for his lorde, sir Blyaunte” (820.7–9). In order to combat the attackers, Lancelot “brake hys chaynes of hys leggys and of hys armys, and in the breakynge he hurte hys hondys sore” (820.10–11). Just as Tristram avenges the mistreatment of the shepherds, Lancelot protects his caregiver, showing that, in spite of his madness, he is able to perform physical chivalric behavior; the act of breaking his chains visually signifies that his madness cannot fully extinguish his knightly prowess, while the subsequent injury to his hands—two tools necessary to successful knights—demonstrates that the possession of both a lack of reason and a surplus of physical capability is inconsistent and untenable.41 Lancelot again acts both madly and chivalrously when he suddenly participates in a hunt. As he watches a party of hunters and their hounds fail to capture a wild boar, he steals a horse and spear from one of the hunters and begins to chase the boar. Anne Rooney notes that the literary motif of the boar-hunt in medieval romance brings together the heroic strength and courtly manners of chivalry: “In Middle English romance, the epic bravery of the boar-hunter is tempered with courtly activity which raises the episode from simple monster-slaying to a demonstration of social skill” that “define[s] the character of the hunter in terms

58  ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’ of traditional masculinity, but allied with courtly prowess.”42 The use of the boar-hunt here aptly underscores Lancelot’s struggle to regain his chivalric identity while mad. Similar to his attempt to protect Blyaunte, which results in wounds to his hands, this bid to participate in a courtly ritual ends in an injury to his body. After Lancelot spears the boar, the animal overturns the knight’s horse and strikes “hym on the brawne of the thyghe up unto the howghe-boone” (821.18–19). In both instances, a knight of sound body, but not of sound mind, is injured physically when attempting to reaccess the chivalric realm. It is as if the bodily injuries serve to punish Lancelot for trying to return fully to his knightly duties before being cured of his mental illness. Lancelot’s decision to enter the hunt “and act as a conventional warrior” while mad, Rooney reminds us, “is incongruous.”43 While the hunt might, as Rooney asserts, represent the first step in Lancelot’s progression toward sanity and thus reintegration into knighthood, I contend that it also demonstrates that he is not yet fit for such a reintegration.44 Within Malory’s ability/disability system of knighthood, one must oscillate between ability and disability, but one must be healed or cured before full reentry. Though in both instances Lancelot’s body is healed, his mind remains afflicted, and thus he remains excluded from the body chivalric. The lack of a complete cure perhaps mirrors Lancelot’s unresolved sin of adultery, which we may interpret as either his encounter with Elaine and/or his relationship with Guenevere. Malory, as he does with Gareth’s thigh wound, which I discuss in both Chapter 1 and 3, leaves unclear whether the wound provides unmistakable evidence of sexual sin; his thigh wound is emblematic of his feminized state, but it only indirectly recalls his sexual affairs with Elaine and Guenevere. As Catherine Batt has observed, the French Lancelot, in its extensive spiritual exegeses, explicitly associates Lancelot’s “sin” as crucial to the “realization of spiritual perfection in the person of Galahad,” whereas the Morte offers a more ambiguous view. In addition to not specifically naming his thigh wound as evidence for sin, Malory also renders the hermit who heals the wound spiritually ineffectual; though he heals Lancelot’s body, the hermit does not provide him food or spiritual guidance.45 His later healing by the Holy Grail equally obscures any direct link between Lancelot’s sinful nature, his madness, and his recovery. Though it is “by miracle and by vertu of that holy vessell” that Lancelot is cured, any overt connection to the divine is mitigated by Dame Brusen’s involvement, for it is only after she places Lancelot under a spell that he is brought into its presence (824.25–6). It will not be until Lancelot’s later encounters with the Grail, as Chapter 4 details, that Lancelot’s experiences with (dis)ability more intimately incorporate spiritual matters. What is clear in Lancelot’s case is that madness is incompatible to knighthood. As we have seen in the examples discussed in this chapter, a man must be of sound mind and body in order to participate in

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  59 the chivalric order. Lancelot reveals as much when, after he recovers, he laments his illness, demands it remain a secret, and enters into a self-imposed exile from the Round Table (824.32–825.17). Interestingly, Lancelot does not fully adopt his original identity after his cure, deciding instead to call himself “Le Shyvalere Ill Mafeete” or “the knyght that hath trespassed” (826.22–3). The exact nature of his “trespass,” however, is never defined, leaving unclear whether it refers to his night with Elaine, affair with Guenevere, or episode of madness. Middle English notions of the term buttress this ambiguity, as, in addition to signaling a general offense or a transgression of civil or divine law,46 the Middle ­English trespass could refer to “a malfunction or disorder of a bodily part or process.”47 Lancelot’s feelings of shame after his cure, according to Batt, do not indicate spiritual or moral growth on the part of the knight: “Launcelot’s concern is not with the deeper significance of the Grail but with his social rehabilitation, which he largely engineers.”48 Indeed, he plans a joust in order to reestablish his knightly identity through the performance of physical combat. Now that his sanity has returned, he is able to return to the rituals of chivalry and, eventually, after proving his recovery, the Round Table itself. As with Tristram, Lancelot’s madness originates with his love for a woman. However, in Lancelot’s case, three women in total contribute to his condition: Dame Brusen, Elaine, and Guenevere. Elaine seems confident that Guenevere is solely at fault. She tells the queen, ­“Madame, ye ar gretly to blame for sir Launcelot, for now have ye loste hym” (806.13–14). Sir Bors, however, sees things a bit differently, noting that both women are to blame: “[B]etwyxt ye bothe ye have destroyed a good knyght” (807.10–11). The progression of Lancelot’s disease is exacerbated by his first sexual encounter with Elaine, which is facilitated by Dame Brusen and her magic. Just as a magic potion exacerbates Tristram’s lovesickness for Isode, so too does a potion influence Lancelot’s encounter with Elaine. Tellingly, Malory directly connects the potion—and thus love—to madness: “And than dame Brusen brought sir Launcelot a kuppe of wyne, and anone as he had drunken that wyne was so asoted and madde that he myght make no delay but wythoute ony let he wente to bedde. And so he wente that mayden Elayne had bene queen Gwenyver” (795.6–11, my emphasis). The text, thus, explicitly associates both the enchantment of love and love-magic with madness. Notably, it is during this madness that Elaine conceives Galahad; while Lancelot’s mad brain, unable to conceive rational thought, functions as a womb, Elaine’s unimpaired womb literally conceives Galahad, who is to become the spiritually and physically perfect knight. Here, feminine enchantment in both senses simultaneously produces disabled knighthood (signified by Lancelot) and chivalric perfection (signified by Galahad), thus illustrating that the system of chivalry necessitates the intersection of the feminine and disability.

60  ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’

Madness, Knighthood, and Identity Lancelot’s time under Dame Brusen’s “enchauntemente” might have led to the creation of Galahad, but it causes a temporary destruction of his own sense of self; when it is “paste,” Lancelot “knew hymselff” (795.21, 22). The magically induced madness that he suffers from the potion is then repeated a second time when he is again tricked into sleeping with Elaine, the act that, as we know, leads to Guenevere’s harsh words and thus to Lancelot’s experience with “real” madness, which causes him to lose his identity for two years. Blyaunte and his dwarf describe this loss of identity when they treat Lancelot and lament that, although his physical health has returned, “in hys wytte they cowde nat brynge hym, nother to know hymselff” (819.27–8). Madness in each of these instances is construed as a loss of knowledge of the self. Knighthood, as this project affirms, is an identity that is produced through the repeated performance of combat resulting in disabling injuries, followed by the subsequent healing of such injuries. However, the total loss of reason in madness hinders a man from fully returning to knighthood, even when his body regains its health. In her study of medieval representations of madness, Sylvia Huot explains that madness “involve[s] the breakdown of boundaries both internal—those marking divisions within the body—and external: the crucial dividing line between self and other. There results a confusion of identity, a sense of alienation from one’s own body, a loss of the clear distinction between self and other, inner and outer.”49 Tristram, too, experiences such a loss, but, unlike Lancelot, he assumes his original identity after he is bathed, fed, and dressed; the acts bring “hym well to hys remembraunce” (501.9–10). For Tristram, the trappings of knighthood are enough to bring back his sanity and thus self-knowledge. Lancelot’s journey back to himself is more complicated, as I discuss later. After recovering their wits, however, both men are exiled from their respective courts, thus deferring full reintegration into the chivalric order. Though Lancelot’s exile is self-imposed and Tristram’s is sanctioned by Mark, the two men’s periods of exile result in their both being able to join the Round Table, with Lancelot reassuming his previous identity and Tristram finally accepting his invitation to join the Round Table. Notably, though previously asked to join the Round Table by both King Arthur and his knights (489.23–8), ­Tristram defers his acceptance until after he finally meets Lancelot during a joust, further connecting the two knights, the recovery of their sanity and identity, and their place within the Round Table, Malory’s symbol for institutionalized knighthood. Malory further explores issues of madness and identity when Lancelot is treated as a fool by the townspeople and knights of Corbenic. The townspeople beat him and taunt him when he arrives to the city naked and out of his wits, but when he is brought to the castle and given

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  61 clothing, the knights notice “many woundys uppon hym” that signal to them that “he had bene a man of worshyp” (822.31–3). Though his nakedness and mental illness mark him as a fool, his clothing and physical disabilities—the wounds of combat—provide evidence of his knightliness. Later, when he dons Sir Castor’s clothing and is “arrayed lyke a knyght,” his appearance as a knight is complete: “he was the semelyeste man in all the courte, and none so well made” (823.13, 14). Treating Lancelot as a fool clearly recalls Tristram’s earlier experience with the shepherds, while the similar phrases “lyke a knyght” and “lyke a foole” used in each episode emphasize the performative nature of the identity categories “fool” and “knight” and the importance of the visual markers of (dis)ability to those identities. Once Lancelot’s appearance matches his “true” self, Elaine recognizes him in the castle gardens: “anone she felle in remembraunce of hym and knew hym verily for sir Launcelot” (823.24–5). However, unlike Tristram, who recovers his sense of self after being reclothed, Lancelot remains disconnected from his true identity. Elaine explains that he is still “distracke oute of hys wytte,” and Dame Brusen, who comes to his aid explains that they must treat him carefully due to his state: “We muste be wyse how we deale wyth hym, for thys knyght ys oute of hys mynde, and yf we awake hym redely, what he woll do we all know nat. And therefore abyde ye a whyle, and I shall throw an inchauntemente uppon hym, that he shall nat awake of an owre” (826.16–17). While under Dame Brusen’s spell, Lancelot is brought to the chamber of the Holy Grail, where the vessel restores his sanity and sense of self. And, thus, Lancelot’s madness ends just as his first encounter with Elaine begins: with magic wrought by a woman. As we have seen in most of the examples discussed in Chapter 1 and earlier, here, a woman liable for a man’s mental illness is also instrumental to its cure. Despite the clear involvement of Elaine and Dame Brusen in Lancelot’s madness, the ending of “Launcelot and Elaine” makes certain that read­ uenevere. ers know whom the knights blame for Lancelot’s afflictions: G After hearing of Lancelot’s adventures, Arthur seems content in believing not only that Elaine is the cause of his madness but also that the ­result— the conception of Galahad—is worth the hardship he has endured. ­A rthur exclaims, “I mervayle for what cause ye, sir L ­ auncelot, wente oute of youre mynde. For I and many othir deme hyt was for the love of fayre Elayne, the doughtir of kynge Pelles, whom ye ar noysed that ye have gotyn a chylde, and hys name ys Galahad. And men sey that he shall do many mervaylouse thyngys” (832.30–5). Malory reveals to the reader, however, that “all sir Launcelottys kynnesmen knew for whom he wente oute of hys mynde” (833.3–5). Although she is not named, it is clear that his kinsmen are referring to Guenevere. And, i­ndeed, ­Guenevere’s influence continues to haunt the knight throughout the entirety of the Morte. As I will discuss in detail in Chapters 4 and 5, his love for her

62  ‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’ plays some part in blocking his access to the Grail in the “Tale of the Sankgreall” and contributes to the establishment and progression of his particular brand of bodily chivalry, which is framed by his encounters with disability. Most drastically, Lancelot’s love-madness for Guenevere results in his death. Her formal rejection of him after ­A rthur’s death effectively removes Lancelot from institutionalized knighthood; he again retreats to the wilderness, this time opting to begin a monastic life. The text frames his monastic experience in terms similar to that of his earlier madness: Guenevere rejects him; he weeps and flees to the forest; he removes his knightly attire; and a party of knights embarks on a quest to “seek syr Launcelot” (1254.21). ­Physically and mentally disabled by his lack of access to the queen and thus unable to prove his worshipfulness, Lancelot remains excluded from the body chivalric. As E. Kay Harris has shown, Guenevere’s final rejection “severs Lancelot from the world he has known: his capacity to act as a knight of worship is taken from him.”50 After Guenevere’s death removes the possibility of a future reunion, Lancelot experiences his final symptoms of love-madness; he swoons, falls into a deep depression, experiences insomnia, and is unable to eat or drink for six weeks, after which he becomes bedridden until his death. Prior to his death, his body is so altered from these symptoms that “he was waxen by a kybbet shorter than he was [and] the peple coude not knowe hym” (1257.5–6). Harris asserts that “through the vehicle of monasticism, [Malory] […] renders ­Lancelot physically incapable of” deeds necessary to knighthood and makes his body “aberrant and debilitated” and thus no longer recognizable.51 Malory accomplishes this erasure of Lancelot’s knightly identity not simply through the vehicle of monasticism, however, as his love-­ madness for Guenevere is what drives him to the ascetic life in the first place. Without her, it seems, he is unable to continue his bodily performance as knight. Ector’s eulogy for Lancelot demonstrates that his knightly identity has hinged on not only his ability to maneuver in combat but also his love for Guenevere, thereby revealing that disabilities caused by women, like lovesickness and love-madness, are necessary to maintaining knighthood. Ector praises Lancelot as a valiant fighter, “the truest frende to thy lovar,” and “the trewest lover, of a synful man, that ever loved woman” (1259.13–15). Armstrong rightly notes that “the inextricability of Lancelot’s identities as both valiant warrior and courteous gentleman is compellingly represented in Ector’s assertion that ‘thou were the truest frende to thy lovar that ever bestrade hors,’ a statement that seamlessly links the concerns of the feminine with the activity of the battlefield.”52 Bound up in both “the concerns of the feminine” and “the activity of the battlefield” is, of course, the implied ability/disability system that undergirds a knight’s interactions with both the foes he meets in combat—who may harm him or be harmed by him—and the woman he serves—who may harm or heal his body. For Malory, interactions

‘For whom he wente oute of hys mynde’  63 with both are necessary to the maintenance of knightly identity, with the stipulation that a knight heals—both physically and mentally—from any disabling condition incurred from a combatant or woman so that he can again participate in such acts in perpetuity. The lack of a cure, as we see in the case of Lancelot, results in permanent removal from the institution of knighthood. With Lancelot’s death, Malory’s “hoole book” thus ends as it began— with an example of a woman’s body leading to a man’s debilitation. While Uther initially recovers from his lovesickness, his bout of the disease launches a series of illnesses that remove him from the battlefield and ultimately end in his death, thus illustrating the importance of a movement from disability to ability to successful masculine chivalry. The text’s subsequent and various examples of the ways in which women influence that movement, whether positively or negatively, reveals that the Morte’s system of chivalry remains dependent on a woman’s ability to set into motion and/or cure disabling conditions like lovesickness and love-madness, a power granted to her by her ability to (dis)able men through enchanting means. Love-madness, in particular, proves to be the most dangerous to a knight’s continued performance of and acceptance into institutionalized knighthood. While mad, Tristram and Lancelot lose their knightly identities, despite retaining some capability to complete the physical acts necessary to achieve worshipfulness. The knights’ changed physical appearances, “feminine” behaviors, flights to the forest, associations with other outsider characters, and exiles from their respective courts make material their time “oute of mynde.” In their cases, a return to the chivalric body necessitates a healing of body and mind. In the next chapter, we will continue to explore how disability informs and unsettles the masculine performance of knighthood by turning our focus to the ways in which disability’s intercession into institutionalized knighthood disrupts not only the gendered performance but also the compulsory heteronormativity of the Malorian knight.

3 “(Dis)abling Heteronormativity The Touch of the Queer/Crip in Malory’s Morte”

A knight’s performance of heteronormative masculinity is equally important and complementary to his exceptional physical prowess. Ruth Mazo Karras explains that medieval texts like the Morte “construct knighthood as requiring participation in heterosexual love relationships,” not “to demonstrate to other men their ‘sexual orientation,’ which was not a medieval concept, but their superiority to other men in the competition for women.”1 Dorsey Armstrong has similarly noted the importance of the suppression of women and the feminine in the construction of masculine heteronormativity, noting that the ­Pentecostal Oath itself mandates that knights must “allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes socour: strengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them, upon payne of dethe” (120.21–3). The text thus presents a “constrained, repetitive performance of gender identities within a scheme of compulsory heterosexuality [that] emphasizes the necessity of a subjugated feminine presence in the construction of individual and communal chivalric identities.”2 As I note in the last two chapters, women and the feminine frequently facilitate a knight’s movement to worshipfulness by harming or healing his body. Here, I would like to argue that knighthood is organized by a scheme of compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory able-mindedness3 that is implicit in its system of compulsory heterosexuality. The boundaries of that scheme are exceeded, however, in some moments in which disability and non-­ heteronormative behaviors meet. Using Robert McRuer’s notion of compulsorily able-bodiedness, this chapter demonstrates that Malorian knighthood is both compulsorily able-bodied and compulsorily heteronormative. The normative drive of the Morte’s narrative, in turn, attempts to promote physical ability and heteronormative relationships by associating “deviant” sexual behaviors with disability, particularly through the image of castration, which is represented literally by Arthur’s punishment of the giant of Mount St.  Michel and figuratively by the repeated motif of the thigh wound. In these examples, physical injury seeks to limit a sexually transgressive male body, thus associating disability with subversive sexuality and paradoxically opening up the possibility for the expression of queer desire,

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  65 behaviors, and relationships in the creation of literal and figurative eunuchs whose bodies defy norms of gender, sexuality, and ability. Though the queer tensions inherent in the figurative castrations of Gareth and Percival are ultimately shut down by the text, the queer potential created when Lavain helps to treat Lancelot’s series of penetrations maintains its presence throughout the rest of the text, echoing back in Lancelot’s later ability to heal Sir Urry. The healings of Lancelot’s penetrative wounds require a tactile interface between the healer and the disabled; in this interface, the world of each body opens for the other, allowing for the construction of queer/crip alliances that undermine the heteronormative, abled-bodied drive of the Morte.

The Compulsory Ability and Compulsory Heterosexuality of Malory’s Knights Robert McRuer has noted the important links between compulsory heterosexuality and what he calls compulsory ability, noting that the systems of compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory heterosexuality jointly produce disability and queerness as (in)comprehensible. The intersections between queerness and disability expose the ways in which heterosexuality and ability are constructed and draw attention to the constructed nature of the norm itself. Alison Kafer asserts that queer/ crip readings “trace the ways in which compulsory able-bodiedness/ able-mindedness and compulsory heterosexuality intertwine in the service of normativity,” which produces those who differ from “the unmarked norm” as “‘defective,’ ‘deviant,’ and ‘sick.’”4 Able-bodiedness, like heterosexuality, is an identity that is accepted as natural, but is built upon an illusory and unattainable norm; just as there is no ­“perfect” measure of heterosexuality, there is no “perfect” measure of ability. McRuer notes, “Able-bodied identity and heterosexual identity are linked in their mutual impossibility and in their mutual incomprehensibility.”5 The two, in fact, are intertwined: the system of compulsory able-bodiedness, which in a sense, produces disability, is thoroughly interwoven with the system of compulsory heterosexuality that produces queerness: that, in fact, compulsory heterosexuality is contingent on compulsory able-­bodiedness, and vice versa.6 Kafer adds that social conventions involving “gendered behavior— proper masculinity and femininity—are based on nondisabled bodies.”7 Because heterosexuality and its attendant binary gender roles are naturalized and unattainable, compulsory heterosexuality produces what Judith Butler has termed “gender trouble” or the instability of norms involving sexuality and gender; the similar qualities of able-bodiedness/

66  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity able-mindedness produce what McRuer calls “ability trouble.”8 Butler affirms that the performance of heterosexual hegemony leads to its inevitable breakdown, and, as a result, its performance must be repeated infinitely.9 Likewise, McRuer adds, Compulsory heterosexuality is intertwined with compulsory able-­ bodiedness; both systems work to (re)produce the able body and heterosexuality. But precisely because these systems depend on a queer/ disabled existence that can never quite be contained, able-­bodied heterosexuality’s hegemony is always in danger of collapse.10 As I have suggested, Malory’s knights must similarly participate in a repeated performance of masculine able-bodiedness/able-mindedness in order to present the illusion of ideal chivalry. This performance of chivalry, however, calls for alignment with not only compulsory heterosexuality, which subjugates women and the feminine, but also compulsory ability, which subjugates the disabled through a dependence upon women and the feminine. Women not only spur the physical action that allows knights to win worship as knightly acts of prowess are most frequently executed in service to ladies; they are also the love-objects that produce and then cure the disabling conditions of lovesickness and love-madness. In Malory, thus, heterosexual desire is often bound up with (dis)ability. By perpetually moving from disability to ability and back again, ­Malory’s knights demonstrate the illusory nature of the perfectly abled body. Their constant need to perform heterosexuality repeatedly through serving women, moreover, reveals that chivalric heterosexuality, too, is in constant danger of collapse. The ability/disability system of chivalry, consequently, is also a system that discerns the heterosexual from the queer.11 In addition to demonstrating their physical ability through repeatedly wounding others, receiving wounds, and healing from wounds, knights must continually perform heteronormativity and demonstrate “proper” relationships with women. However, just as the appearance of disability unsettles cohesive notions of ability and gender in some cases, such as when Lancelot and Tristram are feminized through their episodes of love-madness and female healers like Nyneve and Morgan take on masculine characteristics, it also blurs the lines between the heteronormative and the queer. For example, in some cases, the text depicts and validates non-heteronormative relationships. These cases, I have found, frequently feature characters whose corporeality is disabled or differently embodied. As this chapter will show, the Morte clearly associates embodied difference with nonnormative sexuality, first establishing a connection between “atypical” sexuality and disability, as we shall see in the cases of the giant of Mount St. Michel, Gareth, and Percival. However, as the text progresses, examples of nonnormative relationships that are seemingly endorsed, or at least not punished, including the bond shared between Lancelot and Lavain, appear. In these examples,

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  67 the act of healing a disability is the crux upon which such relationships originate and endure. Thus far, I have stressed the importance of healing to a knight’s adherence to Malorian knighthood as a physically able body is necessary to the combat knighthood requires. In addition to allowing a knight reentry into the chivalric community, the healing of disabilities is essential to the formation of community between knights. As Kenneth Hodges contends, “[W]ounds do more than symbolize the community, they also help to create it,” specifically through the healing of wounds, which produces bonds between knights: “The need of injured knights to be healed invites them to accept hospitality and service from others, and this healing can become the basis for later political and social ties.”12 The formation of chivalric bonds through healing occurs in instances that are normative, as we see with many of the female healers discussed in Chapters 1–2 who enter into love relationships, and, consequently, social and/or political alliances, with those they have healed. However, the examples of non-heteronormative desire between Lancelot and ­Lavain involve disability and its cure. Central to these acts of healing is the care administered from one body to another, and frequently that care is administered via touch. In fact, the only knight able to heal another without the use of touch is Galahad, who heals a crippled man merely by speaking to him (1033.6–7). In contrast, Lancelot’s episodes with Lavain all involve tactile contact between the body of the healer and the body of the disabled. Aristotelian notions of touch underscore the ways in which touch is of the body: “For all of the sense-organs that of touch is the only one that has corporeal substance.”13 As Jeffrey T. Schnapp explains in his study of touch in the Middle Ages, because touch both “corresponds to the body as a whole and to the very flesh of which the body is composed,” the knowledge gained from touch is more immediate than from any other sense.14 Schnapp continues, “To touch […] is less to discover or come to know something about the world than it is to establish a bond between bodies (or bodies and objects) that renders them one.”15 Citing the example of the disciple Thomas, who comes to know of Christ’s resurrection through touch, the healing touches present in the New T ­ estament, and the medieval relics and shrines that heal upon touch, Schnapp notes that touch “opens up a two-way circuit where the principal current flows run from the dead to the living, the supernatural to the natural.”16 In their discussion of the interactions between disabled people and their caregivers and doctors, Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick similarly explain that the act of touching is reciprocal: the body that touches is also touched, and this shared touch can embody what they call “becomingin-the-world-with others.”17 They note, The significance of this acknowledgement is that it disrupts the usual notion of subject/object that is used to analyse the relationship

68  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity between doctor/patient, or assistant/disabled person. The point is that every subject who can touch and see can also be touched and seen by others. The body of the doctor, of the assistant or carer, is not closed, self-contained, independent of the process of examination or of assisting, but is itself ‘open to a world of the other and immersed within it […] rendering the encounter indeterminate and ambiguous.’18 Shildrick later adds that, in such an encounter, “neither body is closed, or self-contained, but becomes open to the world of another,” thus frustrating any static distinction between self and other.19 A sexual encounter similarly involves “mutual becomings” that facilitate “the perceptual opening of one body to another, and an affective sensibility that communicates between bodies, transforming and transposing behaviours, intentionalities, and sensitivities.”20 Julie Orlemanski has written about how medieval examples of the leper’s kiss, wherein men- and women-­ religious embraced and kissed lepers in order to connect to Christ and sometimes effect miraculous cures, merge desires for charity and divine communion with potentially erotic desires. The interaction, or “interface,” between the leper and the kisser has the potential to produce “disruptive, transformative and utopian possibilities.”21 Orelmanski links the interface between the leper and kisser to Carolyn Dinshaw’s notion of “the touch of the queer,” wherein Dinshaw envisions the productive disruption of the queer as a tactile act. 22 Dinshaw explains that the queer “work[s] by contiguity and displacement; like metonymy as distinct from metaphor, queerness knocks signifiers loose, ungrounding bodies, making them strange, working in this way to provoke perceptual shifts and subsequent corporeal response in those touched.”23 Those who touch, or connect, create community, as Dinshaw observes, and the acts of healing discussed in this chapter transform the physical bodies of the healer and the healed and, in doing so, transform the social bodi(es) to which they belong. I would like to suggest that the integration of the disabled and the queer in these moments of mutual care produces what McRuer and Abby Wilkerson have called a “queercrip consciousness,” which has the power to create alternative communities or worlds wherein “an incredible variety of bodies and minds are valued and identities are shaped, where crips and queers have effectively (because repeatedly) displaced the able-bodied/disabled binary.”24 In much the same way that medieval disability studies reveals the socio-historic constructions of the normal body and, as a result, the deviant body, medieval queer theory has done much to challenge the  ­assumption that heterosexuality is part of a universal binary that positions same-sex attraction as unnatural or abnormal. 25 Because both sexual identities are modern constructs, recent medieval queer theorists have challenged queer readings of medieval texts that posit a

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  69 clear heterosexual/homosexual divide. Karma Lochrie, for example, has opened up her study of non-heteronormativity, or “heterosyncrasies,” in the Middle Ages, turning to “the diverse forms of desire, sexual acts, medical technologies, and attendant theologies represented in a variety of texts that are not contained in the procreative model of heterosexuality also found in medieval texts” as well as “instances of same-sex desire that fall into the sprawling categories of disorderly desire, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual by modern judgments.”26 This chapter seeks to use similar notions of the queer to uncover non-­heteronormative relationships and gendered performances that a normative structure might obscure or silence, and, in calling attention to disability, consider the ways in which bodies that exist outside of cultural conventions demonstrate the linked processes by which certain bodies are made (un)intelligible. While the episodes discussed here do not directly portray same-sex sexual contact, they do represent moments of affection ­between characters of the same sex that reveal latent homoerotic desires and nonnormative behaviors, bodies, and expressions of gender. In his discussion of intense friendships between knights, Richard Zeikowitz notes that “an emotive force drives ideal friendships” that raises the potential for same-sex attraction. Zeikowitz calls scholars to observe the “possibility of same-sex attraction—and homoeroticism […] when interpreting homosocial behavior both expressed and suggested in chivalric texts.”27 Similarly, Gretchen Mieskzkowski emphasizes the importance of attending to ­“desire, not acts” when analyzing same-sex attraction in medieval texts.28 My analyses of the queer relationships described here, thus, focus on the ways in which acts of healing or disabling ultimately upset the normative drives of the Morte. As I discuss later, the act of disabling and/or healing becomes the “point de capiton” or a quilting point that interfaces between an explicit act and the implicit desire it reveals. 29 Pugh has argued that “[n]ormativity surrounds a culture […], and it polices sexuality by enveloping heterosexuality and excluding queerness.”30 As I have suggested throughout this project, normativity, too, polices ability by enveloping able-bodiedness/able-mindedness and excluding the disabled. This chapter, then, places the queer and the crip in touch with one another, creating an interface that seeks to disrupt cultural norms of the body and sexuality. By “cripping” the text’s depictions of queer desire and queering the text’s treatment of (dis)ability, I hope to draw attention to the ways in which disability intersects with, complicates, and sometimes upends the normative drives of the Morte.

Disability and Sexual Transgression Some of the Morte’s early instances of sexuality or sexual practices that deviate from the heteronormative are often associated with disability or result in physical injury that is framed as a punishment for such

70  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity practices. That disability either served as an outward marker of inward sinfulness or as a punishment for sinful behaviors, such as sexual excess, is a common misconception about considerations of disability in the Middle Ages. As medieval disability scholars have noted, the disabled body sometimes signaled sinfulness in medieval literature and culture. Edward Wheatley asserts that a religious model of disability operated in the medieval era, noting that medieval Christianity functioned in a way similar to that of medicine in the modern world. Just as medicine views disability as “the absence of health,” he argues, medieval religion viewed disability as the “absence of the divine” made manifest on or in the body.31 Moreover, religion exerted a discursive control over the body in the Middle Ages that is similar to that of today’s medical field; while medicine promises cure through research advancements, medieval Christianity promised a cure through spiritual faith. 32 This link between sin and disability is not always consistent in the Middle Ages, however. Irina Metzler, for instance, notes that “medieval attitudes to ill-health were manifold and ambiguous.”33 Though the Old Testament features episodes wherein disability is used as a punishment for sin, the New ­Testament emphasizes Christ’s healing abilities and does not always offer a clear link between sin and disability. Indeed, illness and impairment are sometimes viewed as desirable and even provide a way through which one might assert a closer relationship with God; physical suffering was sought out by saints and mystics as a way to enact imitatio Christi, and laypeople could participate in a spiritual economy based on acts of charity by giving money to or caring for the impaired. As Joshua Eyler succinctly states, “While it is certainly accurate to say that some people in the Middle Ages believed disability to be God’s punishment for sin, this way of understanding medieval disability has only a limited viability.”34 Though the relationship between sin and disability was not consistent in the Middle Ages, some literature does portray a direct relationship between sinful actions and embodied difference. 35 As David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have shown, writers throughout history have used the impaired body as a symbol for social and/or individual ills in need of reform; in these cases, disabled bodies provide the tangible representation for abstract notions, a phenomenon they term “the materiality of metaphor.”36 In much of the medieval literature that uses bodily difference as a sign of sin, the sin in question is often sexual in nature. Wheatley discusses the trend in medieval literature in which blindness is used as punishment for sexual transgression, citing the biblical example of the blinding of the Sodomites as one of the earliest medieval examples. 37 This example is retold in the Middle English poem Cleanness. Other examples of the punishment of sexually deviant characters with disability include John Gower’s Amans, whose bodily failings mark his lustful nature; Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, who is famously punished with

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  71 deafness for her subversive behavior, and Robert Henryson’s Cresseid, who is struck with leprosy for sexual transgression, to name only a few. Similarly, in Malory, sexually deviant characters are threatened with or receive physical impairments. For instance, King Mark wounds ­Tristram in the breast for attempting to sleep with the married woman he himself fancies (394.11) and sends Isode to a leper-house after she is caught in bed with Tristram (432.18). Dynas later breaks the arm and leg of his lady’s lover for stealing his paramour and his hunting dogs (550.17–28). Perhaps Malory’s most ubiquitous example of a disabling wound caused by sexual indiscretion is the repeated motif of the thigh or buttock wound, which is suffered by Gareth, Percival, and Lancelot. These “ignoble wounds,” as Karen Cherewatuk calls them, physically symbolize the knights’ dishonor due to how they are caused; because they are incurred in moments of sexual impropriety and not on the battlefield, they symbolize moral failing instead of the noble worship that combat wounds signify.38 Cherewatuk explains that the male thigh injury in medieval romance “recalls the Hebrew tradition in which the thigh functions as a euphemism for male genitalia.”39 Scholars thus generally read the knights’ thigh wounds as a symbolic castration that is both emasculating and punishing, and the motif occurs throughout medieval romance.40 For instance, Marie de France’s Guigemar and the Fisher King of Wolfram van Eschenbach’s Parzival suffer wounds to the thigh as a result of promiscuity, and Malory’s own Grail king suffers a thigh wound that, although not directly linked to a sexual sin, suggests impotence and sterility and, in turn, feminization and castration.

Punishing Desire: Literal and Figurative Castration in the Morte Before discussing the wounds of Gareth, Percival, and Lancelot, however, I would like to begin with a discussion of the text’s first literal castration, which occurs when Arthur battles the giant of Mount St. ­M ichel in “The Noble Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius,” as it establishes the parameters through which the symbolic castrations to come are measured. Arthur comes to battle the giant after arriving in ­Normandy and being informed that the giant, who has consumed more than 500 children over the course of seven years, has recently abducted the duchess of Brittany, wife to Duke Howel, who is Arthur’s cousin. The excessive and grotesque body of the giant immediately associates embodied difference with deviant sexuality. Malory describes the giant in great detail, explicitly drawing attention to his physical form: “He had teethe lyke a grayhounde, he was the foulest wyghte that ever man sye, and there was never such one fourmed on erthe, for there was never devil in helle more horryblyer made: for he was fro the hede to the foote fyve fandom longe and large” (202.26–31). Malory emphasizes the

72  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity giant’s great size and depicts his excessive corporeality as both ­animalistic— ­ rthur’s his teeth are dog-like, and he is directly linked to the dragon of A dream—and demonic—­his body is worse than that of a devil, and he is repeatedly called “warlow” (200.24, 203.19) and a “fende” (202.18, 204.5). ­Additionally, the giant’s actions match his “horrybl” form; when Arthur approaches his camp, the giant is sitting down to a carnivalesque anti-feast, “gnawing on the lymmes of a large man” as three maidens turn the bodies of twelve children over a roasting spit (202.9–10). The giant makes manifest a combination of physical difference and hypermasculinity, which is reiterated in his coat made of the beards of kings he has defeated (201.16). Jeffrey J­ erome Cohen has studied the hybrid nature of giants like that of Mount St. ­M ichel, noting their human and monstrous qualities: “The giant’s form is unmistakably human, and male, but his vast size indicates that he fits neither of those categories well. […]. Perhaps the giant [of Mount St. Michel] is so terrifying because he has a liminal body, a form suspended between categories who threatens through his unnamability to smash the distinctions on which categorization is based.”41 The giant’s liminal body connects him with the liminal body of the disabled person, which, as I note earlier, exists between life and death, male and female, abled and disabled, and, indeed, the human and the monstrous.42 ­B ecause of this liminality, the disabled person, like the giant, “slides from one cultural meaning into the next” and threatens the stable notions of masculinity, patriarchy, and empire that undergird Arthur’s individual identity as warrior-king as well as the communal identities of his kingdom and Round Table knights.43 It is this threatening potential to collapse all that organizes Arthurian society that marks the giant of Mount St. Michel as in need of extermination. As Cohen explains, “He is the male body writ large, but he must be killed because his spectacular form disturbingly suggests that there is something not fully human about that body, no matter what its actual size.”44 Malory intensifies the giant’s inhumanity by accentuating his sexual depravity. In both Malory’s source, the Alliterative Morte ­Arthure, and its source, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum ­Britanniae, the giant is a rapist with an insatiable appetite for both food and women, a motif common to medieval romance.45 ­G eoffrey tempers the giant’s perversity somewhat by having his duchess Helena, a young virgin, die of fright before being raped by the giant; the giant instead rapes Helena’s nurse, an elderly widow. It is as if even the giant understands that the rape of a virgin is more horrific and offensive than the rape of an older, once-married woman. As Cohen notes, despite the nurse’s age, which places her outside of the sexual economy, “the monster (and the text) finds [the nurse] easier to ‘befoul,’” presumably due to her sexual experience.46 Another account of the scene, Wace’s R ­ oman de Brut, follows Geoffrey in suggesting the maiden dies before she is sexually violated,

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  73 while Layamon’s Brut, which does imply that she dies during the rape, leaves out specific details.47 The Alliterative Morte, however, heightens the giant’s debauchery and immorality by having him rape the maiden so severely that her body is split in two. Malory retains the explicit sexual violence of the Alliterative Morte, writing that the giant “forced hir by fylth of hymself, and so aftir slytte hir unto the navyll” (201.4–5). In addition to keeping in this graphic detail, Malory adds one of his own: the giant’s insatiable desire for Queen Guenevere. D. Thomas Hanks finds that the inclusion of this detail not only marks the giant “as monstrously lustful” but also identifies G ­ uenevere “as a highly desirable woman.”48 Armstrong adds that because his marriage to Guenevere, which leads to his acquiring the Round Table itself, marks Arthur as heteronormatively masculine and therefore “fit” to “head a homosocial community of knights,” a threat to the queen’s safety is a threat not only to the Arthurian community, but to the king himself, thus demonstrating the importance of defending the feminine to the maintenance of the chivalric code.49 Indeed, the giant’s excessive and perverse sexuality directly challenges the devotion to women mandated by the Pentecostal Oath, which is, not accidentally, announced at Arthur and Guenevere’s wedding. The Oath, as Donald Hoffman notes, pronounces Arthur’s “intention to root out sexual violence from Camelot.”50 The actions of the giant clearly run counter to the Oath’s intentions and demonstrate that he follows and/or signifies what we might call the “anti- Pentecostal Oath” or “anti-­chivalric code.” As Terence McCarthy contends, “The giant is a personification of everything evil the Pentecostal oath sets out to eradicate.”51 Hoffman moreover suggests that the giant embodies the text’s definition of immoral—and therefore inexcusable—sexual behavior, explaining that the giant stands as one extreme of a spectrum of sexuality that positions the virginal Galahad at the opposite (moral) end, with the semi-sanctioned adultery of Lancelot and Guenevere occupying the ­center.52 As the epitome of excessive corporeality and sexuality, the giant must be removed from the text, which Arthur, of course, accomplishes, but not before “he swappis his genytrottys in sundir” (203.7–8). While in earlier versions the giant is figuratively castrated through ­decapitation, Malory retains the Alliterative Morte’s literal castration of the giant, and the detail aptly aligns with his depiction of the giant’s increased threat to the sexual and social order; the giant loses the body part that he wields as a weapon of rape and murder. Malory, moreover, increases the number of physical injuries to the giant’s body; while his source text indicates that the giant cracks Arthur’s ribs in the midst of their fight, Malory transfers that injury onto the body of the giant: “in his fallynge there braste of the gyauntes rybbys three evyn at onys” (203.26–7).53 His broken ribs, though not as visible a physical difference as his castration, emphasize Arthur’s and the text’s desire to punish the

74  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity giant’s transgressions physically. In this scene, then, immoral sexuality is both emblematized by and punished through embodied difference. Through its already aberrant physicality, the giant’s body visually marks him as a threat to masculinity, heteronormativity, and even the human; at the same time, his body is rendered more aberrant in the hopes of taming that threat. As a result, the disabled body is discursively marked as both sexually transgressive and sexually impotent. In its disabled state, the giant’s body bears the marks of not only his depraved acts but also of Arthur’s worshipfulness as it is through his defeat of the giant that Arthur asserts his physical prowess. The king drives this point home by decapitating the giant and ordering the public display of his severed head (204.19–21). Arthur, in effect, doubly castrates the giant, an act that, beyond punishing the giant’s sexual crimes, serves two ends: the fortification of Arthur’s worshipfulness and the destruction of the giant’s future lineage. As Lynch notes, although combat like that between Arthur and the giant “can demonstrate the equation of noble birth with noble deeds, defeat and mutilation can also render one’s race forever disparaged and unmanned.”54 Indeed, castration was used as a punishment for treason in the Middle Ages, albeit sparingly, as it not only signaled a potential usurper’s defeat, but also eliminated an opponent’s ability to continue his lineage. Larissa Tracy explains, “The castration of convicted traitors reinforces the genetic claim of the monarch to the throne. […]. Literal emasculation becomes a symbolic neutering of an opposing line, cut off to insure no further rebellion or revenge.”55 The literal castration of the giant of Mount St. Michel is the point of reference for the Morte’s symbolic castrations suffered by Gareth, Percival, and Lancelot. The first example of symbolic castration occurs in “The Tale of Sir Gareth,” when an enchanted knight sent by Lyonet to hinder a sexual liaison with her sister Lyonesse twice wounds Gareth in the thigh. On the evening of the would-be lovers’ first encounter, the knight “smote hym with a foyne thorow the thycke of the thigh, that the wounde was a shafftemonde brode and had cutte a-too many vaynes and synewys” (333.30–3). Gareth, in retaliation, strikes at his combatant, cutting “off his hede fro the body” (333.35) before severe blood loss causes him to fall in a faint upon the bed (334.2). In this scene, the attacking knight thwarts a sexual act deemed illicit by Lyonet, who believes the couple should wait “untyll they were maryed” to consummate their relationship (333.12–3). Gareth’s symbolic castration, like that of the giant’s literal castration, serves to punish transgressive sexuality. ­Gareth’s decapitation of the enchanted knight, however, is itself an act of symbolic castration. But, Lyonet is able to easily heal her knight, using an ointment to reconnect his head to his body (334.23). Gareth’s wound does not heal so easily. Malory stresses his loss of blood, which causes him to “sown” upon the bed (334.2). The blood

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  75 serves several purposes. It demonstrates both the severity of his injury and its punitive connotations. Cherewatuk has drawn attention to the presumably bloody sheets of Gareth’s bed, noting, “the bloodied bed, the attacker’s missing head and Gareth’s pierced thigh threaten castration to a knight whose intentions push the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior. […]. Gareth’s wound warns against penetrating the virgin’s hymen and the resulting flow of blood.”56 Here, Gareth takes on a feminized position, his body penetrated and bloody in place of L ­ yonesse’s. In addition to occupying the liminal position of disabled and disabler, Gareth also takes on both feminine and masculine characteristics in his dual role as the “penetrated and would-be penetrator.”57 Symbolically, his blood recalls the thoroughly feminine blood of menstruation, but it is also reminiscent of semen, which was thought to be a purified form of blood.58 His thigh wound thus signifies the utter vulnerability of the body chivalric, which must wound and be wounded, participate in sanctioned heteronormative relationships, and perform masculinity even while occupying feminized positions. As orchestrator of the act of wounding, Lyonet ultimately intends the injury to discipline and educate Gareth about the dangerous consequences of premarital sex: the delegitimization of his bloodline and her sister’s reputation. However, Gareth does not learn his lesson the first time around. After healing from his wound, he and Lyonesse revert to their old ways, falling “so hoote in brennynge love” that they plan a second meeting (335.2–3). The actions of the first event are repeated, and while straining against his attacker, Gareth’s “olde wounde braste ayen on-bledynge” (335.15). Undeterred, Gareth again smites off his opponent’s head, this time chopping it into “an hondred pecis” and tossing them out of the window (335.20). By repeating this scene, Malory emphasizes the acts and consequences of the first: a would-be sexual transgressor is punished with bodily impairment, his penetrated and bleeding body occupies both masculine and feminine positions, and he endures a symbolic castration that renders him impotent, thwarting an illicit act that might lead to illegitimate offspring. The reopening of Gareth’s wound suggests that his initial healing was incomplete; because he does not learn his lesson from the first punishment, he must endure punishment again. As I discuss at length in Chapter 1, Lyonet, after ensuring that Gareth has finally learned his lesson, uses her magic to heal his body. Gareth, in turn, uses Lyonesse’s magic ring to prevail in a tournament wherein he finally—and appropriately—wins her hand and thus publicly legitimizes their union.59 Though Gareth’s thigh wound is associated with sexual transgression and, therefore, sin, its ultimate function turns out to be social in nature, not religious, and teaches G ­ areth the value of socially acceptable ­sexual relationships. In contrast, the text’s next episode of symbolic castration, when Percival wounds himself in the thigh, is overtly religious in its demonstration of the perils of transgressive sexual behaviors.

76  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity Percival endures his symbolic castration while on the Grail Quest, a space that, as I discuss at length in the next chapter, brings together the chivalric and the spiritual ways that destabilize and even dismantle the emphasis the Morte places on the earthly aspects of chivalry. Although most other quests in the Morte demand physical action, the Grail Quest differs in its insistence on spiritual action, often enacted by knights through the preservation of their sexual chastity. Malory’s source text, La Queste del Saint Graal, emphasizes to a greater extent the importance of spiritual chivalry, while the Morte lessens the didactic tone in an attempt to bridge spiritual and earthly chivalry.60 The insertion of the spiritual in Malory’s much more bodily conception knighthood imbues bodily injury with a theologically symbolic significance that does not appear in other examples of disablement in the text. As Robert Kelly has found, on the Grail Quest, “false” knights are associated with “pride and being wounded,” while “true knighthood” is linked to intact bodies or the ability to heal.61 While the interplay between wounds, ­healing, sinfulness, and piety on the Grail Quest is much more nuanced, as ­Chapter 4 details, the example of Percival’s self-inflicted thigh wound demonstrates the specific connections Malory draws between sexual sin and bodily injury. Percival’s wounding occurs after an encounter with “a jantillwoman of grete beauté” who turns out to be “the mayster feynde of helle” (916.1, 920.4). After the woman provides the hungry knight with food and “the strengyst wyne that ever he dranke” (918.8), Percival is so taken with her that he offers her his love. With some prodding, she agrees, requesting that he “be a trew knyght,” which he vows to do “by the feythe of [his] body” (918.22). She disrobes, “[a]nd than sir Percivale layde hym downe by her naked” (918.28–9). Upon spying the red cross on the handle of his sword, Percival thinks “on hys knyghthode,” makes the sign of the cross on his forehead, and halts the encounter (918.32). With this action, the pavilion under which they lay overturns and finally disappears into a thick cloud of black smoke. The woman retreats to her ship, “rorynge and yellynge,” the sea seemingly burning all around her (919.8). ­Upset at his momentary lapse in judgment, Percival grabs his sword and “rooff hymselff thorow the thygh, that the blood sterte aboute hym” (919.14–5). Percival’s episode with the fiend shares many similarities with ­Gareth’s attempts to consummate his relationship with Lyonesse. Like Gareth, Percival becomes, in this moment, both the penetrated and the penetrator and, consequently, takes on feminine and masculine characteristics. ­Percival both bleeds and swoons, assuming a feminized position that is both literal and figurative and that leaves him physically weak (919.28). Again, a male knight’s spurting blood, which usually spills upon the public field of battle, recalls the loss of virginity that occurs in the private space of the bedroom as well as menstruation and ejaculation.

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  77 Cherewatuk adds that Percival’s “pierced thigh, flowing blood and swoon coalesce to suggest to the audience the deposition of the cross, aligning the knight with both the suffering Christ and his mother swooning at the foot of the cross,” thus figuring him as both male and female, masculine and feminine.62 His seducer’s own transformation from “jantillwoman” to fiend mirrors Percival’s gender fluidity while also evoking the giant of Mount St. Michel, another sexually aggressive fiend who exceeds the bounds of gender. Moreover, Percival’s desire for a figure who intermixes masculinity and femininity, indeed, the human and the supernatural, calls into question Percival’s heteronormativity and heightens the deviance of his sexual temptation. As a result, though Percival does not consummate his desire for the devil-woman, both he and the fiend are guilty of troubling gender and sexual norms. It is clear that Percival intends his self-inflicted wound to be a punishment for almost giving in to illicit bodily desire. Just before stabbing himself, he cries, “Sitthyn my fleysshe woll be my mayster I shall punyssh hit” (919.12–3) and then asks God to “take thys in recompensacion of that I have myssedone ayenste The” (919.16–7). Percival understands that the consequences of sexual sin, within the spiritual context of the Grail Quest, are permanent: “How nyghe I was loste, and to have lost that I sholde never have gotyn agayne, that was my virginité, for that may never be recovered aftir hit ys onys loste” (919.19–22). Because it is presented as a humorous social lesson, Gareth’s symbolic castration demonstrates the ways in which sexual transgression could hinder the position of a knight and his lady within a courtly community. Percival’s symbolic castration, however, bespeaks a more serious lesson: sexual sin can block a knight’s communion with the divine. As noted in the Introduction, the ability/disability system of knighthood, which stipulates that a knight’s disability must be healed before he can reenter the chivalric community, echoes the cycle of openings and closures to social bodies that permeate the Morte. Though the narrative drive of the Morte seeks to close these bodies, the impossibility of a fully whole or healed body resists such closure, thus causing the cycle to repeat. Despite the existence of many episodes of disabling and healing in the “Sankgreal,” the tale consistently gives preference to such closed bodies. As Jill Mann finds, the unpenetrated body of the virgin is essential to the spiritual community of knights on the Grail Quest: “It is because the intact, inviolate, virgin body is an image of spiritual wholeness that sexual temptations loom so large in the adventures of Grail knights.”63 Percival’s bodily self-punishment cements this link as his physically broken body stands in for his nearly lost virginity. The spiritual focus of the Grail Quest explicitly connects (dis)ability and sexuality, demanding both able bodies and sexual purity; hence, Galahad, the tale’s only completely closed body—in both physical and sexual terms—is the sole knight worthy of fully achieving the Grail.

78  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity Indeed, the vision Percival receives before his encounter with the demon directly connects bodily integrity with sexual purity. In this vision, Percival is confronted by two women, a young woman on a lion and an old woman on a serpent. The young woman, whom a “good man” later tells Percival represents “the new law of Holy Chirche” (915.6–7), warns him of an upcoming battle against “the strongest champion of the worlde” (913.23). She explains, “And if thou be overcom thou shalt nat be quytte for losyng of ony of thy membrys, but thou shalt be shamed for ever to the worldis ende” (913.24–5, my emphasis). The old woman, whom the good man reveals to represent “the olde law” (915.18), attempts, but fails to seduce Percival. Percival’s encounter with the “mayster feynde of helle” clearly parallels the events of his vision, and the old man later makes clear that the fiend and the old lady are one in the same (920.5). The young lady’s warning that he may lose one of his “membrys” in the battle foreshadows Percival’s punctured thigh, which suggests the removal of a sexual organ and subsequently sexual desire, while also linking physical disability with sexual sin. The use of the term “battle” to describe the sexual test he undertakes heightens this connection as threats to a knight’s body occur most frequently on the battlefield. Percival’s battle with the fiend, like Arthur’s battle with the giant, is a fight against sexual depravity that results in castration, but in this case, it is the hero who endures the bodily injury. As the lady explains in his vision, a loss of a “membyr” in this battle will bring Percival shame “for ever to the worldis ende” (913.25–6). The old man later repeats, almost verbatim, that defeat in the battle will occur “by losying of one membir, but thou shalt be shamed to the worldis ende” (915.16–7, my emphasis). The shamefulness of the disabled body is conflated here with the shamefulness of the non-virginal body; a knight who fails on the Grail Quest is both physically and sexually damaged. When sexual purity is threatened, however, physical disability is presented as the better alternative. It is preferable for Percival to suffer a wounded thigh, which is easily healed after being wiped “with a pece of hys sherte,” than to lose his virginity, which “may never be recoverde” (919.22–3, 919.21).64 In contrast to the giant, whose injured body reflects his inner wickedness, Percival’s broken body allows his spiritual nature to remain intact. As Mann affirms, “The physical wound paradoxically heals the spiritual wound, the acknowledgment of guilt re-creates wholeness on the spiritual plane.”65 Percival’s wound exposes, punishes, and amends his deviant body and behavior. In contrast to Gareth, whose thigh wound instructs proper social behavior, Percival learns a lesson in proper spiritual conduct.

Castration as Queer/crip The Morte positions the symbolic castration of Gareth and Percival as a punitive and instructive lesson meant to limit or control sexual deviance.

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  79 Its presence in each scene, however, creates momentary fissures in the normative fictions of gender and sexuality that the narrative tends to forward. The ambiguous function of castration as both regulatory and disruptive reflects the act’s ambivalent resonances in the Middle Ages. Although rare, castration was used as a punishment throughout ­medieval Europe for treason as well as sexual crimes, including rape, ­adultery, and miscegenation.66 While it might seem, then, that castration always signals sexual deviance, its theological representation as a vehicle through which one might tame sexual desire complicates its punitive connotations. Matthew 19:12 seemingly endorses autocastration in the service of God by describing “eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs,” and proclaiming, “he that can take, let him take it.” Though most theologians read the passage figuratively, a few interpreted it literally; Origen, for example, famously went through with the operation.67 Records of a number of saints, holy men, and hermits described as eunuchs, as well as legends recounting the stories of holy men castrated by angels, further demonstrate that castration was not always considered evidence of sinful behavior.68 Some medical practitioners cite castration “as treatment for a variety of related and unrelated diseases: satyriasis, elephantiasis, hernias, hair loss (in extreme cases), leprosy, gout, varicose veins, and epilepsy,” thus characterizing it as curative instead of wounding.69 In the literary examples of symbolic castration depicted in Grail Quest knights, such as that of Percival, the act of self-castration allows the knight to maintain his sexual purity and thus advance his goal of achieving communion with the divine. As Jed Chandler finds, “[R]ather than surrender to lust, and with it to the loss of his sexual purity, the Grail knight undertakes metaphorical or literal castration. Where castration disqualifies a man from winning the lady, it can qualify him for winning the Grail.”70 The medieval eunuch’s body, then, has the potential to signify simultaneously an excess or absence of sexual desire, sexual purity or corruption, masculinity and femininity, cure and injury, sinfulness and spirituality. As a disabled body, the eunuch likewise resides in a liminal, in-between position and resists categorization, “confus[ing] not only the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female,’ but the categories ‘nature’ and ‘accident,’ ‘biology’ and ‘culture,’ ‘reality’ and ‘representation,’ ‘essentialism’ and ‘constructionism’.”71 Perhaps most strikingly, the eunuch challenges standard notions of gender and sexuality. As an act of emasculation, castration, whether literal or implied, directly calls masculinity into question, as the analyses of the giant, Gareth, and Percival all show. Mathew Kuefler affirms, “The gender ambiguity of the eunuch […] disturbed and challenged those notions of the absolute divide between male and female.”72 Tracy adds, “The act of castration removes men from the male sphere and creates fluid boundaries between masculinity and femininity—it raises questions of whether a castrated man is truly a man, or whether he is

80  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity female, and if he is now ‘female,’ whether that makes certain activities or identities acceptable.”73 Other groups whose gender expression might seem unconventional, including men whose sex organs did not fully develop, impotent men, and those with indeterminate sex organs, were often discussed collectively in medical discussions of castration, and, often, sources link castration and passive homosexuality, according to Kuefler.74 As a figure who exceeds the binaries of gender and sex, the eunuch also troubles notions of heteronormativity. If not a man or a woman, whom does the eunuch desire, and for whom is the eunuch an object of desire? While it might seem at first that castration removes all sexual desire, medical practitioners from medieval to modern have noted the varying effects of castration on sexual interest.75 Historical evidence, furthermore, suggests that eunuchs were viewed by both men and women as sex objects; in the ancient world, they were used sexually by powerful men, a practice that continued into the Christian Roman Empire, while some ancient Roman discourses characterize them as philanderers capable of intercourse with women without the risk of pregnancy.76 In the Middle Ages, Eastern Christian theologians cite the eunuch’s ability to attract men, while Jerome describes the eunuch’s youthfulness as attractive.77 Medieval medical texts often follow a discussion of castration with eunuchism, which sometimes leads to further discussion of effeminacy and then same-sex desire.78 As a figure in medieval literature, the eunuch symbolizes queer sexuality, perhaps most famously by Chaucer’s Pardoner, a character the narrator suggests has been castrated and/or may engage in non-heteronormative sexual activities.79 Because eunuchs, as discursive figures, embody multiple genders and sexualities, it is perhaps most appropriate to frame them as queer. Anna Klosowska has studied the ways in which the act of castration and the figure of the eunuch open up the possibility for queer readings in medieval texts. In her examination of medieval theological texts and secular romance, which makes use of the Lacanian notion of the “point de ­capiton” or quilting point, she finds that castration is frequently tied to queer acts in literature: a fiction of castration acts like […] a thematic site that connects two areas—castration and queer concerns—and transports us from one to the other with no intermediate steps in the logic, no narrative thread, no justification provided by a heading (“genitalia and sex”) as in a medical text. A quilting point works as an interchange between two topics. It allows for one of them to be articulated (genital wounding) and the other implied (same-sex preference).80 Another thread woven into the quilting point of castration is the disabled body that the act of castration creates; castration is always already tied to disability. “Cripping” Klosowska’s scheme spotlights the fact that

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  81 a body must be disabled in order to articulate castration and imply non-­ heteronormative sexuality. As a result, castration, non-­heteronormative sexual desire, and disability are tightly sutured together in these moments. The literal castration of the giant and the figurative castrations of Gareth and Percival similarly serve as thematic sites that queer/crip Malory’s text; however, that queer potential is ultimately reframed as a reinstatement of social and religious sexual norms in an attempt to “unstitch” the quilting point created by the presence of castration. This attempt at unstitching short-circuits in some moments in which characters touch one another in acts of healing that attempt to reverse the disruption to the body and text caused by injuries like castration. One example in which an interface between an able-bodied and disabled character leads to a queer alliance occurs when Percival’s sister bleeds for the Leprous Lady, a woman suffering from a mysterious, leprous-like illness that can only be cured through the blood of a virgin maiden.81 Because the healing requires an exchange of bodily fluids, it serves as a thematic site that connects an act of healing to the implication of samesex desire. The bleeding here is the articulated act, while the sexual union between the women is implied. Although Percival’s sister’s willingness to bleed for another is a kind of imitatio Christi that allows her to demonstrate her spirituality, Martin Shichtman notes that “the blood spilled by Percival’s sister also seems to represent a symbolic sexual consummation.”82 Similarly, Kathleen Coyne Kelly reads the scene as a homoerotic union, calling the women “writable lesbians,” noting that “there is a kind of plenty in this romance, an unresolvable kink or unaccounted-­for surplus that undermines the homosocial premises of the Morte Darthur.”83 While I agree that Percival’s sister’s indefinable sexuality suggests a “surplus” in the text, I resist containing that surplus under the label of lesbian, especially since, in addition to her erotic union with the Leprous Lady, she participates in a male-female union with Galahad, when she gifts him his sword along with a girdle made from her hair. As a result, it might be more apt to call her fluid sexuality “queer” in that it combines virginity, sexuality, male-female desire, and female-female desire. In this scene, Galahad grips the sword as she “gurte hym aboute the myddyll with the swerde” (995.26). ­Shichtman reads this scene as “a symbolic wedding ceremony” and interprets ­Galahad’s grasp of the sword and Percival’s sister’s forfeit of her hair as “a symbolic consummation.”84 Similar to her bleeding for the Leprous Lady, Percival’s sister takes from her own body in order to make possible her union with another. The “amputation” of her hair, a symbol of her female sexuality, is likewise a kind of castration. While the scene between Percival’s sister and the Leprous Lady does not present a literal castration, it does feature a character whose indeterminate gender and sexuality mirror that of a eunuch. As C ­ hapter  4 ­discusses at length, Percival’s sister’s gender performance remains unstable

82  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity throughout the Morte; she is at once highly feminized and masculinized by the text’s insistence upon her virginal status, and, like a eunuch figure, she defies gender norms, blurs the line between the sacred and ­ oreover, profane, and remains both sexually pure and highly sexual. M due the medieval belief in the sexual nature of leprosy as well as the promiscuity of lepers, castration was sometimes viewed as a treatment for or even prophylactic against the disease.85 The skin of the eunuch, moreover, was thought to possess properties that warded off diseases like leprosy.86 With this in mind, it is possible to view the union between the women as entailing a kind of castration that seeks to control a disease and/or unchecked queer desire. In contrast to her brother, whose self-castration occurs just before her appearance in the text, Percival’s sister wounds herself, not to close off the possibility of sexual union, but to hasten it. Like a saint bending to kiss the sores of a leper, Percival’s sister agrees to open her “closed,” virginal body to another, and interface with the “open” body of a woman whose disease suggests sexual transgression.87 ­Percival’s sister and the Leprous Lady thus participate in an act of becoming-­in-the-world with another, briefly merging themselves and prompting the creation of a queer bond. Their bond, however, is short-lived as the act of bleeding soon leads to Percival’s sister’s death when Galahad, ­Percival, and Bors are unable to staunch her blood (1003.19–20). As I  will discuss in the next chapter, this scene mirrors that of a knight enduring a fatal blow in combat; however, ultimately, her unmitigated flow of blood grounds Percival’s sister in her “leaky” female body and draws attention to her non-heteronormative exchange with another woman. The Middle English meanings of staunch as “to cause the cessation of bleeding” and “to satisfy the appetite or desire” indicate that, like her flow of blood, Percival’s sister’s queer desire is unmanageable and in need of containment.88 The Leprous Lady, who on the same day of Percival’s sister’s death is “heled whan she was anoynted with hir bloode,” is also killed when a sudden storm turns her castle “upso-downe” (1004.6–7, 17). A disembodied voice asserts that the cause of the tempest is the ­Leprous ­Lady’s improper desire “for blood-shedynge of maydyns” (1005.10). Consequently, the text suppresses the queer potential of their union. As Hodges notes, beyond the initial bond between the women, “this healing […] creates no communities.”89 The placement of Percival’s sister’s homoerotic union prior to ­Lancelot’s encounters with Lavain, however, sets into motion new ways in which the acquiring and healing of disabilities might serve as the catalysts for the expression of non-heteronormative desire. Indeed, the relationship between Lancelot and Lavain, whose homoerotic bond is cemented by Lavain’s role in the healing of Lancelot’s own figurative castration, remains unpunished, therefore leaving castration and its queer/crip insinuations intact. The first such encounter occurs after he endures his own symbolic castration at the hand of the huntress.

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  83

Penetrating/Penetrated Lancelot Unlike the injuries of Gareth and Percival, Lancelot’s “ignoble” wound is not a thigh wound, but a wound in the buttock.90 Lancelot’s wound also differs in that a woman dispenses it. Aiming at a “hynde” she and her other female companions have been tracking, a huntress overshoots, striking a sleeping Lancelot “in the thycke of the buttock over the barbys” (1104.28–9). The wound incapacitates Lancelot. He is able to pull out most of the arrow, but its point remains embedded in his flesh, and he is forced to seek help from a nearby hermit, who pulls “oute the arrow-­hede oute of sir Launcelottis buttoke” (1105.15). The wound bleeds profusely and causes Lancelot a great deal of pain, but he is most upset that its placement prohibits his ability to “sytte in no sadyll” (1106.3), calling himself “the most unhappy man that lyvyth” because the injury will prevent him from gaining worship during the upcoming Candlemas joust (1106.5). Lancelot’s wound shares several similarities with those of Gareth and Percival. He receives it after placing himself in a position that renders him vulnerable to a woman; the wound results in bleeding that recalls femininity, sexual penetration, and the blood spilled in knightly combat; it temporarily removes him from participation in knightly activities; and it serves as a bodily marker of subversive sexual desire. Indeed, despite being in the buttock and not the thigh, Lancelot’s wound in “the thycke of the buttock” is described in language that directly correlates his wound with that of Percival, which goes “thorow the thygh,” and Gareth, which goes “thorow the thycke of the thigh.” In addition to the repetitive language, the measurements of both Gareth’s and Lancelot’s wounds are the same as Gareth’s measures “a shafftemonde brode,” or six inches, and Lancelot’s measures “six inchys depe and inlyke longe” (333.31–2 and 1114.6–7).91 Lancelot’s buttock wound also recalls the one he receives to his thigh when he participates in a boar hunt during his bout of madness (821.18–9) and looks forward to the wound in the thigh he will receive when he fights Sir Mador de la Porte (1057.26–7). In the first example, as noted in Chapter 2, this wound serves as a kind of punishment for not only his attempt to reaccess the chivalric realm before recovering his sanity but also his adulterous relationship with Guenevere. His wound from Mador, which I will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 5, is received while fighting for Guenevere’s honor and can read as a denunciation of his relationship with the queen. As I have noted, women are ­frequently the vehicles through which men receive these wounds and their treatment. Cherewatuk offers an extended analysis of the connections between the boar episode and huntress episode, noting that the women involved in each—Elaine of Astolat, Elaine of Corbyn, ­Guenevere, and the huntress—reveal that “in his relationships with women […] Lancelot is both wounded and wounding.”92

84  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity The concatenation of the wounds of Gareth, Percival, and Lancelot, all caused in the presence of women, link transgressive sexual behavior to physical disability. Because he is wounded by a woman, Lancelot most clearly becomes a passive body penetrated by female desire. The huntress’s associations with Diana, goddess of chastity and the hunt, further complicate the significance of his wound.93 The possible connection between the huntress and the goddess frames Lancelot’s wound as a punishment for the transgression of female chastity as Diana, in the classical tradition, punishes men who have violated her chastity or that of her female followers. Lancelot, unlike Gareth and Percival, does not incur his wound during an erotic encounter; however, the scene is not devoid of sexual undertones. The arrow’s penetration of his buttock, of course, recalls the act of sodomy, which in the Middle Ages could include any deviant sexual act.94 As several scholars have noted, the specters of Lancelot’s adulterous relationship with Guenevere, as well as his other problematic relationships with women throughout the Morte, including Elaine of Corbyn and Elaine of Astolat, haunt the scene and position the injury as a kind of punishment for this behavior.95 Indeed, though the huntress herself claims to have mistakenly hit Lancelot after her “hande swarved” (1105.5), McInerney suggests the possibility that the injury is intentional, pointing to the mixed pronouns used in reference to the huntress’s prey, a barren hind, as evidence of the huntress’s implied intention to harm Lancelot. The text refers to the hind using both he and she: “when he cam to the welle, for heete she wente to soyle” (1104.19–20). While this might be explained away by the feminine nominative’s flexibility in Middle English or even scribal error, the text’s later explanation that the huntress spies “hym” before shooting her arrow further complicates the issue. As McInerney affirms, “Either the hynde has changed its sex or the lady spies not the hynde but Sir Lancelot, and shoots him accidentally on purpose.”96 Cherewatuk adds that it is possible to read this scene in conjunction with the Ovidian tale of Actaeon, who, while hunting, stumbles upon Diana as she bathes. Her followers transform ­Actaeon into a stag, and he is soon chased after and wounded in the back by his own dogs. In the Morte, Lancelot simultaneously plays the role of the gazed upon goddess, the prey, and the hunter, and, like ­Actaeon, he is wounded on his backside for his indiscretions: “The huntress’s arrow thus exacts a contrapasso-like wound on the knight who has unwittingly transgressed female integrity.”97 Like the thigh wounds of Gareth and Percival, whose figurative castrations are tainted by the giant’s earlier literal castration, Lancelot’s buttock wound stands in as a punitive castration resulting from overstepping heteronormative social and sexual boundaries. Lancelot’s wounded buttock does not only punish his heteronormative sexual transgression as it also shares connections with subversive

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  85 gender and queer desire. Lancelot, like Gareth and Percival before him, of course demonstrates the gender fluidity of the bleeding, wounded knight. As noted earlier, he is asleep when the huntress shoots him, making him quite literally a passive object of the female gaze. The wound’s location, moreover, impairs his ability to “sytte in no sadyll” (1106.3) and thus his masculine knightly identity, for, as Catherine LaFarge reminds us, “to be unhorsed is to be unknighted; to be unknighted is to be unmanned.”98 The huntress, similarly, shares both masculine and feminine qualities. Though Malory explicitly and repeatedly emphasizes her womanhood, twice calling her “the lady, the hunteresse” (1104.11 and 22–3), her agency and ability to wield weapons mark her as androgynous or even genderqueer.99 Moreover, her desire to dwell in the feminine space of the forest with only the company of women, as “no men wente never with her, but allwayes women” (1104.5–6), suggests the possibility that she is queer not only in gender expression but also sexual desire. While it is impossible to determine her sexual proclivities from her short appearance in the text, the relationship between the huntress and the women of her group raises the possibility of homoeroticism and certainly marks her as queer. Her position as a huntress who travels with a pack of women recalls the Amazon women of classical myth who followed the goddess Artemis, Diana’s Greek counterpart, and they exhibit customs and behaviors that challenge heteronormativity. For example, the Amazons’ custom of remaining chaste except for certain times of the year and their anti-maternal, anti-domestic practices mark them as queer. Lochrie explains, “[T]he Amazon assumes a queer virginity that grants her certain exemptions form femininity rather than reinforcing the cultural gender ideal. She is more stone butch than she is either desexualized saint or heterosexual woman. Her virginity is sexual and martial, but as a virtue it is problematic since it neither excludes desire nor makes itself available to male exchange.”100 The Amazon women’s practice of removing a breast in order to facilitate their archery skills, moreover, align them with the queer/crip. In addition to her possibly queer/crip status, the huntress’s connections to Diana imbue her with supernatural qualities. Lancelot himself voices confusion over both her gender and her humanity, crying, “Lady, or damesell, whatsomever ye be, in an evyll tyme bare ye thys bowe. The devyll made you a shoter!” (1104.33–4), my emphasis). His associating the huntress with evil and the devil recalls earlier figures linked to non-heteronormativity, such as the giant and Percival’s fiend. After the huntress shoots him and Lancelot pulls out the shaft, the knight makes a painful journey to a hermitage where he has been ­staying with fellow knight Lavain, arrowhead still embedded in his buttock, ­“evermore bledynge as he wente” (1105.9–10). Unhorsed, bleeding, ­literally penetrated, and figuratively castrated, Lancelot assumes a feminized, yet queer, position. With Lavain at his side, the hermit Brascias

86  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity removes the arrowhead, causing Lancelot to shed “muche of hys bloode” (1106.1). In the masculine space of the hermitage, Lancelot’s buttock, which has already been breached by the arrow of an androgynous woman, is again breached, this time by the fingers of a male hermit. The sequence mimics the bodily penetration and blood loss of a sexual consummation. Malory explains, “And so wyth grete payne the ermyte gate out the arrow-hede oute of sir Launcelottis buttoke, and muche of hys bloode he shed; and the wounde was passynge sore and unhappily smytten” (1105.13–5–1106.1–2). The use of arrow and hede for penis in Middle English intensifies the queer sexual connotations of the scene.101 This is not the first time in which Lavain has been involved with helping Lancelot heal after an injury. Earlier, Lancelot disguises himself from other Round Table knights during a tournament by wearing Elaine of Astolat’s red sleeve and carrying a shield that belongs to Lavain’s older brother. Lavain facilitates this disguise by carrying a matching shield on the field, thus obfuscating Lancelot’s true identity. In the melee, Bors punctures Lancelot’s side with his spear (1072.3–5). Notably, Lancelot rides a mile away from the field of battle and, once he knows “he myght nat be seyne,” he begs Lavain to remove the arrow: “‘I charge you,’ seyde sir Launcelot, ‘as ye love me, draw hit oute!’” (1074.7–8). Away from the sight of other knights, Lavain acquiesces and pulls the spear from his side, causing Lancelot to give “a grete shryche and a gresly grone” as “the blood braste oute, nyghe a pynte at onlys” (1074.11, 12). Lavain then takes Lancelot to a hermitage where he receives medical treatment from the hermit Badwyn and care from Lavain and Elaine. The intimate nature of this scene prefigures the removal of the huntress’s arrow discussed earlier. Lavain’s presence in both of these scenes heightens their homoerotic undercurrent as the knight has already publicly declared a love for Lancelot that is more than simply platonic. Indeed, many scholars read Lavain’s affection for Lancelot as queer as it parallels that of his sister, Elaine, who falls in love with Lancelot at first sight and ultimately dies when her love goes unrequited.102 After her death, Lavain asserts that he shares the same level of devotion to Lancelot as his sister: “[S]he doth as I do, for sythen I saw first my lorde sir Launcelot I cowde never departe frome hym, nother nought I will, and I may folow hym” (1091.13–5). Lavain’s devotion to Lancelot, which begins at first sight, and his desire to never part from him, mirror Elaine’s own reaction to Lancelot and thus suggest that Lavain also suffers from lovesickness for Lancelot. As noted in Chapter 1, the ultimate cure for lovesickness for the lover to consummate his or her relationship with the beloved. Unlike Elaine, however, who is unable to successfully couple with Lancelot and thus dies, Lavain is able to become Lancelot’s companion, presumably for quite some time, as the Morte describes him as an intimate companion to Lancelot in future tales. Later, the text explicitly links Lavain to Urry,

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  87 describing the pair in tandem after Urry is healed: together, they excel equally at a joust, are made Round Table knights, serve as ­Lancelot’s retainers and advisors, and are named earls when Lancelot divvies up his lands (1153.17–9, 1153.20–1, 1153.26, 1190.25–6, 1193.17–21, 1203.10–1, 1205.9–10). Indeed, Urry’s first meeting with ­Lancelot mirrors Lavain’s as his initial sight of him is also framed through his sister, who first spies him as he enters the court, causing her heart to “gyveth gretly” (1151.12). Urry’s heart, likewise, “doth […] lyghte gretly ayenste” Lancelot when he spies him just after his sister (1151.14). The siblings’ reactions to Lancelot mimic the love-imprint process of ­lovesickness, which enters through the eyes and affects the heart, and repeat the lovesickness that both Lavain and Elaine suffer for Lancelot. As Mieszkowski explains, Lavain’s “homoerotic emotion” for Lancelot “is deliberately designed and identified as the homoerotic echo of Elaine’s heterosexual feelings for Lancelot, and it acquires its meaning as a mirror image of her heterosexual passion.”103 As Cherewatuk has noted, the repetition of wounding throughout the huntress scene (as well as the text’s other depictions of thigh wounds) creates “echoic” effects that “echo back, retelling past injuries, project forward, associating the hero with future events.”104 Urry’s reaction to Lancelot, therefore, reiterates and evokes Lavain’s, and serves as a homoerotic echo, or reversal, of a woman’s heterosexual feelings, demonstrating that the new boundaries shaped by Lavain’s healing touch have lasting effects. Lavain’s later marriage to Filelolly, who is linked to Elaine through these echoic effects, perhaps “heals” the “wound” of Elaine’s death.105 As Hodges notes, the marriage between Lavain and Filelolly “mitigat[es] the disastrous love affair of his sister Elaine.”106 Unlike Lancelot’s relationship with Lavain, his relationship with Urry is not a direct result of his own figurative castration; instead of playing the role of the one to be healed, Lancelot heals Urry, a lesson he perhaps learns from his experiences with Lavain, Galahad, or even Percival’s sister and that reflects his escalating associations with disability after the Grail Quest. Like the healing of the Leprous Lady, Lavain’s healing episodes can be read as moments of consummation. Though Malory may not intend to depict it as such, the breaching of a man’s body by another man in order to remove the “hede” of a weapon implies a homoerotic encounter. Lavain’s attendance at both of these moments as well as his clear characterization as “a man who has fallen in love with another man” supports this reading of the scenes107 as does the detail that the removal of the spear takes place in the “woodys evyse” (1073.28–9), the liminal edge of the battlefield and the forest, and out of the sight of other knights. As Cherewatuk astutely observes, Lavain is “involved intimately with each of Launcelot’s penetrating injuries and remains as devoted to him as any female would-be lover.”108 After participating in Lancelot’s healings, Lavain remains a healer throughout the rest of the

88  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity Morte: Malory adds him to “The Knight of Cart” episode, where he arranges litters to carry away Guenevere’s wounded knights (1135.10) and provides treatment and a disguise for Lancelot’s wounded hand (1132.1). Lavain’s role as healer aligns him not only with his sister, Elaine, but also with the female healers discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, whose healing capabilities stem from their ability to enchant men through magic or love. Those would-be lovers often play a role in the harm that comes to a man’s body; for instance, Guenevere and Isode both instigate Lancelot’s and Tristram’s bouts of lovesickness and love-madness. Lavain, conversely, contracts lovesickness from Lancelot; thus, Lancelot’s two healing sessions perhaps feature the becoming-in-the-world of two disabled men who heal one another. After these moments of consummation, ­Lavain is frequently described as Lancelot’s companion, but there is no further mention of Lavain’s overly passionate feelings, perhaps suggesting that, now that he has consummated his relationship with Lancelot and continues to serve as his companion, he has staved off the symptoms of lovesickness. As noted earlier, his later marriage to Filelolly serves as a symbolic healing of the damage caused by his sister’s fatal experience with the disease. Lancelot’s experience with Lavain is not his first homoerotic encounter, and that first encounter also involves an act of disabling and healing. In the “Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake,” Lancelot has just escaped imprisonment by the four queens, who command him to choose one of them as a paramour in exchange for his freedom. He refuses and later escapes with the help of Sir Bagdemagus’s daughter. Tired and lost in the forest, he comes upon a pavilion and decides to rest there for the night. After falling asleep, Belleus, the owner of the pavilion, returns, goes to his bed, and, thinking he is lying next to his lady, begins to embrace and kiss Lancelot. When Lancelot feels “a rough berde kyssyng hym,” he leaps from the bed (259.32). Realizing the mistake, both knights arm ­ elleus. themselves, and their fight ends with Lancelot gravely wounding B Upon yielding, Belleus identifies himself and explains the case of mistaken identity. Lancelot apologizes for wounding him and proceeds to treat his wound. In this scene, both Lancelot and Belleus are presented as potentially unknightly and unmanly; both are undressed and unarmed, ­ nightliness. As and thus lack the usual visual markers of masculine k Kathleen Coyne Kelly has noted about the scene, Lancelot’s lack of armor, which would clearly signal his masculinity, “leaves himself open, as it were, for a different interpretation.”109 Armstrong adds, “Out of his armor and in the soft bed of the pavilion, Belleus interprets the sleeping Lancelot as not only ‘not a knight’ but also ‘not a man,’ a misunderstanding that Lancelot significantly redresses through a violent display of masculine knightly prowess.”110 Though initially each man is read as female by the other, Lancelot, assumes the most vulnerable and feminized position in that Belleus initiates the sexual advance upon him as

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  89 he sleeps. This representation of the men differs from Malory’s source, the Prose Lancelot, in which Lancelot actively reciprocates the kisses of the nameless—and beardless—knight of the pavilion and it is the knight who violently responds to Lancelot.111 Malory’s Lancelot is thus acted upon and then chooses to react against the queer encounter once he feels the “rough berde,” which Kelly reminds us “serves as an unambiguous sign of sexual sameness,” that threatens his heterosexual status.112 ­Regardless of these changes, the potential for Malory’s ­Lancelot to participate in a sexual encounter with Belleus still exists as there is a beat between the beginning of the kiss and the moment in which Lancelot recognizes the incongruous “berde.”113 Not unlike Chaucer’s Absolon who violently retaliates against the “beards” of both Alisoun and ­Nicholas in “The Miller’s Tale,” Lancelot and Belleus respond to their kiss and, by extension their threatened masculinity and sexuality, by taking up arms and participating in the masculine act of combat. Though not penetrated by a weapon, as he is by Bors and later the huntress, L ­ ancelot’s bodily contours are breached—i.e., interfaced—by a kiss, and this breaching is dealt with by a call to arms.114 Despite the queer potential that lies in the moment between the men’s kiss and their recognition of sameness, the text seems to punish that potential by having Belleus suffer a wound as the consequence of his sexual transgression. Thus, though Lancelot’s experience with Belleus captures a queer surplus in the text, it is only momentary. A kiss between men occurs, but Lancelot’s violent response shows that the text ultimately condemns the act; Belleus’s “deviant” sexual advance is thus punished through a penetration deemed appropriate, the thrust of a sword.115 Lancelot’s role as Belleus’s healer, however, complicates a simple reading of this scene. The text mentions Lancelot’s healing act three times: first, Lancelot attests, “I shall staunche your bloode” (260.11); the narrator then notes that “anone sir Launcelot staunched his blood” (12–3); and lastly, Belleus explains to his bewildered lady, who has just joined the scene, that Lancelot “is a good man and a knyght of aventures” who “hath staunched my bloode” (260.18, 20–1). The emphasis on staunching blood draws attention to the act that caused Belleus to bleed in the first place, while the closure of the wound attempts to nullify the erotic implications of that act. Kelly reads Lancelot’s staunching of the blood as “both a literal healing and a symbolic gesture towards establishing difference,” citing the same meanings of staunch that I ­mention earlier (“to cause the cessation of bleeding” and “to satisfy the appetite or desire”) as evidence that the healing both closes Belleus’s body and the possibility of homoerotic desire.116 While Percival’s sister’s unstaunched flow demonstrates her uncontrollable body and its desires, Lancelot’s ability to stop Belleus’s bleeding indicates that his homoerotic feelings can be ­contained. After this threat to the compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness of the chivalric community is suppressed,

90  (Dis)abling Heteronormativity Belleus’s lady requests that Lancelot help Belleus join the Round Table.117 The act of healing the body of a knight transfers the men’s “improper” homoerotic bond to the acceptable homosocial bond of knighthood, thereby reestablishing and renewing the chivalric community. Interestingly, unlike Belleus and Lancelot’s kiss, the Morte does not condemn the queer relationship between Lancelot and Lavain. In fact, Mieszkowski suggests that Malory may have been drawing on the Prose Lancelot’s Galehot, a man deeply in love with Lancelot and more overtly depicted as homoerotic, for his portrayal of Lavain. Mieskowski posits that Galehot serves as a model for Lavain, citing the multiple mentions of “Galahalte the Haute Prynce” in the section (1065.10, 1069.19, 1070.4, 1073.14, 1076.26, 1088.2) as well as Malory’s additions to La Mort le Roi Artu, his source for the story of Elaine of Astolat, which leaves Lavain as an undeveloped character and does not feature ­Galehot.118 Just as the Prose Lancelot offers an overt endorsement of male-male attraction, the Morte tacitly sanctions Lavain’s homoerotic desire for Lancelot. What the Morte does punish are the transgressive acts that have occurred between Lancelot and other women. The spear-wound he receives from Bors perhaps chastises his mistreatment of both Elaine and Guenevere: wearing another woman’s sleeve in battle—an act he has refused to do throughout the text—both exploits Elaine’s feelings for Lancelot and exacerbates her lovesickness while serving as a visual affront to Guenevere. The huntress’s arrow-wound, as we have established, is a rebuke to Lancelot’s many offenses involving women, including his adulterous relationship with Guenevere and his exploitation of Elaine. In these cases, Lancelot’s problematic heterosexual encounters are admonished through the breaking of his body. The damage to his body is then reversed through the repeated queer encounters with Lavain. Lancelot’s queer relationships, then, heal—indeed, reverse—injuries caused by his deviant heteronormative relationships with Guenevere and Elaine. Disability is at the center of Lancelot and Lavain’s relationship, and their bond develops and intensifies through the disabling and subsequent healing of Lancelot’s figurative castrations. As kinds of consummations, these acts of healing are the physical expressions of Lavain’s desire for Lancelot, and they attempt to right the wrongs of Lancelot’s transgressive relationships with women by serving as reversals to the physical and social wounds of heteronormative love. Lancelot’s injuries, thus, render his physical body incomplete, while the healing of those injuries produces a bond between men that subverts the compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness of the body chivalric (the relationship’s queer tendencies upend the heterosexual desires of Elaine) while also fortifying it (Lavain joins the ranks of the Round Table knights). In these consummations, bodies touch, opening their worlds to one another and creating alternative bonds that undermine the heteronormative and able-bodied drives of the text. As Dinshaw has noted, the touch of the

(Dis)abling Heteronormativity  91 queer “show[s] something disjunctive within unities that are presumed unproblematic, even natural.”119 The Morte attempts to present compulsory able-bodiedness/mindedness and compulsory heterosexuality as a natural, even essential, component of knighthood by associating deviant sexuality with physical difference, as we see in the example of the giant of Mount St. Michel, whose excessive size signals his excessive sexual appetite. Arthur’s castration of the giant furthers this association, setting up a connection between sexual transgression and eunuchism. However, using disability (in this case, castration) as a punishment for behaviors that supposedly stem from disability (here, the giant’s disproportionate body) muddies the connection between sexual deviancy and disability as his now doubly disabled body reflects sexual uncontrollability, impotence, and queerness. The text’s later figurative castrations, signified by the thigh wounds of Gareth and Percival, continue to raise queer possibilities that are ultimately condemned. However, in the case of Lancelot and Lavain, Lancelot’s figurative castrations, signified through his side and buttock wounds, serve as catalysts for Lavain’s queer touches, which, in their breaching and thus redrawing of corporeal and social boundaries, unmoor the heteronormative and able-bodied matrix through which the project of chivalry takes shape. That project will meet its greatest challenge as the knights enter the Grail Quest; it is to this Quest that we now turn.

4 Vessels of Blood (Dis)abled Bodies and the Grail in Malory’s “Tale of the Sankgreal”

As the previous chapters have shown, (dis)ability is an essential though liminal force throughout the Morte, capable of exposing the illusory qualities of gender, sexuality, ability, and health. In the sixth book of Malory’s opus, “The Tale of the Sankgreal,” the liminal in all of its iterations is central to the tale. The knights find themselves in a liminal physical space, encounter liminal figures, and seek a liminal object. Readers often note the uncanny nature of the “Sankgreal,” for, in its bringing together of the spiritual and the chivalric, the tale creates an uneasy space wherein earthly knights take up spiritual pursuits and the common conventions of knighthood cease to be necessary to demonstrating one’s worth. Here, the code of conduct by which knights have been measured “is largely useless.”1 Dorsey Armstrong explains, “In this space, the spiritual and secular, usually so distinctly separate, intersect, producing instability or ‘unsykerness.’”2 If we are to see the liminal as that which straddles two sides of a boundary, never settling into one side or the other, then, in its navigation between the earthly and the spiritual, Malory’s “Sankgreal” is indeed a liminal text. Moreover, the aventure of the Grail Quest knights figures at a liminal moment within Malory’s narrative, a moment on the cusp, poised both at the height of the Round Table’s glory and on the eve of its ruin. By closely linking disability to blood and the vessels that contain it, the tale attaches a spiritual connotation to disability that the Morte ­ tkinson has previously overlooked or only insinuated. As Stephen A finds, the injuries in the “Sankgreal” possess “the sort of spiritual significance attached to all elements of the Grail world.”3 Disability ­u ndergirds both kinds of chivalry represented in the tale as bodily chivalry continues to necessitate a permeable body capable of disablement, while spiritual chivalry becomes associated with bodily integrity. In particular, the experiences of Lancelot, Percival’s sister, and Galahad exemplify the ways in which the disabled body figures into the tale’s movement between earthly and spiritual knighthood. As this chapter will show, Lancelot’s experiences with disability fully ground him within the bodily realm; Percival’s sister unites the bodily and spiritual in her act of healing; and Galahad uses disability to separate the bodily

Vessels of Blood  93 from the spiritual. In each example, blood serves as the interface between bodily and spiritual ability. While he had access to secular versions of the Grail Quest, Malory takes the more religious early thirteenth-century French La Queste del Saint Graal as his source text, making additions and subtractions both major and minor throughout.4 Despite Eugène Vinaver’s claim that Malory’s version, which he considered a mere “translation” of the source text, “is the least original of all of his works,” scholars have noted that ­Malory’s omissions and additions are essential to the “Sankgreal”’s placement and function within his “hoole book.”5 Charles Moorman contends that the “Sankgreal” is vital to Malory’s particular vision of Arthurian history, and Atkinson agrees that, while the Queste should be considered a “self-contained work,” Malory’s version “cannot be isolated from its context in the Morte Darthur” as it is an integral “part of a complete history of Arthur’s kingdom.”6 In addition to considering the “ ­ Sankgreal”’s positioning within the context of Malory’s vision of the Arthurian story, scholars have also studied the writer’s ostensible secularization of the Grail narrative. The most notable change Malory makes to the Queste is to shorten it through the removal of hermits’ lengthy exegeses of the knights’ visions and dreams, thus muting the Queste’s more theological focus.7 Sandra Ness Ihle affirms that Malory’s changes do more than simply shorten the Queste; they help him to create a wholly new text: “[The source’s] entire ‘shape’ has been altered, and consequently, the meaning has undergone a radical transformation.”8 The integration of the chivalric and the spiritual, thus, does more than just secularize the Grail story, for it allows Malory to explore what happens to the stability of knighthood in the face of the spiritual. Dhira B. Mahoney argues that it is more appropriate to call Malory’s “Sankgreal” an anglicization of the Grail Quest for a fifteenth-century audience, noting that Malory places a “thirteenth century spiritual message in language and thought that is characteristic of fifteenth-century England, where secular and spiritual pursuits could be considered complementary rather than competitive elements of a knightly life.”9 As a result, Malory examines “the functional limits of a knightly code of conduct” in order to determine “how that code functions in the spiritual realm,” as Armstrong explains.10 One locus at which those functional limits of knighthood are tested resides in the “Sankgreal”’s explorations of the disabled body. In fact, disability indelibly marks the Grail Quest, and earlier moments in the Morte prefigure the prominence it will take in the “Sankgreal.”

Prefiguring the “Sankgreal”: Blood, Disability, and Healing in the Tale of Balin The Morte’s second book “Balin le Sauvage, or the Knight with the Two Swords” illustrates the enmeshing of disability, blood, and knighthood

94  Vessels of Blood that will take center stage on the Grail Quest. Here, Balin’s actions prefigure and even accentuate the deeds of other characters and inaugurate events that will reappear later in the text, thus connecting the text’s seemingly disparate parts. For example, Balin strikes the “Dolorous Stroke” that leads to the beginning of the Grail Quest. Moreover, the narrative “failures” of Balin, which I discuss later, portend the successes to be had in the “Sankgreal.” Andrew Lynch has argued that Balin’s failures are part of the Morte’s overall desire to magnify the heroics of knights like Lancelot and Galahad through a drive for “narrative closure constantly enforced in this tale by the stronger claims of the wider story-cycle (Malory’s) in which it is inserted.”11 Lynch notes that Malory’s version of the tale is “confused” and follows an “ambiguous pattern” that does not allow Balin access to the social acceptance that his peers will attain.12 Despite being a worshipful knight, “a passynge good man of hys hondys and of hys dedis, withoute velony other trechory and withoute treson,” Balin is unable to support his claim that “manhode and worship ys hyd within a mannes person” (61.33–62.1–2, 63.24). Though he is deserving of knightly worship, Balin is constantly met with disappointment and blame. Such fate frustrates the typical notion of a chivalric system that rewards capable knights, but it does so in the service of the glorification of Malory’s more prominent knights. What promotes this narrative frustration, I contend, are Balin’s associations with acts of disabling that remain “unprostheticized” until later in the text.13 The disabilities incurred and/or not healed in “Balin” are refracted throughout the bulk of the Morte, not to be picked up again until the “Sankgreal.” It is apt, then, that Lynch notes, “The normal system of punishment and reward is disabled in [Balin’s] case” (my emphasis).14 After other knights fail to remove a sword from the girdle of an unnamed lady at King Arthur’s court, Balin successfully removes it and chooses to keep the sword despite the lady’s warnings that it will cause him to “sle with that swerde the beste frende that ye have and the man that ye most love in the worlde” (64.9–11). Almost immediately, Balin’s bad luck begins; he insults Arthur by using the sword to behead the Lady of Lake in his presence, and he later kills Lanceor with the sword, which leads Columbe, Lanceor’s lover, to impale herself upon it. The young maiden’s death, Merlin reveals, will lead to greater trouble for Balin: [B]ecause of the dethe of that lady, thou shalt stryke a stroke moste dolorous that ever man stroke, excepte the stroke of Oure Lorde Jesu Cryste. For thou shalt hurte the trewyst knyght and the man of moste worship that now lyvith; and thorow that stroke, three kyngedomys shall be brought into grete poverte, miseri and wrecchednesse twelve yere. And the knyght shall nat be hole of that wounde many yerys. (72.25–32)

Vessels of Blood  95 Even though “Balin” occurs before Arthur receives the Round Table as a wedding gift and thus before the knights swear their first ­Pentecostal Oath as a unified group, Malory stresses early on the links between whole, or healed, physical bodies and cohesive social bodies like the body chivalric, as I note in the Introduction. Before striking the ­Dolorous Stroke, Balin first encounters two curious instances involving disability and healing. After taking up the quest of a Round Table knight named Berbeus who has just been mortally wounded by Garlon, the invisible knight, Balin follows a damsel to a castle with an unusual custom: each woman who passes by must bleed into a dish in the hopes of curing the owner’s leprous-like illness. Balin’s companion tries, but fails to heal the Leprous Lady.15 Malory explains soon after, “And as it tellith aftir in the SANKGREALL that sir Percivall his syster holpe that lady with hir blood” (82.12–14). Apart from foreshadowing Percival’s sister’s role in the future healing of the lady, Balin’s stay at the Leprous Lady’s castle seems superfluous. When examined in conjunction with Balin’s attempt to heal a wounded knight and his subsequent striking of the Dolorous Stroke, however, the interlacing of knighthood, disability, and blood becomes apparent. Several days after encountering the Leprous Lady, Balin and his damsel stay a few days with a rich man whose son has been wounded by Garlon. The man explains, “And so he wounded thus my son that can nat be hole tylle I have of that knyghtes bloode” (82.25–7). Unlike his attempt to aid in the cure of the Leprous Lady, Balin is successful in helping to heal his host’s son. He gains entrance to the castle of King Pellam, the invisible knight’s brother, and is there able to slay him and immediately call out to his host: “Now may ye fecche blood inowghe to hele youre son withall” (84.17–18). The expected healing, however, is not described in the text as the narrative action moves to Balin’s subsequent fight with King Pellam, who seeks to avenge his brother’s death. Thus, we can only assume that the host’s son is healed, but we have no proof that the cure takes place, only the line in which Balin informs the host that he now has access to Garlon’s blood. As a result, the specular act of the cure is deferred, reappearing later in the scenes of completed miraculous cures that populate the “Sankgreal” that I discuss later. Like the Leprous Lady before him, the wounded knight can only receive cure through blood. As Caroline Walker Bynum has found, folk customs, religious discourse, secular texts, and medical treatises throughout the Middle Ages stressed the healing, life-giving properties of blood while also acknowledging that the loss of blood leads to the loss of life: “In such practices, we see a fundamental ambivalence located exactly in the assumption that blood carries life. […]. It is blood that staunches wounds and brings again the life and fertility it also threatens.”16 With regard to blood’s ability to cure and cause impairments and disease, Bettina Bildhauer affirms, “While learned medicine in the

96  Vessels of Blood classical tradition had developed elaborate theories that imbalances of bodily fluids, as well as poisonous residues in the blood, were the cause of all illness, folk medicine often seems to have seen diseases quite literally as residing in the blood. Discharging it through bloodletting thus largely sufficed to maintain or regain health.”17 The emphasis on the retrieval of blood for curative purposes in “Balin,” thus reflects the widely circulating notions of blood as both restorative and harmful. This oppositional nature merges in religious understandings of blood. Though presented as polluting and sinful in patristic and biblical writings, blood also figures prominently in the lives and deaths of saints as well as Christ’s crucifixion. Devotion to images of holy blood was important to a later medieval practice of piety that emphasized meditation on and identification with the broken body of Christ. In such meditations, a coalescence of medical associations between blood and breast milk renders Jesus a mother-figure whose blood nourishes and gives birth to humankind.18 In particular, his wounded side, pierced by the spear of the blind soldier Longinus, comes to represent the site of this simultaneous nourishment and parturition. Interestingly, the Dolorous Stroke that Balin strikes upon the body of King Pellam is not with his sword, but with the spear of Longinus.19 After losing his sword in the heat of the fight, Balin runs from room to room, looking for a weapon. Finally, he enters a mysterious room wherein he finds a man lying on a sumptuous bed next to an ornate table upon which sits “a mervaylous spere”; he grabs the spear and turns, striking King Pellam in the thigh (85.7). Immediately, “the castell brake rooffe and wallis and felle downe to the erthe. And Balyn felle downe and might nat styrre hande nor foote, and for the moste party of that castell was dede thorow the dolorouse stroke” (85.11–14). Three days later, Merlin rescues Balin from the wreckage; King Pellam, however, does not escape unscathed: And kynge Pellam lay so many yerys sore wounded and might never be hole tylle that Galaad the Hawte Prynce heled hym in the queste of the Sankgreall. For in that place was parte of the bloode of Oure Lorde Jesu Cryste, which Joseph off Aramathy brought into thys londe. And there hymselff [lay] in that ryche bedde. And that was the spere whych Longeus smote Oure Lorde with to the herte. And kyng Pellam was nyghe of Joseph kynne, and that was the moste worshipfullist man on lyve in tho dayes, and grete pité hite was of hys hurte, for thorow that stroke hit turned to grete dole, tray and tene. (85.20–30) Here, we directly see that physical ability continues to be central to worshipfulness as Pellam’s “hurte” renders the “moste worshipfullist man”

Vessels of Blood  97 deserving of pity. Pellam, also known as the Maimed King, derives from the Fisher King of earlier Arthurian tales and is most often depicted as immobile. When the Maimed King reappears in the Grail Quest, he is called Pelles and is identified as Galahad’s grandfather, who lives at ­Corbenic with “Kynge Pecchere” or the Fisher King (861.1–2). All of these Grail kings are associated with disability, and like his literary relatives, Pellam “is a figure defined by his disability.”20 Malory emphasizes his lack of wholeness, and, just as the Leprous Lady “might nat be hole” (81.31) and the host’s son “can nat be hole” (82.25) without the healing properties of blood, he also emphasizes that King Pellam “might never be hole” until Galahad touches him with the spear anointed with Christ’s blood. Blood in its many iterations come together in this passage as well: in addition to Pellam’s injury and the wounds of Christ, Malory mentions the shared bloodline between Pellam and Joseph of Arimathea, the man whom the Gospels state donated his own tomb for the body of Christ, Grail legends cite as responsible for transporting the Holy Grail to Britain, and Malory will later link to Lancelot and his son Galahad. 21 As many modern readers have noticed, blood is an important commodity throughout the Morte, creating what Lynch has called a textual “cult of blood” that “unconsciously opens to question the automatic connection of military success and power with noble birth, and accompanies with gruesome parody the holiest religious mysteries.”22 Indeed, “Malory does not consider anything a wound that does not produce visible blood,” as Atkinson explains. 23 Blood is essential to the quests and combat that comprise knightly aventure, reveals one’s genealogy and nobility, and serves as a measure of spiritual worth. The prevalence of blood in conjunction with disability throughout the story of Balin looks forward to the more nuanced explorations of the intersections between the two in the book it prefigures, the “Sankgreal.” The tale’s title itself brings together these associations, as, in Middle English, san-greal denotes “Holy Grail,” while sang-real denotes “royal blood” and “blood of Christ.”24

Vessels of Blood: The Knight’s Body and the Grail As my discussion of “Balin” suggests, the incurrences and thwarted cures of disability with which Balin is involved reemerge in the ­“Sankgreal.” The tale’s preoccupation with disability begins with the object the knights seek: the Holy Grail itself. The Grail, the object that links various knights in an interconnected web of shared desire, emblematizes the liminality of disability so integral to text. Indeed, ability/disability is central to the very nature of the Grail. The tale emphasizes its indeterminate quality as questing knights are unable to clearly view it; only Galahad fully “achieves” the Grail, and his subsequent death keeps its mysteries intact. In its Latin form, gradale or gradalis signifies a dish,

98  Vessels of Blood and Old French greal or graal indicates “a vessel, cup or both of wood, earthenware, or metal.”25 Though in its first appearance in literature, Chretien de Troyes’s twelfth-century Conte del Graal, the Grail is not a religious object, it becomes identified as the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper and the vessel Joseph of Arimathea uses to collect Christ’s blood after his death in Robert de Boron’s thirteenth-century Estoire du Graal. By the time Malory writes his version of the Grail Quest, the Grail is inextricable from its religious associations, becoming for his knights a vessel of the Eucharist. 26 Ihle has noted that Malory reduces the multiple meanings and images attributed to the Grail in his source text. For him, the Grail is not a religious symbol; it is a material object that permits one’s communion with God. 27 But, though a material object, Malory’s Grail maintains indefinability. When the Grail first appears before the Round Table at a Pentecostal feast, it is hidden from view, “covered with whygt samyte” (865.25–6). Its appearance is likewise occluded when Lancelot spies it while in his own liminal state of “half waking and half slepynge” in the doorway of a chapel (894.9). When it appears in its fullest form before Galahad, a bishop takes from it bread that transforms into the face of a child that then becomes the body of a man. Next, “a man come oute of the holy vessell that had all the sygnes of the Passion of Jesu Cryste beldynge all opynly” (1030.3–5). Malory’s Grail, in its ability to produce shifting images that at once make abstract and concretize the mysteries of the Eucharist, brings together the body and blood, the essential components of both Christ’s suffering and the knighthood espoused by the Morte. As the vessel of Christ’s blood, the Grail is specifically linked to Christ’s body; in the same way, as scholars like Charlotte Morse and Jill Mann have discussed, the human body operates as a kind of grail in the Grail Quest. 28 Mann explains, “Just as Christ’s bodily suffering was, miraculously and mysteriously, the means though which redemption was accomplished on the spiritual plane, so the knight’s bodily exploits are the vehicle through which his spiritual worth is realized. […]. The knightly body is represented in quasi-stylized form as a vessel containing blood, and in this it resembles the Grail itself.”29 Though Mann does not bring disability into her study, I contend that the centrality of (dis)ability to knightly identity coheres in the connection between the Grail and the body chivalric throughout the “Sankgreal.” In the Grail Quest, physical ability is essential to demonstrating both the salvific qualities of Christ’s body and a knight’s spirituality, and it establishes as it questions coherent notions of bodily integrity. Just as a knight proves his worth through physical wounds that feminize as they shore up his masculinity, Christ’s body challenges a clear separation between masculinity and femininity. As he emerges from the Grail before G ­ alahad, though sexed male, Christ’s nurturing qualities and wounds “bledynge all opynly” link him to femininity. At the same time, his broken body troubles a distinct

Vessels of Blood  99 binary between ability and disability, for in its physical weakness, it demonstrates his spiritual strength. 30 In its ambivalence, Malory’s Grail and its contents serve as a pharmakon, a remedy and a poison, 31 almost exclusively appearing in moments that feature disability, either as its cause or cure. In his discussion of ­Plato’s pharmakon in relationship to speech and writing, Jacques ­Derrida notes the philosopher’s omission of the term pharmakos, or scapegoat, in his work. In an ancient Athenian rite, the city would expel a scapegoat, usually a slave, criminal, or disabled person, in order to purify the community and establish stability. 32 Plato’s exclusion of the term pharmakos, according to Derrida, does not render it absent; instead, due to its close lexical relationship to pharmakon, pharmakos “passes through certain discoverable points of presence.”33 The pharmakos, moreover, is not totally outside of the community, for its presence is integral to communal identity itself.34 For Malory, able-bodied knightly identity relies on the disabled pharmakos; knights must experience disability, then immediately eschew it. In the “Sankgreal,” the Grail, or pharmakon, is always already linked to the disabled body, or pharmakos. The Quest itself is set in motion by Balin’s wounding of the Maimed King, whom Galahad will heal when he achieves the Grail. When the Grail appears before the Round Table knights for the first time, disability marks its arrival in two ways. First, the knights are struck mute just prior to its appearance: “there was no knyght that might speke one worde a grete whyle” (865.24–5). While it might seem at first that the knights are merely shocked into silence or unable to put into words what they feel about the mysterious spectacle, the text reveals that the knights are indeed unable to speak, for when the vessel disappears, “Than had they all breth to speke” (865.34). Moreover, the knights suffer a kind of blindness in its presence; no one is able to clearly view the Grail, and it is this inability to see it that inaugurates the Grail Quest: they vow not to return until they have “sene hit more opynly” (866.3–11). Disability thus serves as the Quest’s motive and objective: to see what cannot be seen, or, in effect, to cure impaired vision.35 As both remedy and poison, the pharmakon, not unlike the categories of knighthood, disability, and blood discussed here, encompasses its own opposite. The Grail, then, as a literal vessel containing blood that can harm or heal and as metaphoric symbol of the (im)permeability of the knightly body, makes material the tale’s pharmakonian representation of knightly ability. This is not the first time the Grail has appeared in conjunction with disability in the text. In the book just prior to the “Sankgreal,” the Grail appears before Lancelot’s nephew, Bors, who has just met the young Galahad. Soon after viewing the Grail and learning of Galahad’s lineage, Bors stays the night in Castle Corbenic wherein he is struck by an enchanted spear. Later, Bors follows a procession into a chamber, where he views a shimmering sword that blinds him (802.3–6). Later in the

100  Vessels of Blood same book, Percival and Ector are healed by the Grail after wounding one another in battle (816.32–26 and 817.1). In both of these instances, the Grail appears either before or after a knight incurs a physical ­impairment; moreover, both instances include references to impaired vision. Just as the Round Table knights struggle to view the Grail during its appearance at the Pentecostal feast, Percival and Ector here do not fully view the Grail (816.32–35). After Percival questions the meaning of their miraculous healing, Ector stresses its elusive appearance, noting that it “may nat be sene […] buy yff hit be by a parfyte man” (817.6–10). ­E ctor’s emphasis on perfection suggests that physical and moral excellence are requisite to viewing the Grail and hints at Galahad, the book’s most “parfyte man” and the only knight able to fully achieve the Grail. These sections seem to link impaired vision to sinful or unknightly behavior. Though Malory does not specify that Bors is unable to see the Grail, he does endure temporary blindness from the silver sword after his view of the Grail, perhaps suggesting that he is not the “parfyte man” Ector describes and that he has seen something that he should not or was not ready to see. After the sword strikes, a disembodied voice admonishes, “Go hens, thou sir Bors, for as yet thou arte not worthy for to be in this place!” (802.7–9). As noted in Chapter 3, although not universally applied or accepted, the linking between inward sinfulness and outward physical appearance did occur in some religious, medical, legal, and literary discourses in the Middle Ages, a connection intensified by the Fourth Lateran Council’s canons of 1215, which prioritized spiritual health through confession over bodily health through medical intervention. The presence of characters such as Longinus and King Mordrains, whose blindness indicates sin, emphasizes the tale’s examination of (im)proper sight, whether spiritual or physical. Edward Wheatley has noted that aligning sight with spiritual ability fits with medieval religious discourse that links sight to the acceptance of ­Christian truth and blindness to a purposeful turning away from such truth. It is unsurprising, then, that in medieval secular literature, blinding as punishment takes on religious overtones that link acts of sin to blinding and/or blindness.36 The examples of blinding or blindness during the adventures of Castle ­Corbenic demonstrate that knightly worship must be earned through not only feats of strength but also through spiritual ability—a framework that will reappear during the Grail Quest. Pelles explains to Bors that a godly knight will fare better than one who is merely physically adept in this castle: “[H]ere shall no kyght wynne worshyp but yf he be of worshyp hymselff and of good lyvynge, and that lovyth God an dredyth God. And ellys he getyth no worshyp here, be he never so hardy a man” (799.6–9). Pelles emphasizes that without spiritual strength, a knight’s physical strength, or “hardinesse,” has no bearing on his worshipfulness, and he advises Bors to take confession before staying the night in the castle. After he is shriven, Malory takes a moment to emphasize Bors’s sexual purity, which is almost perfect, noting that “sauff for [Elayne,

Vessels of Blood  101 the mother of his child,] sir Bors was a clene mayden” (799.21–4). The emphasis on Bors’s almost-virginity draws attention to his spiritual (un)cleanness and also foreshadows the role sexual purity will later play in the Grail Quest as Bors’s chastity and Percival’s and Galahad’s virginity contribute to their success. Though honorable, at this moment, Bors is not quite perfect enough, thus warranting the temporary blinding that he receives when he attempts to view the Grail more clearly. The “Sankgreal” continues to connect sinful behavior with disability. For instance, Melyas de Lyle receives a serious wound to his left side that is later interpreted as a punishment for entering knighthood without receiving confession, presumptuously choosing a left-hand path only meant for the worthiest knights, and attempting to steal a golden crown. Melyas thus fails at both knightly and spiritual action. Though Melyas takes the left-hand path in the hopes of demonstrating his prowess, he ends up sustaining injuries that, instead of communicating knightly worship, convey “no knyghtly dedys” (886.26). In an act that emphasizes Melyas’s unknightly decisions and furthers the connection between bad behavior and punishment through impairment, Galahad lops off the left hand of the knight involved in Melyas’s attack (885.14–15). Melyas is not physically blind, but his actions indicate the same kind of impaired spiritual vision that Bors suffers from. A later disabled figure, King Evelake, more acutely brings together spiritual and physical blindness. After a conversion to Christianity by Joseph of Arimathea and a subsequent interest in viewing the Grail, King Evelake is blinded by God for approaching the Grail too closely. He lives for four hundred years, waiting to see “opynly” Galahad, the knight who will fully achieve the Grail (908.27). When Percival happens upon Evelake at Corbenic, he describes the man’s appearance as similar to the muddled views of the Grail that have occurred thus far. Near an altar, Percival sees a human figure, whose covered face conceals his gender, lying upon a bed clothed in “sylke and golde” (907.29–30). The figure is not uncovered until receiving the sacrament, at which time he is revealed to be an old man wearing a crown, his naked torso “full of grete woundys, both on the shuldirs, armys, and vysayge” (908.3–4). The image of Evelake’s covered body that then becomes a bleeding, wounded body, certainly evokes the Grail as the often visually obscured vessel of Christ’s blood, while also signifying the broken body so essential to the performance of knighthood. As with Bors and Melyas, Malory directly presents ­Evelake’s impairment as a punishment for overstepping spiritual bounds, lending what David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder call the materiality of metaphor to the text’s exploration of spiritual ignorance. 37 Lynch concurs, noting that the text uses “the incurable physical wound […] as a potent recurring theme of malice, ignorance or spiritual blindness” that can only be cured through the achievement of spiritual sight.38 Indeed, Percival later wounds himself in the thigh as punishment for almost betraying his virginity, as I discuss at length in Chapter 3 (919.12–17). However, while Evelake’s

102  Vessels of Blood blindness is a punishment, his wounds are the product of “persecucions the whych the enemyes of Cryst ded unto hym,” physical symbols of his commitment to his faith. Like the Malorian knight whose injuries enable and disable him from the achievement of worshipfulness, Evelake’s body represents the ambivalent ability of impairments to both punish spiritual ignorance and signify spiritual strength, while also serving as the vehicle through which Galahad will further demonstrate his singularity. All of these punishments—especially that of Bors, Melyas, and Evelake— contain interesting commonalities. The men are punished with physical impairments for sinful behavior, thereby associating impairment with spiritual weakness. Each episode draws a connection between physical impairment and the wounds of Christ, consequently strengthening the text’s interrelation of the holy vessel and the body chivalric as well as its reliance upon (dis)ability as a central component of knightly identity. Bors is injured with a spear and later views the spear of Longinus, the weapon that wounds Christ, while Melyas is wounded also with a spear that breaks off in his left side, the same side in which Christ is stabbed. Although the profuse bleeding of Percival and Ector only indirectly recalls the bloody body of Christ, Evelake’s bleeding body at the altar most certainly evokes Christ’s crucified and eucharistic body. Moreover, each instance involves the rituals of confession and/or holy communion: Bors must be shriven in order to continue his stay at ­Corbenic, Melyas seeks confession after being wounded and is scolded for entering into knightly aventure without confession, and Percival attends mass just before encountering King Evelake, whom he witnesses partaking in the ­Eucharist. The close association of impairment, sin, and the religious rites of confession and communion connects physical and spiritual health and ­underscores the therapeutic effects of sacred ritual, thus echoing the Fourth Lateran Council’s suggestion that those with bodily impairment seek spiritual treatment before seeking medical treatment. In addition to privileging the health of the soul over that of the body, the Fourth Lateran Council also insisted on yearly confession, a ritual necessary to participation in communion.39 In its exploration of spiritual and physical health, the Morte demonstrates the slippage that can occur between literal and metaphoric impairment in the Middle Ages.

Lancelot and Embodied Chivalry In particular, Bors’s experiences at Castle Corbenic that culminate in his ocular punishment prefigure what is to come for Lancelot in the Grail Quest. The old man clearly connects the two knights and their adventures when he commands Bors, [G]o ye to youre cousyn Launcelot and telle hym this adventure had be moste covenyent for hym of all earthely knyghtes, but synne ys so

Vessels of Blood  103 foule in hym that he may nat enchyve non suche holy dedys; for had nat bene hys synne, he had paste all the knyghtes that ever were in hys dayes. And telle thou sir Launcelot, of all worldly adventures he passyth in manhode and proues all othir, but in spyrytuall maters he shall have many hys bettyrs. (801.25–33) Instead of focusing on Bors’s past sexual transgression, the old man stresses Lancelot’s propensity for sin, undoubtedly an allusion to his adulterous affair with Queen Guenevere and an attribute that leads to his inability to completely “achieve” the Grail. Interestingly, Atkinson refers to Lancelot’s sinful past with Guenevere as a “spiritual handicap.”40 Throughout the Morte, Malory positions Lancelot as the essence of knighthood, “the floure of all knyghtes,” as he is called (282.22–3). His superlative physical ability, which augments his worshipfulness, is only stopped by duplicitous or supernatural means, placing him at the normative center of the institutionalized masculinity of knighthood in the text. King Arthur himself stresses that Lancelot has no equal when it comes to his physical strength: “[S]ir Launcelot ys an hardy knyght, and all ye know that he ys the beste knyght amonge us all […], and I know no knyght that ys able to macch hym” (1163.14–18). In the chapters leading up to the Grail Quest, Lancelot acts as the pinnacle of true knighthood in his feats of strength, despite his adulterous interactions with ­Guenevere, which will prove to be a hindrance to him as he attempts to view the Grail. Many have noted that Malory tends to downplay the traitorous nature of Lancelot’s adultery.41 For instance, he removes passages from his source texts that draw attention to his affair with the queen. Atkinson adds that despite having access to source material that emphasizes the adultery, Malory “hold[s] back episodes which show the private lives of Lancelot and the queen and us[es] only those episodes which show their public lives at court or Lancelot’s pursuit of adventures, […] ma[king] it impossible for us to know the precise state of their love before it emerges in the Tale of Tristram as common knowledge.”42 Moreover, he allows Lancelot more leeway in terms of his spiritual development during the Grail Quest than the Queste author, who clearly condemns Lancelot’s sinful nature and deems his participation in the Grail Quest a failure. As a result, Malory’s “Sankgreal” judges Lancelot in terms of the actions he takes, while the Queste finds him guilty of faulty spiritual vision.43 For both texts, thus, Lancelot’s performance in the Grail Quest is a matter of ability, either that of physical action or spiritual sight. Malory is interested in both aspects of Lancelot’s character, but throughout the “Sankgreal,” the emphasis tends more towards physical, visible markers of (dis)ability than metaphorical, thereby demonstrating the importance of physical ability to Malorian conceptions of knighthood, even on the Grail Quest.

104  Vessels of Blood Although the Morte positions Lancelot as the epitome of knightly behavior when it comes to combat, many readers have focused on Lancelot’s spiritual instability in the “Sankgreal,” mentioning his “inner fragmentation,” “failure of […] self-integrity,” and spiritual ­“backsliding,” and noting that it is indicative of what Galahad calls an “unstable” and “unsyker” world (1035.12, 1036.29).44 Armstrong finds that Lancelot’s unstable nature “is in fact a delicate, deliberate, and necessary balancing act in which Lancelot’s superiority as a courteous man of arms is consistently offset by his lack of spiritual understanding.”45 He is consistent in his spiritual misunderstanding because of his strict adherence to the chivalric code; as a result, he embodies the Grail Quest’s fusion of the spiritual and the chivalric. Armstrong explains, “It is not Lancelot who is ‘unsyker’ or ‘unstable,’ but rather, the world around him has changed,” and in his attempt to navigate this “new” world, Lancelot ends up “occupying a sort of middle ground” or “liminal space” that brings together the spiritual and the knightly.46 Though one could interpret the “unsyker worlde” mentioned by Galahad as the secular world, Armstrong finds that it is most likely a world that fuses the spiritual and secular: “[T]he actions of secular, chivalrous knights in pursuit of the sacred object of the grail create this ‘worlde.’ In this space, the spiritual and secular, usually so distinctly separate, intersect, producing instability or ‘unsykerness.’” I must draw attention here to Malory’s use of the term “unsyker” as it signifies not only danger, risk, instability, uncertainty, and insincerity but also frailty and weakness, particularly of the spiritual kind.47 Unsyker is, of course, the opposite of siker, which means certain, strong, or stable.48 The related term sik indicates bodily as well as spiritual illness.49 Throughout the Grail Quest exists movement between “sykerness” and “unsykerness,” as well as movement between “sickness” and “unsickness.” Thus, the Grail Quest’s “unsyker worlde” brings together spiritual and physical infirmity in its explorations of chivalric and spiritual knighthood. As the intermediary between these realms, Lancelot is a liminal figure operating in a liminal space. It is not surprising, then, that his liminality is frequently represented in terms of disability, an already liminal state. Mann contends that the “Sankgreal” represents Lancelot’s “inner fragmentation” in terms of distance, noting the instances in which he is unable to penetrate thoroughly the mysteries of the Grail. 50 I would add that in addition to distance, Lancelot’s fractured nature is explored through disability as these moments feature more than just physical and/ or spiritual distance; they involve acts of disabling and/or healing. Near the beginning of the quest, Lancelot attempts to enter a church, but is unable to due to a broken door. He then falls into a sort of trance, “half wakyng and half slepynge,” and witnesses a sick knight who is healed after kissing the Holy Grail (894.9). In this liminal state between wakefulness and sleep, Lancelot is unable to clearly view the Grail, and when

Vessels of Blood  105 he attempts to enter the church in order to better see it, he is struck with paralysis (894.36). The formerly sick knight and his squire observe Lancelot and postulate that it is likely that a “never confessed” sin has impeded Lancelot’s healing (895.10–11). Upon waking, Lancelot agrees: “My synne and my wyckednes hat brought me unto grete dishonoure! […]. And now I take uppon me the adventures to seke of holy thynges, now I se and undirstonde that myne olde synne hyndryth me and shamyth me, that I had no power to stirre nother speke whan the holy bloode appered before me” (896.1–9). In this section, as Molly Martin notes, Malory underscores Lancelot’s worldly abilities—he has beauty, wealth, and physical strength—even as he points out his spiritual weaknesses (897.3, 898.12–16).51 On the Grail Quest, physical “hardinesse” has little meaning, although it has given him “more worldly worship than ony knyght that ys now lyvynge” (896.31). While the Queste’s Lancelot stresses his spiritual vision in this section, twice mentioning his blindness, Malory’s Lancelot focuses on his “worldly adventures for worldely desyres” and makes no specific mention of blindness (896.2–3). 52 It isn’t until later that a hermit confirms that Lancelot’s sinfulness has impeded his ability to see the Grail: “And for youre presumpcion to take uppon you in dedely synne for to be in Hys presence, where Hys flesh and Hys blood was, which caused you ye might nat se hyt with youre worldely yen, for He woll nat appere where such synners bene but if hit be unto their grete hurte other unto their shame” (896.32–6, 897.1). Echoing the religious model discussed earlier, the hermit asserts that sinfulness results in spiritual blindness that manifests in physical blindness. Lancelot then confesses his sin of adultery with Guenevere and promises to refrain from being with the queen again. In addition to confession, Lancelot also participates in corporeal works of piety by donning a hair shirt and abstaining from certain food and drink, 53 common later medieval practices of affective piety, a highly emotional and frequently physical devotion to Christ’s humanity. For men- and women-religious practicing such a piety, any hardship to the body was akin to experiencing Christ’s physical suffering and brought the practitioner closer to Christ through the act of imitatio Christi. The hair shirt, which was commonly made of animal skin or coarse cloth, would cause an irritation of the skin and could thus serve as an act of penance or religious devotion. Due to Lancelot’s attachment to the body, it is unsurprising that even his attempts at spiritual devotion remain in the physical realm. Indeed, Malory uniquely emphasizes Lancelot’s physical reaction to the hair shirt: it “pricked faste sir Launcelots skynne and greved hym sore, but he toke hyt mekely and suffirde the payne” (931.8–10). 54 Further drawing attention to materiality, the chapel priest stresses Lancelot’s spiritual blindness and connects it to physically impaired vision. He counsels Lancelot to seek the Grail if he would like, “but

106  Vessels of Blood thoughe hit were here ye shall have no power to se hit, no more than a blynde man that sholde se a bryghte swerd” (927.12–14). The old man’s reference to a blind man unable to view a shining sword alludes to the temporary blindness Bors earlier incurs at Castle Corbenic and further connects that previous episode with the fuller examination of disability at work in the “Sankgreal.” The old man’s next statement emphasizes how not only Lancelot’s status as a Grail Quest knight but also the tale itself depends upon (dis)ability: “And that ys long on youre synne, and ellys ye were more abeler than ony man lyvynge” (927.14–16, my emphasis). If not for his sin, the man explains, Lancelot would be “more abeler” to view the Grail than any other. This statement is unique to Malory and demonstrates the “Sankgreal”’s emphasis on the physical ability of knights and, in particular, Lancelot’s physical ability while on the Grail Quest. Ihle confirms, “Not only does this addition provide a context for the reference to blindness [by the hermit]; it also recalls anew Lancelot’s relative knightly valor,” thereby keeping him on the liminal boundary between the material and the spiritual. 55 Lancelot’s final experience with the Grail illustrates the centrality of the liminal state of disability to the liminal space of the Grail Quest. The tale’s interweaving of the chivalric and the spiritual is emphasized when Lancelot approaches Castle Corbenic in order to “see a grete parte of [his] desyre” (1014.14–15). He first attempts to arm himself by grabbing his sword, the standard material signifier of knightly prowess. However, he is immediately met by a dwarf that strikes him on the arm, knocking his sword to the ground. A voice then chastises him for trusting his “harneyse” over the power of God: “For He myght more avayle the than thyne armour, in what servyse that thou arte sette in” (1014.22–24). It is clear that Lancelot’s penchant for the physical is out of place here, but Malory reworks his source in a subtle way that keeps intact his more material exploration of spiritual knighthood. The dwarf that metes out ­Lancelot’s punishment is not mentioned in the Queste; there, a flaming hand injures Lancelot and disarms him: “Einsi come Lancelot ot trete l’espee, si resgarde contremont et voit venir une main toute enflammee qui le feri si durement par mi le braz qu l’espee li voila de la main” (253.19–22). [“No sooner had he drawn his sword than glancing up he saw a flaming hand plunge earthward, which struck him so hard on the arm that the sword flew out of his grip” (260)]. Though it is probable, as Vinaver has noted, that Malory misconstrues the French “main” [“hand”] as “nain” [“dwarf”], his possible error lends a concreteness to the scene not present in the source text.56 The Queste’s use of a spiritual agent of punishment follows that text’s clear privileging spiritual strength, while Malory’s more material agent of punishment again ­injects the earthly into the spiritual. As Irina Metzler has noted, “real” ­medieval dwarfs, despite their often negatively represented ­literary counterparts, were not really disabled in the physical or social

Vessels of Blood  107 sense. However, dwarfs in the Middle Ages (and today) are always associated with the bodily materiality: “dwarfs of all epochs are always ­‘natural’, since it is their unfakeable physical characteristics, which cannot be manipulated, that define them.”57 Malory’s dwarf thus serves as yet another insertion of the ­physical world into the Grail Quest. As per usual, Lancelot does not completely abjure his chivalric ways, choosing to enter Corbenic with his sword, though he keeps it sheathed. Soon Lancelot again finds himself at a locked door, unable to enter into the room that houses the Grail. After praying to God to “shew [him] somthynge of that [he] seke[s]” (1015.13–14), the chamber door opens, and Lancelot sees what will be his fullest image of the Grail but not before being warned not to cross into the room: “Sir Launcelot, flee and entir nat, for thou ought nat to do hit! For and if thou entir thou shalt forthynke hit” (1015.20–22). Here on the literal threshold of the earthly and spiritual, Lancelot fully embodies his liminal status. 58 Mann notes, that, as in Lancelot’s prior encounter with the Grail, he is again kept at a distance from the vessel. 59 In addition, his body will face a similar physical reaction to it, this time with more intense effects. From his spot on the threshold, Lancelot spies “the holy vessell covered with rede samyte” and flanked by angels, a priest as if performing the consecration in the mass, and three men above the priest—two placing the third man into the priest’s hands (1015.25–6). Again focused on the physical, Lancelot foolishly enters the chamber, hoping to help the priest he assumes is struggling to hold up the three men. Suddenly, a hot breath hits him, burning his face and knocking him to the ground. As he was at the church, Lancelot is again paralyzed by the Grail, but this time he suffers even more disabling physical effects, losing “the power of hys body and hys hyrynge and sight[, and] semynge dede to all people” (1016.11–15) and remaining in the coma-like state for twenty-four days (1017.1–2). The increased intensity of Lancelot’s physical reactions to the Grail at Corbenic marks this episode as climactic, and, indeed, it is the pinnacle of Lancelot’s quest for the Grail, ultimately leading us to G ­ alahad’s full achievement of the Grail in the following section. Just as his temporary blindness and paralysis both indicate and punish Lancelot’s ­spiritual weakness in his earlier encounter with the Grail, this paralyzed, blind, and deafened state could represent a punishment for disobeying the voice’s command and not adhering to the spiritual challenges that have been placed before him throughout the quest. Lancelot seems to interpret it in this way: “Than hym thought hit was ponyshemente for the four [and twenty] yere that he had bene [a] sinner, wherefore Oure Lorde put hym in penaunce the foure [and twenty] dayes and nyghtes” (1017.16–19). But, his initial, instinctual reaction to waking from his coma construes the state as enjoyable. He asks those around him, “Why have ye awaked me? For I was more at ease than I am now” (1017.6–7). It is only after thinking through what he has seen in his state that he

108  Vessels of Blood wonders whether his sinfulness has inhibited his view of the Grail. As a result, we can interpret Lancelot’s impaired state as a kind of reward that enables instead of disables the knight for it is only through his physical impairments that Lancelot is able to see the “grete mervayles that no tunge may telle, and more than ony herte can thynke” (1017.11–12). And though only a partial viewing, Lancelot’s view of the Grail is deemed much more successful than his Queste counterpart.60 The people of Corbenic assert that “the queste of the Sankgreall ys encheved now right in you, and never shall ye se of Sankgreall more than ye have sene” (1017.30–1018.1–2). Lancelot agrees that what he has seen “suffisith” (1018.4). As with all of his experiences with the Grail, Lancelot here endures (dis)abling effects in its presence. Attempting to approach the vessel leaves him physically impaired, while also enabling him to look upon divine sights that he is subsequently unable to express in physical terms—words and thoughts fail him. This punishment, which influences his body and soul and rewards even as it chastises, is indicative of Lancelot’s liminal status throughout the tale. Armstrong explains, “Such ‘discipline,’ in its gentleness, then, seems to include an implicit acknowledgment that Lancelot had no choice but to cross the threshold; his behavior is a function of his role as the fulcrum between the spiritual and secular realms, and it is a role he cannot step out of.”61 That his “discipline” takes the form of disability only enhances this liminal role. Lancelot’s reaction to such a spiritual experience is—unsurprisingly— visceral. After considering his coma as a penance for his sins, he immediately looks to the hair shirt he donned a year earlier, a method of doing penance that leaves its impressions upon the body. Malory mentions the hair shirt three times in seventeen lines: he first looks to the hair shirt (1017.20), puts on the hair shirt in place of a linen shirt that is brought forth (1017.29), and then presumably puts on the hair shirt again, covering it with the linen shirt (1018.7). Twice, Lancelot “takes” the hair shirt: he “toke the hayre to him” (1017.29) and “toke the hayre and clothed him in hit” (1018.7). We might read the first taking of the hair shirt as just that—picking it up and taking it—and the second as the donning of the hair shirt, hence “clothed him in it.” However, when used in reference to religious garments like Lancelot’s hair shirt, the verb taken references the act of donning the garment.62 If we read Malory’s “toke the hayre” in this way, then Lancelot puts on the garment twice. The repetition of this action draws attention to the pain and discomfort the shirt will bring to Lancelot’s body as well as to the physical act of putting it on and taking it off. For Lancelot, spiritual matters are dealt with through the body and its actions. Indeed, when asked how he is after waking from his coma, he refers not to his spiritual state but to his body, answering, “I am hole of body” (1017.24). Just as his source text does, Malory indicates that Lancelot suffers from spiritual blindness that keeps him from an unimpaired view of the Grail.

Vessels of Blood  109 However, the focus in his version moves away from spiritual knowledge and toward physical action. In their liminality, the images of disability that accompany the appearances of the Grail, the “Sankgreal”’s most spiritual moments, bridge, yet keep intact, the division between spiritual and earthly chivalry by marking the body as central to Lancelot’s spiritual development. This move maintains Malory’s unique exploration of the path of chivalric knighthood as not inferior, but parallel to that of spiritual knighthood. Indeed, Lancelot, despite his past sexual transgressions and partial viewing of the Grail, is considered alongside Percival, Bors, and Galahad as a successful Grail Quest knight. What occurs in the “Sankgreal” indicates that, for Malory’s knights, complete spiritual understanding comes only at death, when the material is no longer. It is a place one progresses to after abandoning earthly knighthood. Mahoney explains, “For [Malory’s] knights the ‘ghostly chivalry’ is an alternative that is only emotionally available after the earthly chivalry has been relinquished, after the fellowship that gave it meaning has gone.”63 The spiritual continues to pressure Lancelot’s chivalric performances after the Grail Quest is completed, as Chapter 5 will explore. As Barbara N ­ ewman has noted, the spiritual humility Lancelot gains on the Grail Quest exists alongside his earthly duplicity, “double-coding” him as both “heroic sinner and penitent saint.”64 Disability facilitates this double-­coding as post-Grail Quest events find him increasingly associated with (dis)ability as wounder; wounded; and, finally, healer. First, however, Lancelot’s son, Galahad, provides an example of how one knight might transition from earthly to spiritual knighthood, and he does so as a healer of disability. In his dealings with the Grail, Lancelot endures physical impairments, whereas Galahad miraculously heals them. This ability to heal allows Galahad to transition from this world to the next.

Galahad and Spiritual Chivalry If Lancelot’s practice of chivalry is both bodily and spiritual, his son ­Galahad represents a chivalry that is strictly celestial. Both Lancelot’s and Galahad’s adventures on the Grail Quest involve the body as ­Lancelot experiences the Grail through his body, while Galahad ultimately transcends the body, first through working a number of miraculous cures and then, finally, through his death. Whereas Lancelot is represented as unstable, unable to fully commit to spiritual chivalry because of his entanglement with the physical world of secular knighthood, G ­ alahad is the spiritually stable center of the Grail Quest. That spiritual stability is reflected in the impermeable boundaries of his own body: as a virgin, Galahad functions as a closed, complete body that has not been penetrated by sexual sin.65 Moreover, his body is the only one among those of all of the Grail Quest knights that is never threatened by a physical injury; his skin is never punctured, and his blood never spills. As the last

110  Vessels of Blood in a bloodline that reaches back to Joseph of Arimathea, Galahad is, as Lynch notes, “a human version of the Grail itself.”66 And, unlike the vessels that knights like Lancelot signify, the vessel that Galahad represents does not need to be broken in order to assert itself; rather, its presence has the ability to heal the broken bodies of others. Galahad’s ability to make bodies whole is first demonstrated when he takes his seat at the Siege Perilous, thereby finally making complete the social body of the Round Table. The empty seat that had long been labeled “‘HERE OUGHT TO SITTE HE,’ and ‘HE OUGHT TO SITTE HYRE’” features a new message just before Camelot’s Pentecostal feast that asserts that the seat will soon be “FULFYLLED” (855.8 and 855.14). Excited about this turn of events, Lancelot orders the message to be covered in cloth until the day the missing knight takes his seat. When Galahad finally takes his seat at the table, the cloth is unveiled to name Galahad as the rightful owner (860.11). As Mann notes, Galahad’s presence completes the hitherto incomplete Round Table, finally—and only briefly—making whole the body chivalric.67 King Arthur relishes the moment, and immediately calls for a joust in which he can view his Round Table “holé togydirs,” a phrase he repeats four times: ‘Now,’ seyde the kynge, ‘I am sure at this quest of the Sankegreall shall all ye of the Rownde Table departe, and nevyr shall I se you agayne holé togydirs, therefore ones shall I se you togydir in the medow, all holé togydirs! Therefore I woll se you all hole togydirs in the medow of Camelot, to juste and to turney, that aftir youre dethe men may speke of hit that such good knyghtes were here such a day holé togydirs.’ (520.39–44) Despite his enthusiasm, however, Arthur suggests that he understands that this fellowship will soon be scattered as the knights embark on the Grail Quest. References to the wholeness/incompleteness of bodies continue in the removal of the sword from the stone. Before Galahad’s appearance at Camelot, Malory makes clear that he will supersede his father as the best knight in the quest for the Holy Grail. After the “Tale of the ­Sankgreal” opens with Lancelot knighting Galahad, a floating stone with a sword upon it appears outside of Arthur’s court. The sword can only be removed by “THE BESTE KNYGHT OF THE WORLDE” (856.14–15). Arthur predictably assumes this “beste knyght” to be Lancelot, but Lancelot demurs: “Sir, hit is nat my swerde” (856.21). In this spiritual quest that the knights are about to begin, Lancelot seems to understand that he will not be the best. This is proven when he is unable to remove the sword after the king commands him to try. Interestingly, the appearance of the sword before the quest is yet another instance in which

Vessels of Blood  111 Malory asserts (dis)ability as central to this tale. Lancelot emphasizes his physical inability to draw the sword, noting that he does not possess the “hardines” needed to remove it (856.21). He furthermore underscores the disabling consequences incurred from wielding such a sword when he explains that he who removes it will “resseyve a wounde by that swerde that he shall nat be longe hole afftir,” a reference to the fatal wound Gawain will eventually receive from its blade (856.24–5). When Galahad easily takes the sword from the stone, he notes that this is the same sword Balin used to strike the Dolorous Stroke upon Pellam, “the whych ys nat yet hole nor naught shall be tyll that [he] hele[s] hym” (863.8–9). Malory uniquely makes Galahad’s sword the same sword that Balin uses; in the Queste, Balin wields two swords. The sword intended for Galahad is used for protection from spiritual enemies, the other to strike the Dolorous Stroke. As Lynch finds, the Queste’s use of two swords nicely divides the spiritual and the secular and subordinates a sword that causes harm to one that heals.68 In fusing the two swords, however, Malory highlights the role of incurring and healing physical impairments throughout the tale. In Galahad’s hands, a sword known for causing utter destruction will also repair it. Galahad’s use of Balin’s sword is echoed in his use of Longinus’s spear to heal the Maimed King. In both instances, an instrument of bodily harm heals. In addition to swords and spears, another weapon serves as a visual and physical link between Galahad and (dis)ability.69 When he encounters Bagdemagus and Uwayne at an abbey, Galahad finds that B ­ agdemagus plans to brandish a shield that a monk explains will only protect “the worthyest knyght of the worlde” (877.27–8). P ­ redictably—even ­Bagdemagus admits that he is “nat the beste knyght” (877.31–2)—­Bagdemagus is wounded in the shoulder by a white knight after the shield “coverde hym nat as at that tyme” (878.11). Here, an object meant to protect leads to an injury so severe that it renders Bagdemagus bedridden for some time until he eventually recovers, though he “ascaped hard with the lyff” (879.2). As the rightful owner of the shield, Galahad takes it up and later meets the white knight who explains the shield’s mystical history. At the behest of Joseph of Arimathea, it was made “in the name of Hym that dyed on the Crosse” for a newly converted King ­Evelake (880.2). Though usually covered in a cloth, when uncloaked, the shield miraculously protects the king in the most dangerous points of battle as “a vigoure of a man on the crosse” appears on the shield before the eyes of his enemies (880. 6–7). In addition to keeping Evelake safe from the harm, the shield also has healing properties. When one of King ­Evelake’s men loses a hand, Joseph orders him to touch the shield’s cross. ­I mmediately, his hand is “as hole as ever hit was tofore” (880.13–14). The miraculous healing leads the cross to disappear from the front of the shield for many years, only to be replaced at Joseph’s deathbed by a cross drawn in his own blood: “Then Joseph bledde sore at the nose,

112  Vessels of Blood that he myght nat by no meane be staunched, and there upon that shylde, he made a crosse of his owne blood” (881.4–6). The blood, Joseph explains, will remain “allwayes as freysh as hit ys now” and will serve as a visual remembrance of his love for Evelake (881.9). Moreover, Joseph continues, “never shall no man beare thys shylde aboute hys necke but he shall repente hit, unto the tyme that Galahad, the good knyght, beare hit and, laste of my lynayge, have hit aboute hys necke, that shall do many meravaylous dedys” (881.9–13). The shield both protects and withholds protection from bodies; additionally, it makes material the text’s layered representations of blood as a liminal fluid that is at once inside and outside of the contours of the body. Indeed, the shield is a screen upon which the text’s multiple iterations of blood are displayed. As a blood-spattered shield, it recalls more generally the blood that must be spilled through violence in the construction of knightly identity. Its early projection of Christ on the cross suggests crucifixion and Eucharist, while its later display of ­Joseph’s blood signifies Galahad’s holy bloodline. The unchecked flow of Joseph’s blood represents a lack of closure, a continual outpouring of the blood that flows in life and death and leads to rebirth through Christ. This opening is only closed by Galahad’s assumption of the shield. Mirroring the dual power of Galahad’s sword and shield to both harm and heal, the scenes succeeding Galahad’s assumption of the shield alternate between the wounding and healing of others and include ­Melyas’s injury and cure, the healing of the sick knight before the Grail and Lancelot’s subsequent paralysis, the story of Evelake’s blindness, and Percival’s thigh wound. Before participating in the most important act of healing in the “Sankgreal,” the healing of the Maimed King, Galahad administers one of the most important wounds of the tale, the wound to Gawain’s head that prefigures the one that will lead to his death. When he meets Gawain in a tournament “by aventure,” Galahad “smote him so sore that he clave hys helme and the coyff of iron unto the hede, that sir Gawayne felle to the erthe” (981.24–6). The stroke is so forceful that it not only slices through Gawain’s helmet but also “kutte the horse sholdir in too” (981.27–8). With this strike, Galahad fulfills the prophecy revealed after he removes his sword from the stone that “who that assayth to take hit and faylith of that swerde, he shall resseyve a wounde by that swerde that he shall nat be longe hole afftir” (856.23–5). ­Despite multiple warnings of the consequences, Gawain tried and failed to remove the sword. As a result, Gawain’s wounded head thus serves as physical, visible proof of the prophecy’s truths: one, that he who fails will be wounded, and two, that Galahad is “the beste knyght of the worlde” (856.14–15). More than just causing intense pain, Gawain’s wound has disabling effects. The injury is so severe that he immediately knows that his participation in the Grail Quest is over, causing him to remark to Ector, “I shall seke no farther” (982.13). Moreover, he finds that the

Vessels of Blood  113 wound will take him out of knightly endeavors for at least a month. After being stripped of his armor and put to bed, Gawain is treated by “a leche [who] founde that he myght lyve, and to be hole within a moneth” (982.15–16). Galahad’s strike and its subsequent healing anticipates the cycle of wounding and healing that Gawain will endure in the Morte’s last books. After being struck in the head by Lancelot twice, Gawain will receive a third blow—this time fatal—in combat against Mordred. Like Lancelot, Galahad’s identity as the “beste knyght of the worlde” depends upon his interactions with disability. While Lancelot’s experiences reflect his being firmly in and of the secular world, however, Galahad’s set him apart as on his way out of the material and into fully spiritual. His sword and shield, the tools necessary to worshipful chivalric knighthood, are imbued with mystical genealogies and abilities that bridge the material and spiritual in their power to harm bodies and heal them. Whereas Lancelot’s penetrable body is essential to his more material brand of spiritual chivalry, Galahad’s intact body marks him as purely spiritual. Although all other knights that populate the Morte are clearly temporarily able-bodied,70 Galahad remains permanently able-bodied until his death. His permanently able-bodied status perhaps allows him to work the greatest number of miraculous cures. Just prior to the culmination of the Grail Quest during which Galahad will heal both King Mordrains and the Maimed King, Galahad, Percival, and Bors witness the cure of the Leprous Lady by Percival’s sister. Percival’s sister, then, serves as the intermediate link between Lancelot’s embodied spirituality and Galahad’s spiritual perfection. Prior to his encounter with Percival’s sister, Galahad has not yet healed any impairments. His observation of her cure of the Leprous Lady, however, inaugurates his involvement in the series of miracles the Morte has prophesied. Like ­Galahad, Percival’s sister’s act of curing is prophesied; in the tale of Balin, we learn that Percival’s sister is fated to cure a woman stricken with a disfiguring disease, who, despite calling every passing maiden to bleed for her, is still seeking a cure when Percival’s sister, Galahad, and Percival happen upon her castle. Unlike Galahad’s, however, her miraculous cure requires an opening of her body in the act of making another’s body whole.

Percival’s Sister and Liminal Chivalry The parallels between Percival’s sister and Galahad are numerous and continue throughout the tale, and she is additionally linked to the questing knights around her, especially Lancelot. She and Galahad both embody and resist traditional identity categories, while, much like Lancelot, she maintains a liminal position. As many scholars have noted, much of Percival’s sister’s agency depends upon her virginity; she is a virgin even before being a woman: Armstrong affirms, “She is most important

114  Vessels of Blood because of her status as a virgin, and her value as such demands that she die with her virginity intact; her femininity is thus ultimately and completely deferred and denied.”71 Her virginal status both desexualizes her so that she can safely participate in a quest that specifically excludes women and marks her as particularly valuable in the sexual economy of the text. While Percival’s sister is clearly sexed female, the unstable performativity of her gender troubles this notion. As a female virgin, Percival’s sister is both feminized (she is rendered unthreatening to the homosociality of chivalry) and, as Martin B. Shichtman has noted, phallicized (her virginity permits her access to masculinity and grants her status as a virago).72 Her shifting gender allows her to function both passively as a Mary figure and as a Christ figure and actively as a woman who chooses to die for another. Just like Lancelot, Percival’s sister’s liminality, I contend, lies in her body and her corporeal relationships that the text associates with disability. Throughout her brief moments in the text, Percival’s sister repeatedly destabilizes the normative notions Malory seeks to uphold.73 In fact, scholars have noted that her active participation in bleeding for the Leprous Lady mirrors the acts of combat a knight must complete in order to participate fully in the institutionalized masculinity of knighthood. In the cases of both a knight and Percival’s sister, the hero(ine) sheds blood in the hopes of attaining worship. Lynch finds the structure of the scene depicting the liaison between Percival’s sister and the Leprous Lady similar to that of Malory’s many battle scenes: ­“Percival’s sister is confronted with the sick lady who is ‘brought forth’ as if an opponent in combat (1003/9), and Galahad and his fellows attempt to staunch her blood as if after a fight.”74 Lisa Robeson adds that Percival’s sister’s bleeding for the Leprous Lady allows her to attain worship not entirely unlike that of a knight and deems the maiden’s act as “a unique case of women’s worship.”75 Her earlier adventures with Galahad and Percival underscore her knight-like identity. As Robeson notes, “She is able to participate in a chivalric career of adventures. She leads the Grail knights through a set of magical adventures on Solomon’s ship; she sacrifices her own body and life to fulfill the custom of the castle rather than risk the lives of her compatriots by her refusal.”76 Indeed, when choosing to die for the lady, Percival’s sister twice mentions the word worship: “‘Truly,” sayed she, “and I dye for the helth of her I shall gete me grete worship and soule helthe, and worship to my lynayge’” (591.39–8; my emphasis). She is the only woman in the Morte, Robeson finds, about whom Malory uses the term worship three times. The last, in which Galahad “seyde grete worship of hir” (1–12.25) is unique to Malory’s version.77 In addition to drawing a connection between Percival’s sister’s act of cure and knightly acts of worship, the text overtly compares Percival’s sister to a saint. This comparison has not gone unnoticed by readers as many studies of Percival’s sister are allegorical or typological, casting

Vessels of Blood  115 her as a Mary figure or a Christ figure and always associating her with saintliness, due in part to her much-emphasized virginity.78 ­However, her body is not only virginal—a closed, “whole” body like that of ­Galahad—but also permeable, for her body must be penetrated in order to cure the Leprous Lady, an act hagiographical narratives insist is integral to proving saintliness as it imitates the wounds Christ must receive to “heal” the sins of humankind. As Chapter 3 mentions, the interface between the two women mirrors the act of the leper’s kiss, wherein a man- or woman-religious kisses or embraces the leper in order to demonstrate spiritual singularity, effect miraculous cure, or simulate communion with Christ.79 Percival’s sister acknowledges how curing the woman’s disability will enable her saintly status when she asserts that her own death will grant her not only worship but also “soule helthe” (1002.30–1). She stresses, moreover, that it is her death that has produced the cure. After bleeding for the woman, she tells her, “Madame, I am com to my dethe for to hele you” (1003.15). Just before dying, she tells her brother, “I dye for the helynge of this lady” (1003.21–2). In order to heal the Leprous Lady, Percival’s sister must be “a clene virgyne in wylle and in worke, and a kynges daughter” (1002.21–2). Though her sexual status aligns her with the tale’s other virgins, ­Galahad, Percival, and Bors, Percival’s sister’s virginity is a special case in the Grail Quest. She is chaste in both desire (“wyll”) and deed (“worke”). Furthermore, Phillipa Beckerling finds that, as a Mary figure, Percival’s sister must take on the roles of virgin and mother while simultaneously rejecting sexuality. Like a mother, she nurtures Galahad by taking him into her home, feeding him and allowing him to board there. At the same time, by cutting off her own hair and fashioning a belt for Percival’s sword, Percival’s sister is linked with sexuality; in biblical and patristic writings, a woman who shears her hair uncovers herself, which is an act of immodesty that tempts men. However, Beckerling quickly notes that Percival’s sister is able to disavow her sexuality by casting her shorn hair as a sacred object.80 Though the scene can be read as one that depicts an act of imitatio Christi, the exchange of blood between the women is akin to sexual consummation, as Chapter 3 details.81 Indeed, the exchange is undeniably homoerotic, and the act unites the sacred and profane, serving to further bolster her liminal status. Though Malory does not reveal the cause of the Leprous Lady’s condition, it is probable, as Susan Murray finds, that it is a result of sexual transgression, and it is clear that the malady is undoubtedly disabling.82 The miraculous cure thus brings together the closed body of a woman known for her virginity and the open body of a woman whose disease connotes sexual excess. As I note in Chapter 3, however, the narrative tames the exchange’s queer possibilities as the loss of blood she endures grounds her in the “leaky” feminine body her virginity has sought to deny, leading to her death.

116  Vessels of Blood The mystical consummation that she shares with Galahad is similarly reliant upon the disabled body as it is preceded by the shearing of her hair and the gifting of a magical sword.83 Before presenting Galahad with a girdle she has fashioned out of her hair, Percival’s sister recounts the history of Galahad’s magical sword, and this history is one replete with references to disability and its cure. From her story, we learn that Galahad, who is fated to draw the sword, will never suffer a wounded body in death, whereas all others who attempt to draw it will be killed or maimed (986–8). Galahad’s closed body will remain closed. Messages around the sword and upon its scabbard reiterate that he who draws the sword must be able-bodied or “MORE HARDYER THAN ONY OTHER” (986.16, 987.26–7). As we have noted earlier, in order to gain worship, a knight must be hardy or have great physical strength. The drawing of the sword, indeed, is a test of physical ability; several who try to remove it, including Nacien and Percival, lack the “hardynesse” needed to do so (988.23). The superlative hardiness of the sword-­drawer’s body will remain protected by the sword: “HE SHALL NEVER BE SHAMED OF HYS BODY NOTHER WOUNDED TO THE DETHE” (986.17–18). Despite its promise to keep the sword-drawer’s body whole, the sword itself is broken into pieces and must be reset after Nacien attempts to defend himself from a “horrible gyaunte” (988.28). After slaying the giant without help from the sword, Nacien is reunited with King Mordrains, who notes that the shattered sword signifies Nacien’s sinful nature (989.12–13). Nacien soon after receives a wound to his right foot that confirms this connection; this injury, a disembodied voice explains is due to not being “worthy to handyll” the sword (989.30). Finally, a spear maims King Pelles in the thighs after he attempts to draw the sword. Similar to the punishment through impairment of Evelake and Lancelot, Nacien’s and Pelles’s physical injuries clearly punish the men for assuming they had the “hardynesse” necessary to wield the sword. The sword thus is both a protector and attacker of bodies and has suffered both the fragmentation and restoration of its own body. It seems fitting, then, that it is a sword destined for Galahad, a healer of broken bodies himself, and that its girdle must be fashioned out of the hair of Percival’s sister, also a healer. Even after the death of Percival’s sister, her body continues to resonate throughout the text, effecting another sort of consummation: the reunion of father and son. Both Lancelot and Galahad are united after they separately happen upon the ship housing her body. Their reunion is followed by a six-month detour at sea, presumably with her body still aboard, in which the two men spend what will be their final moments together. Percival’s sister’s body, thus, remains in proximity to Galahad until just before his disembarkment and arrival at the abbey where he will perform his first in a line of healing miracles. While Lancelot’s departure from his son leads him to his partial viewing of the

Vessels of Blood  117 Grail, Galahad’s departure from his father leads him—after “many journeys” (1025.1)—to retrace Lancelot’s footsteps and achieve the Grail fully. Prior to that achievement, Galahad proves his worth as the best of all knights through the immediate healing of King Mordrayns’s blindness. Interestingly, the miracle occurs with little fanfare; Malory simply writes that, as Galahad approaches the king, “anone the kyng saw hym, whych had layne blynde of longe tyme” (1025.6–7). King Mordrayns’s ability to see in the presence of Galahad, which recalls the Round Table knights’ earlier emphasis on seeing the Grail and foreshadows ­Galahad’s impending view of the Grail, stands in stark contrast to Lancelot’s inability to see the Grail fully in the previous chapter. The king’s immediate response after the restoration of his sight suggests that, unlike Lancelot, whose “sinfulness” impedes his access to the Grail, Galahad’s virginity is the cause of his singularity. He exclaims, “For though arte a clene virgyne above all knyghtes, as the floure of the lyly in whom virginité is signified” (1025.12–13). It is unclear, however, whether ­Galahad deliberately heals Mordrayns’s blindness or whether the cure is an unintentional fulfillment of the prophecy that his presence alone allows the king to see. After Mordrayns regains his sight, Galahad goes on to work two miracles involving objects before he cures the Maimed King. First, the knight cools a boiling well, whose burning serves as “a sygne of lechory” (1025.30–1) that can only be abated by Galahad’s “pure virginite” (1025.32). After arriving at Castle Corbenic, Galahad next makes whole “the brokyn swerde wherewith Josephe was stryken thorow the thyghe” (1027.16–17). Both Bors and Percival attempt first to reset it, and both fail. Galahad then takes “the pecis and set hem togydirs, and semed to them as hit had never be brokyn, and as well as hit was firste forged” (1027.24–6). As with the boiling well, the sword can only be restored by Galahad, and, though his virginity is not directly mentioned, its importance is implied when the sword later arises “grete and merevaylous,” accompanied by a voice commanding those unworthy of sitting at Christ’s table to leave (1027.30–1). The only people who remain are Pelles and his son, whom Malory describes as “holy men”; Pelles’s niece, “a mayde”; and Galahad, also a virgin (1028.5). Like Percival’s sister, then, Galahad’s ability to work miracles demands virginity, a closed body, or one that has not lost blood. Conversely, both Percival’s sister’s healing of the Leprous Lady and Galahad’s later healing of the Maimed King require the presence of blood. However, whereas Percival’s sister’s act of healing results in blood loss so extreme that the men are unable to staunch its flow (1003.17–20), Galahad’s miraculous cure needs only a few drops, not from his own body, but from the spear of Longinus. Galahad’s body, as a result, remains sealed. Just after Galahad restores the sword and the “unworthy” knights exit the castle, four women enter the room carrying the Maimed King, described here as “a good man syke,” upon a bed (1028.18). The Maimed King’s

118  Vessels of Blood entrance is followed by the procession of four angels bearing candles, a towel, and the spear. As the last angel carries the spear, a constant flow of blood drips from the spear, the drops of which are carefully caught in a small box held in the angel’s opposite hand. During the ritual of the mass, the men witness first the image of a child smite “hymselff into the brede,” revealing to the men “that the brede was fourmed of a fleshely man” (1029.27). The priest then places the bread, which is now body (a kind of vessel), into the Grail (another kind of vessel), thus enclosing the physical body inside the metaphorical body signified by the Grail. This fusion of vessels of blood—both the body and the object—results in the emergence of Christ himself from the Grail: “Than loked they and saw a man com oute of the holy vessel that had all the sygnes of the Passion of Jesu Cryste bledynge all opynly” (1030.3–5). Christ then administers the Eucharist to the men, presumably continuing to bleed while doing so. He then instructs Galahad to “take with you off thys bloode of thys speare for to anoynte the Maymed Kynge, both his legges and hys body, and he shall have hys heale” (1030.33–6).84 Galahad follows his ­instructions, using the blood to heal the king. Unlike that of Percival’s sister, the blood that Galahad uses is Christ’s, not his own. Galahad’s body, thus, remains intact, and his “sealed” body is able to make whole that of another. Just as contact with Percival’s sister’s body precedes Galahad’s first acts of healing, she also appears just before his last act of healing. After arriving in Sarras, Galahad, Percival, and Bors find the ship carrying ­Percival’s sister’s body, just as she prophesied. As the men struggle to carry into the city the silver table that housed the Grail at Corbenic, ­Galahad calls “an olde man croked” to help them with their load. The man reveals that he has been unable to walk without crutches for ten years. To this, Galahad calls, “Care thou nat […], aryse up and shew thy good wyll!” (1033.6–7). The man then finds “hymselff as hole as ever he was” and eagerly helps the men with the table (1033.10–11). ­Galahad thus progresses from witnessing Percival’s sister heal the ­L eprous Lady with her own blood to miraculously “healing” objects to curing the Maimed King with the use of Christ’s blood to finally curing a crippled man by just speaking to him. The acts progress from the very bodily—and bloody—to the spiritual: healing the Leprous Lady requires ­Percival’s sister’s blood, cooling the water and resetting the sword requires ­Galahad’s touch, curing the Maimed King requires Christ’s blood from the spear, and healing the crippled man requires only Galahad’s voice. In each of these miracles both Percival’s sister and Galahad function as kinds of grails. Percival’s sister, however, is a “leaky” vessel, one that must spill its blood in order to work miracles. As noted in Chapter 1, this leaky quality corresponds with medieval medical notions of the female body as containing and thus purging more moisture than the male body. The monthly release of menstrual blood was thought to be

Vessels of Blood  119 necessary to the purification of the female body. Due to this permeable quality of the female body, medical and religious texts viewed women as more prone to temptation and sin. As a result, women-religious often had to go to extreme lengths to prove their spirituality, and they did so most often through virginity or chastity. In addition, women, such as Mary of Oignies, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe, used the fluid nature of their bodies to express their spirituality; their bodies predisposed them to connect to the body of Christ feminized through crucifixion.85 Percival’s sister’s act seems to combine both of these approaches. Her strong commitment to virginity emphasizes her worthiness to enact the miracle, while the spilling of her blood aligns her directly with Christ. Despite forging a direct connection between Percival’s sister and Christ, the text ultimately depicts her body as a vehicle through which Galahad can demonstrate his own spiritual singularity. Because she is a liminal figure that embodies the saintly and the physical, it seems fitting that Percival’s sister appears just prior to the miraculous acts of healing that prove Galahad’s saintliness. She, also fittingly, exits the text just after his last miraculous cure. After healing the crippled man, the knights bury Percival’s sister’s body (1033.17). The removal of her body from the tale bolsters the text’s privileging of Galahad’s more spiritual approach. Through his participation in the progression of miracles in the tale, Galahad’s body becomes not just a metaphorical grail but the Grail itself: a vessel containing blood, the mere sight of which enacts miracles. Like the Grail’s earlier ability to heal Percival and Ector by virtue of its presence, Galahad is able to heal the crippled man by just speaking to him. This movement from the bodily to the spiritual corresponds the “unsyker” world of the tale, a world that brings together the chivalric and spiritual. But, unlike his father, who practices a physical spirituality, and Percival’s sister, whose virginity is breached by an exchange of blood, Galahad embraces the purely spiritual. Even in death, Galahad manages to avoid the physical; unlike those of Percival’s sister and his fellow knights, his death is not a result of a bloody wound. His body remains sealed and able, his spirit finally transcending the physical. Galahad’s reaction to his complete view of the Grail demonstrates his inability to remain in the world. After Joseph of Arimathea shows him what he “hast much desired to se,” Galahad begins “to tremble right harde whan the dedly fleysh began to beholde spirituall thynges” (1034.20, 21–2). The full view of the Grail is an act so holy that his physical body cannot function in its presence. Galahad seems to understand that his ability to see the Grail makes it impossible for him to “lyve in this wrecched worlde no lenger” (1034.26), and soon after, a “grete multitude of angels” carry his soul to heaven just as he kneels down to pray (1035.15). The physical world is a world better suited for those able to possess both the spiritual and the bodily, like his father. The sacredness of the Grail, however, is reserved only for those who achieve

120  Vessels of Blood pure holiness; it remains inaccessible to those of secular world. After the Grail and spear are taken into heaven by a bodiless hand, Malory writes, “And sythen was there never man so hardy to sey that he hade seyn the Sankgreal” (1035.20–1, my emphasis). The bodiless hand aptly represents the needlessness of the body in the spiritual realm; just as Galahad’s soul departs from his body, so too is the hand unmoored from its body. With the removal of the Grail and spear from the Arthurian world, any ability to see the Grail is removed as well, and no amount of “hardinesse” will grant a person access to it until the ultimate transcendence of the body in death. Though Malory ultimately privileges Galahad’s spiritual approach, the ambivalent nature of knighthood, disability, and blood allows him to present Lancelot’s embodied knighthood as ideal for knights in and of the world as well as to present Percival’s sister as the intermediary between the two. In each case, the movement between ability and disability is facilitated by the liminal nature of blood and its ability to transgress and define boundaries, be they of the body or the Grail itself. Both an object that can cure or harm and a metaphor for the (im)permeable body chivalric, the Grail and its contents make material the “Sankgreal”’s liminal representation of knightly (dis)ability. In the next chapter, we continue to follow Lancelot, whose experiences on the Grail Quest enable him to hone a spirituality that allows him to fulfill the requirements of institutional knighthood while also demonstrating his piety as he navigates the chivalric realm post-Grail. At this point in Malory’s text, Lancelot is not ready to fully view the Grail; his place is in Arthur’s kingdom, the realm of the chivalric, the “unsyker” world. His adventures on the Grail Quest, however, leave him marked by disability in ways that continue to affect him throughout the remainder of the text; these are not adventures he will soon forget. Indeed, just prior to his death, Galahad instructs Bors to find ­Lancelot and “bydde hym remembir of this worlde unstable” (1035.11–12). Bors keeps his promise upon his return to Camelot, telling Lancelot, “Also, sire Launcelot, sir Galahad prayde you to remembir of thys unsyker worlde, as ye behyght hym whan ye were togidirs more than halffe a yere” (1036.27–30). Lancelot vows to keep his promise to Galahad. His subsequent vow to Bors to keep his “poure body redy atte all tymes whyle the spyryte is in hit” (1037.2–3) aptly illustrates his chivalric spirituality: his body, both abled and disabled, is necessary to knighthood; his soul to spiritual practice. Lancelot’s next adventures demonstrate a further doubling of the two.

5 Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry, and Images of (Dis)ability in the “Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” The function of disabling and healing to the performance of institutionalized knighthood takes on new significance in the remainder of the Morte, post-Grail Quest. As discussed in the last chapter, the ­“Sankgreal”’s introduction of the spiritual throws into instability the more secular brand of chivalry practiced by Malory’s knights, bringing a religious emphasis to the ability/disability system of knighthood. Injuries and healings assume a more symbolic import, implying that the body articulates the state of the soul, and those who heal the body become more revered than those who harm. However, the Grail Quest also reveals that the truly spiritual knight cannot function in the “unsyker” world, a world that must blend the earthly and the spiritual, the disabled and the abled. Lancelot, who develops his uniquely embodied spirituality through his interactions with the Grail, which are all framed through (dis)ability, demonstrates this convergence, and the lessons he learned on the Grail Quest carry over once he resumes his post-Grail chivalric activities. In the book that follows, the “Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” sequences of disabling and healing, as well as images of disability, occur at an almost frantic pace, leading to the series of fatal wounds that result in the final collapse of the Round Table. Importantly, Lancelot’s body is at the center of these sequences as he is consistently associated with disability and the disabled and even granted the ability to miraculously heal. “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” is punctuated by ­disabilities and their cure, and, although other knights do suffer disabling wounds, Lancelot receives the greatest number of them. He is wounded in the thigh by Mador de la Porte (1057.26–7), speared in the side by Bors (1072.3–5), shot in the buttock with the arrow of the huntress (1104.28–9), and suffers cuts to his hand from the bars of Guenvere’s window (1131.21–5). In these situations, his body is an object that is acted upon—either by those who dispense the wounds or those who provide healing ministrations. Moreover, Lancelot is increasingly associated with disability in general; a cadre of wounded knights surrounds Guenevere’s chamber when the two clandestinely meet, he rides in a cart reminiscent of the litters associated with wounded knights throughout

122  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry the text, he defeats Meleagant by disabling himself, and he proves himself to be the only knight able to heal the wounds of Sir Urry. Catherine La Farge notes that the “plenitude of piercings” to Lancelot’s body that occurs throughout “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” reveals that his identity is inextricable from disability, and “‘[W]ounded’ manifests itself as the appropriate way of naming ­Lancelot, and precisely what wound came first, or which is which, fails to cohere,” leaving readers with the notion that “a fatal unwholeness” will “assert itself.”1 As Catherine Batt has observed, the body in the Morte is the locus for issues regarding or questions of integrity or wholeness, and threats to that body represent threats to a character’s moral or social identity. 2 During the Grail Quest, Lancelot, who has throughout the text been hailed as the best knight in the world, endures an identity crisis when Galahad supersedes him, proving himself to be the best knight for that quest. As ­Chapter 4 demonstrates, the bodies of Lancelot and G ­ alahad reflect their spiritual status: Galahad, unpenetrated by disability or sin, serves as the ­superlative spiritual knight, while Lancelot, who is beset by a number of disabilities during the Quest, demonstrates a physical spirituality. Once back in Camelot, Lancelot’s actions demonstrate just how difficult it is for him to balance his role as “the floure of all kyghtes” (282.22–3) and his newfound spirituality. Despite his “promise of perfeccion that he made in the queste,” Lancelot soon begins “to resorte unto queen Gwenivere agayne,” causing many in the court to gossip that their relationship was “more hotter” than ever before (1045.10–11, 9–10, and 18). Scholars often cite his renewed relationship with ­Guenevere as one piece of evidence that the spiritual matters of the Grail Quest are transcended by the secular elements of chivalry. 3 However, the text never draws a clear hierarchical distinction between the two forms of chivalry, as, regardless of his continued dalliances with Guenevere, Lancelot finds that the spiritual lessons he learned on the Grail Quest cannot be “lyghtly forgotyn” (1046.13). As noted in ­Chapter 4, Barbara Newman has remarked that the spiritual impulses of the “Sankgreal” exist alongside the secular, resulting in a “double-­coding” that presents neither as more salient than the other. This double-­coding invites readers to participate in what Newman calls “double judgement,” or “a medieval aesthetic of inclusiveness, of both/and,” that considers the earthly and divine without privileging one over the other when reading Malory’s text.4 In the chapters that follow the Grail Quest, Malory continues to develop Lancelot as a double-coded figure “whose character and rhetoric virtually demand double judgement.”5 For example, he vacillates between his “prevy thoughtes,” which focus on the queen, and his physical actions, meant “for the plesure of Oure Lorde Jesu Cryst” (1046.13, 25–6). His later role in the healing of Urry, as we shall find, further complicates a straightforward evaluation of the Morte as ultimately secular in focus.

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  123 As C. David Benson has noted, the series of events in “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” set up what will occur in the final book.6 The succession of wounds to Lancelot’s body ends with his miraculous healing of Sir Urry, a Hungarian knight who comes before the court in search of a cure for his cursed wounds. At first glance, it seems incongruous that a worldly knight like Lancelot, whose repeatedly wounded body suggests a lack of spiritual integrity, should have the ability to miraculously heal, a gift we have only seen used by G ­ alahad, the best of the spiritual knights. Robert Kelly succinctly expresses the heart of the problem: “The question, finally, is why Malory sets up a sequence of episodes united by the motif of Lancelot’s wounds as a means of ­depicting Lancelot’s deterioration as a knight, only to follow that sequence with an episode in which Lancelot appears as the ideal knight/physician.”7 This chapter explores this question, analyzing how each moment of wounding Lancelot endures exposes the vulnerability of his body and examining the sequence’s reliance on the imagery of (dis)ability, including wounded knights, a wounded horse, horse-litters, and carts. In the book’s final moments, hand imagery comes to signify physical and spiritual (dis)ability, as Lancelot’s hands are wounded, wound others, provide evidence of his sinful acts, and finally facilitate cure when he raises them in prayer before “searching” Urry’s body. Urry’s body, as I will show, not only reflects Lancelot’s own wounded body but also represents the Round Table as well as Malory’s narration of its history; his wounds, then, incurred in battle and in need of healing, recall the perpetual vulnerability of the physical bodies of knights and the social institution of chivalry as well as the book’s reliance on the imagery of whole and disabled bodies in order to depict those vulnerabilities. In the first four chapters of “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,” images of and references to disability evoke Lancelot’s sinfulness, ­attachment to the earthly, and desire to access the spiritual and mimic the double-bind of an institutionalized knighthood that demands a continual movement between ability and disability. Through ­Lancelot’s abled and disabled body, Malory demonstrates that occupying either status wholly is as impossible as holding together a progressively splintering Round Table. If the body of Lancelot, Malory’s best knight and thus exemplar of knighthood, is vulnerable, then so too is the social body to which he belongs and epitomizes. The sequence’s final tale, “The ­Healing of Sir Urry,” in which Arthur’s knights gather together one last time before their final separation, seems to attempt to ward off that vulnerability by positioning Lancelot as a healer of bodies. This tale, considered to be Malory’s own, introduces the character Sir Urry, who has incurred “seven grete woundis” that can only be healed by “the beste knyght of the worlde” (1145.13, 19–20). King Arthur himself, followed by all of the Round Table knights in attendance, attempt but fail to heal his wounds. Lancelot arrives on the scene and, at Arthur’s

124  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry urging, makes his attempt. After praying, he touches all seven of Urry’s wounds, restoring them to their healthy state. As the court cheers his accomplishment, Lancelot weeps as if “he had bene a chylde that had bene betayn” (1152.36). The episode ends with a celebratory joust, the appointment of Lavain and Urry to the Round Table, and the marriage of Lavain and Urry’s sister, Filleloly. Several elements of the Urry episode demonstrate the ways in which I have described, in my preceding chapters, the operation of disability throughout the Morte. Urry, the narrator explains, receives his wounds from Alpheus, the son of the earl of Spain, whom Urry kills in battle: “But thys knyght that was slayne had yevyn sir Urry, or ever he were slayne, seven grete woundis, three on the hede and three on hys body, and one uppon hys lyffte honde” (1145.11–14). His wounds, thus, originate during a battle in which the prevailing knight will prove his worshipfulness. Alpheus’s mother, “a grete sorseras,” puts a spell on the wounds, causing the wounds to “one tyme fester and another tyme blede, so that he shulde never be hole untyll the beste knight of the worlde had serched hys woundis” (1145.15, 16–22). The involvement of a sorceress in Urry’s wounds recalls the women of Chapters 1 and 2, whose enchantment frequently facilitates a knight’s acquirement of disabilities, be they physical or mental in nature. In addition to contributing to a knight’s injuries, the women of the Morte are also often ­instrumental in the healing of such wounds, as Urry’s mother and ­Filleloly, his sister, show. The two women actively seek out Urry’s cure, leading him by horse-litter “thorow many contreyes” over the course of seven years in order to help him find the knight who might heal him (1145.27). ­Chapters 1 and 2 also detail the ways in which women can cause the physically and mentally disabling condition of lovesickness; however, in the case of Urry, it is Lancelot who causes symptoms of lovesickness in both Urry and Filleloy. As I note in Chapter 3, the siblings spy Lancelot at the same time and express their emotional and physical responses to him in terms that imitate the love-imprint process: the sight of him causes their hearts to “gyveth gretely” (1151.12, 15). This reaction recalls Lavain and Elaine’s mutual response to Lancelot, which leads to Elaine’s death from unrequited love and the formation of homoerotic bonds between Lancelot and Lavain. The healing of Urry, furthermore, demonstrates the claim in Chapter 3 that healing creates community as Urry (along with Lavain) becomes a constant companion to ­Lancelot in the days to come. Lastly, the episode showcases the embodied spirituality that Lancelot develops over the course of the Grail Quest: the miraculous healing takes place in the “unsyker” world and features ­elements that imply Lancelot’s growing spiritual conscience while also maintaining his connection to his secular position as ­A rthur’s knight and Guenevere’s lover. As a result, this brief tale lays bare the book’s reliance on (dis)ability to encapsulate Malorian knighthood and

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  125 narrate the rise and fall of Arthur’s kingdom, a reliance made material in the touch of Lancelot’s hands upon Urry’s body. As my last chapter asserts, “Balin” sets into motion acts of disabling and portends acts of healing that occur in the “Sankgreal” and affect the spiritual and bodily integrity of individual knights and the Round Table as a whole. While many of the disabilities incurred in “Balin” reappear to be healed in the “Sankgreal,” the seven wounds suffered by Balin and his brother Balan do not resurface until “The Healing of Sir  Urry.” There, the two brothers, neither aware of the other’s identity, attack one another so fiercely that “they hadde eyther smyten other seven grete woundes so that the lest of them myght have ben the dethe of the myghtyest gyaunt in this world” (89.30–2). Like the brothers, Urry suffers seven wounds: “three on the hede, and three on hys body, an one uppon hys lyffte honde” (1145.13–14). The seven wounds of Balin, Balan, and Urry, Catherine Batt finds, represent “a common frame of reference” that “intimates that Lancelot’s healing of Urry has more than local significance, that it can represent a more general healing.”8 Stephen Atkinson links what he calls “the first of the Round Table’s collective failures,” when Arthur and his knights are unable to draw Balin’s sword in “Balin,” to the knights’ failure to heal Urry, for, in both cases, a group of knights fails a test of knightly worshipfulness but only one knight succeeds.9 In “Balin,” moreover, Merlin reveals that “sir Launcelot other ellis sir Galahad” will fill the role as the “beste knyght in the worlde” to “handyll” Balin’s sword, the same one used in his fatal fight with Balan (91.23, 21, 22). Lancelot, of course, later uses Balin’s sword when striking Gawain’s fatal wound. The mention of both Lancelot and Galahad as “beste knyght” is telling as it names the text’s best earthly and spiritual knights as possible equals.10 Moreover, it associates Lancelot with his son, who throughout the “Sankgreal,” is able to effect miraculous cures. The parallels between the two tales are noteworthy: a sword that a group of Round Table knights fail to draw causes seven fatal wounds; Lancelot will later use that same sword to strike one of the worst blows to the Round Table community, Gawain’s fatal wound, after healing seven wounds that the Round Table knights fail to cure. The Morte thus establishes early on that healing of Urry will concern not only the healing of Urry’s body or Lancelot’s soul but also a desire to make and keep cohesive the Round Table community.

Lancelot’s Wounds in “The Poisoned Apple,” “The Fair Maid of Astolat,” and “The Great Tournament” After the Grail Quest, Lancelot experiences a series of episodes in which he receives and is healed from disabling wounds. The first wound to ­Lancelot’s body in this succession occurs when he returns to fight for Guenevere’s honor after she has been falsely accused of poisoning

126  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry Sir Patrice by Sir Mador de la Porte in “The Poisoned Apple.” Lancelot, who has been exiled by Guenevere for serving other ladies, arrives just in ­ ador, having been informed by Bors of the situation. After time to battle M ­ ancelot Lancelot knocks ­Mador to the ground, Mador rises up, slashing L “thorow the thyk of the thyghes, that the bloode braste oure fyersly” (1057.26–7). ­Lancelot then quickly regains the upper hand, and, in fear for his life, ­Mador retracts his accusations against Guenevere. The knights then receive treatment for their wounds, and Mador is eventually forgiven. Lancelot’s thigh wound recalls the earlier thigh wounds of Gareth and Percival, which, as Chapter 3 shows, insinuate sexual sin and emasculation. Though less directly sexual in nature, Lancelot’s wound from Mador could be read as a condemnation of Lancelot’s renewed relationship with ­Guenevere, and it certainly foreshadows Lancelot’s upcoming wounds dispensed by Bors and the huntress, which Chapter 3 asserts are more straightforwardly punitive of transgressions against women. Kenneth Hodges notes that, although “not necessarily a sexual wound” because of the logistics of the fight (Mador inflicts the wound from his position on the ground), the thigh wound “is certainly suggestive of a blood that condemns rather than redeems.”11 Robert Kelly adds, “In view of the symbolism of wounds in the Quest, the severe wound in the thighs Lancelot suffers in judicial combat with Mador de la Porte […] can readily be seen as a judgment upon the impurity of his motive.”12 Lancelot’s wounded thighs and the wounds he gives to Mador, furthermore, allow him to demonstrate his knightly worshipfulness, and their resultant healings prove again to be essential to the creation of communal identities. Malory specifies that after the battle, “Sir Madore was had to lechecrauffte, and sir Launcelot was heled of hys play. And so there was made grete joy, and many merthys there was made in that courte” (1059.7–10). The treatment administered to their wounded bodies also mends social bodies, although only temporarily, closing the blows dealt to Guenevere’s honor by the accusation of treason, repairing the broken relationship between Lancelot and Guenevere, allowing Lancelot to rejoin the fellowship of the Round Table, and restoring Mador to the “quenys good grace” (1060.5). Despite the medical treatment he receives, however, Lancelot’s injured thighs are slow to heal, and, in his disabled state, his re-entrance into the body chivalric is delayed, stranding him in that liminal state on the margins of knighthood. His wounds prevent him from leaving with the rest of the knights for the Assumption Day tournament: “Sir Launcelot […] wolde nat ryde with the kynge; for he seyde he was nat hole of the play of sir Madore” (1065.23–4). The queen, too, we find has also stayed behind, due to an illness that prevents her from riding. She acknowledges that their decisions not to travel make them look guilty: So whan the kynge was departed the quene called sir Launcelot unto her and seyde thus: “Sir ye ar gretly to blame thus to holde

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  127 you behynde my lorde. What woll youre enemyes and myne sey and deme? ‘Se how sir Launcelot holdith hym ever behynde the kynge, and so the quene doth also, for that they wolde have their pleasure togydirs.’ And thus woll they sey,” seyde the quene. (1065.30–1066.4) Their own bodily maladies, thus, articulate to those “many men [that] spekith of [their] love in thys courte and have [them] gretely in awayte” the possibility of sexual sin (1046.15–17). Lancelot agrees and, conspicuously, chooses to remain on the outskirts of the Arthurian community, joining the tournament “ayenste the kynge and ayenst all hys felyship” (1066.11–12), despite Guenevere’s warnings against doing so.13 She reminds Lancelot, “[B]e my counceyle ye shall nat be ayenst youre kynge and your felyshyp, for there bene full many hardé knyghts of youre bloode” (1066.13–16). Guenevere emphasizes both the physical ability (hardinesse) of the Round Table knights as well as Lancelot’s social and familial ties to them, drawing attention to the danger inherent in Lancelot’s placement outside those ideals. Malory does not reveal whether Lancelot’s additional night of rest has allowed his thighs to fully heal, and the knight’s position within a chivalric ritual but outside of his Round Table fellowship reflects the uncertain status of both his body and his social position. Disability continues to frame Lancelot’s actions once he arrives in Astolat. There, he meets Elaine and Lavain, who experience symptoms of lovesickness upon seeing Lancelot (as I mention earlier and detail in Chapter 3). Moreover, in the hopes of disguising himself, Lancelot takes up the shield of Sir Tirry, Elaine and Lavain’s brother, a knight who “was hurte that same day he was made knyght, and he may nat ryde” (1067.14–16). In addition to wielding an injured knight’s shield, Lancelot agrees to wear Elaine’s red sleeve in the tournament, a request she makes of him because of her lovesickness for him: “So thus as she cam to and fro, she was so hote in love that she besought sir Launcelot to were uppon hym at the justis a tokyn of hers” (1068.3–5). Malory here uniquely references Elaine’s lovesickness as the reason behind her request, drawing attention to the mental and physical symptoms behind her demand.14 Sporting his own only recently treated thigh wounds and adorned with trappings associated with disabling injury and illness, Lancelot thus enters into the tournament, fighting against his knightly community and incurring a serious wound when Bors’s spear drives through his shield and breaks off into his side. Critically wounded, Lancelot rides away from the field and into the forest, where, once out of sight of the others, he calls for Lavain to pull the spear from his side. Lavain then helps him back on to his horse, and the two ride for the hermitage of Badwyn. Once at the hermitage, we see firsthand the ways in which knightly identity, particularly Lancelot’s, hinges on (dis)ability. At first, Lancelot’s

128  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry new wound disguises his identity as Badwyn is unable to “brynge hym to knowlech bycause he was so pale for bledynge” (1075.28–30). Soon, however, Badwyn recognizes Lancelot “by a wounde on hys chyeke” (1075.36–7).15 As his new wound and old scar demonstrate, an unhealed disability removes a knight from the institution of knighthood, while a healed-over wound proves his membership in it. Although Lancelot’s stay at the hermitage creates community between him and Lavain, as Chapter 3 explores, it bars him from participating in knightly fellowship with the Round Table. Malory explains that, while Lancelot lies in a state between wholeness and injury, even life and death, Arthur and his knights and the other kings and their knights have gathered together for a “grete feste” in order to celebrate the heroic actions of the day (1076.20). During his month-long stay at the hermitage, Lancelot remains in his liminal state, both physically and socially, despite being eager to return to knightly activities. His body, however, hinders him from attending the joust at All Hallows Mass. In an attempt to test his bodily ability, Lancelot mounts his horse in full knightly regalia. Unable to properly handle the horse, which is “lusty and frycke” (1085.26) after a month of inactivity, Lancelot “strayened hymselff so straytly, whith so grete fors, to gete the courser forewarde that the bottom of hys wounde braste both within and withoute” causing him to swoon (1086.1–3). The reopened wound affirms that Lancelot is not whole enough to rejoin his knightly community. With Lancelot again bedridden, Malory turns the focus to the joust that Lancelot must miss, detailing the heroic deeds of arms of the other Round Table knights until Lancelot returns “hole and sownde” (1092.2). By alternating descriptions of Lancelot’s disabled state with those detailing the Round Table community’s collective acts, Malory underscores the ways in which disability hinders a knight’s full membership in the body chivalric. In the next tale, “The Great Tournament,” Lancelot’s encounter with the huntress, who shoots an arrow into his buttock, replicates the previous episode, continuing the enmeshing of Lancelot’s post-Grail experiences and disability. Just as before, Lancelot is wounded by a weapon that becomes lodged in his body, thus derailing his immediate participation in a joust; is healed with the help of Lavain and a hermit; and later joins the tournament in disguise alongside Lavain, fighting against the ­ rthur’s Round Table knights. After his identity is revealed, he rejoins A knights and the court resumes its “grete festis […], revell, game, and play” (1114.29–30). The wound to the buttock reminds readers not only of Lancelot’s previous thigh wounds but also of those of Gareth and Percival, which Chapter 3 analyzes as punitive of sexual transgression. Moreover, Lancelot’s inability to “sytte in no sadyll” (1106.3) recalls Sir Tirry, Lavain’s brother, who is unable to ride in the Assumption Day tournament and therefore provides Lancelot with his shield. These

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  129 overlapping and repeated connections coalesce at the end of the episode, when Lancelot himself retells the story of his buttock wound to ­A rthur and Guenevere: “Than sir Launcelot tolde the kynge and the quene how the lady hunteras shotte hym in the foreyste of Wyndesore in the buttok with a brode arrow, and how the wounde was at that tyme six inchys depe and inklyke longe” (1114.4–7). As Karen Cherewatuk has observed, the two different narratives of the buttock wound act as scaffolds for the action of the tournament: “[T]he narrator’s diegetic narration and Launcelot’s own retelling” look backward, “recalling past injuries, and project forward, associating the hero with future events.”16 The repetition of the origin of Lancelot’s buttock wound both reiterates the wounding that has occurred in general throughout the Morte, the wounding Lancelot has incurred specifically, and the wounding that is to come—both to the bodies of knights and to the social body to which they belong. The accretion of wounds to Lancelot’s body throughout the first three chapters of “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” highlights his struggle to embody and perform the responsibilities necessary to both spiritual and secular chivalry. As Chapter 4 suggests, the Grail Quest does not necessarily subordinate secular chivalry to the spiritual, instead presenting the two as parallel paths. Lancelot’s efforts to bring the two together, however, results in instability to both his physical body and the body of knights to which he belongs. His attempt to balance the duty he owes to his king, his queen, and his God proves impossible to execute successfully, and his failure to be both the best knight of this world and the spiritual realm shows in the injuries to his body. Unable to have both the impermeable body of the best spiritual knight and the permeable body of the best worldly knight, Lancelot’s body increasingly breaks apart and heals only to be broken again. Kelly has argued that the succession of wounds in this section suggests “a gradual falling off from the true knightliness [Lancelot] had attained during the Quest through confession and repentance,”17 and, indeed, Lancelot’s injuries reveal his spiritual shortcomings. However, as Chapter 4 notes, it is debatable that Lancelot ever fully achieves a truly spiritual knightliness while on the Quest: his view of the Grail is partial and mitigated by his body, and the spirituality he develops throughout the Quest is thoroughly of the physical realm. This is not to suggest, though, that Malory depicts a post-Grail Lancelot who has completely eschewed the spiritual lessons of the Quest and is only interested in highlighting the accrual of knightly worship through martial acts, as K. S. Whetter has suggested.18 ­Cherewatuk, for example, has studied the hagiographical elements and language of sin present in the Morte’s last chapters to show that Malory presents Lancelot as a redeemed figure, while J. Cameron Moore argues that Lancelot’s spiritual development can be traced through his use of prayer.19 Despite the seemingly clear divide between the motivations of

130  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry the Grail Quest and the chapters that follow, the spiritual focus seeps into all of the book’s subsequent events, creating a “blended value system” that merges the Christian and the chivalric. 20 Kenneth Hodges notes that tales after the Grail mix the spiritual emphasis of Christian exempla with worldly concerns, therefore demonstrating “that the Grail quest is not allowed to present an unchallenged, monovocal version of Christianity.”21 Newman has argued at length that Malory’s manipulation of his source texts after the Grail Quest is an “insistent double-­ coding” that leaves us with ambiguous endings for both Arthur and Lancelot that may be read as sacred, pagan, and secular in nature. 22 While the degree to which the book and its knights disregard, adopt, or renew the spiritual is debatable, what is certain is that the body and its ability to wound, be wounded, and heal are at the center of the text’s explorations of what happens when the secular and the spiritual come into contact. The book’s next sequence, which begins with the “Knight of the Cart,” in which Lancelot is presented as wounded and wounding, followed by “The Healing of Sir Urry,” in which Lancelot is presented as a healer, aptly illustrates this centrality.

“The Knight of the Cart” The events of Malory’s tale of “The Knight of the Cart” follow the general pattern established in Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier de la Charrette and the Prose Lancelot’s later retelling: Lancelot must ride in a cart in order to rescue Guenevere, who has been abducted by Meleagant. However, as I show later, Malory makes several changes to the tale that continue and even intensify the connections between Lancelot’s knightly status and (dis)ability, making it an important link between the wounded Lancelot of the first three chapters and the healer we find in the wholly original “Healing of Sir Urry.” Malory multiplies and accentuates images of disability in the tale in order to continue to frame Lancelot’s characterization and anticipate the damage that the already fracturing Round Table will endure in the last book of the Morte. The trouble begins when Sir Meleagant decides to ambush Guenevere while she is out Maying with her unarmored knights. In the melee, ten of her knights are gravely wounded, prompting Guenevere to surrender to Meleagant in order to save their lives. Lancelot hears the news and rushes to save her, but Meleagant, anticipating his arrival, has set up thirty archers to greet him. Interestingly, Meleagant commands the archers to aim only at Lancelot’s horse, emphasizing the knight’s physical ability: “but in no maner have ye ado wyth hym bodyly, for he ys over hardé to overcom” (1124.18–19, my emphasis). The archers follow their instructions and shoot at the horse, causing Lancelot to search for other transportation, which leads him to two carters fetching wood. After Lancelot slays one of the carters, the other agrees to pull him to ­Meleagant’s castle, where Meleagant promises to surrender peacefully.

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  131 Malory’s version of Lancelot’s ride in the cart differs greatly from its depiction in the French tradition. He displaces it from its usual location in the succession of events, removes the challenges Lancelot endures on the way, and downplays the significance of the cart as a symbol of shame. 23 The cart’s shameful connotations stem from its historical use as transport for criminals heading to the gallows. Chrétien emphasizes these associations in Chevalier de la Charrette, which Malory would have encountered through the Prose Lancelot. Chrétien’s Lancelot is shamed not just for lowering himself to ride in the executioner’s cart but also for hesitating before climbing in. The Morte’s use of the cart is not quite so clear-cut. Lancelot’s unnecessary murder of the carter certainly calls his knightliness into question. Kelly, noting that unjust killing is linked to falsehood in the Grail Quest, affirms, “The cart ride, then, with its association of criminality and shameful death, reflects the condition of Lancelot’s knighthood.”24 However, these traces of the cart’s shameful associations are complicated by Guenevere’s defense of Lancelot. When one of her ladies spots Lancelot’s approach in the cart and comments that he must be riding “unto a hangynge” (1127.5–6), Guenvere rebukes her for likening “the moste noble knyght of the worlde unto such a shamefull dethe” (1127.18–19). In the tale’s only other reference to the cart, the narrator reports that Lancelot is “called many dayes aftyr ‘le Shyvalere de Charyotte’, and so he ded many dedys and grete adventures” (1130.2–3). 25 Usually, this episode of the cart occurs before Lancelot embarks on the Grail Quest, but Malory places it afterward, integrating “it into a series of three rescues [of Guenevere] in which the love affair and, therefore, the kingdom are in increasing danger.”26 In increasing danger, too, is Lancelot’s body, which continues to endure disabling injuries during his participation in these rescues. That danger to his body is underscored by his ride in the cart, which, I suggest, resembles the transport of not only convicted criminals but also the wounded and sick knights via horse-­ litters throughout the Morte, including Uther, Kay, Tristram, Lancelot, Alexander, and Urry. Chapter 1 briefly discusses the early scene in which an ill Uther is carried onto the battlefield upon a litter and notes that litters were often associated with the impaired, sick, or dead. 27 Though the cart differs from a horse-litter in that it is propelled by wheels, the two were both used as mobility devices in the Middle Ages. Irina Metzler has catalogued a number of instances in medieval hagiographies in which carts or litters are used to transport the impaired to religious shrines. She notes, “In a period such as the Middle Ages, before the invention of the wheelchair, mobility of the impaired was not necessarily curtailed or restricted, but relied on improvisation, making the most use of already existing transportations methods—the carts, baskets and handbarrows mentioned in the sources—and adapting them for the specific needs of the impaired person.”28 Malory confirms that Lancelot’s

132  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry ride in the cart is also a matter of accessibility; while making the twomile walk to the castle, he becomes “sore acombrid of hys armoire, hys ­shylde, and hys speare” but cannot shed any of his clothing or weapons for fear of ­Meleagant’s “treson” (1126.7–8, 11). ­Presumably, a long walk in heavy armor would tire Lancelot, hindering his ability to rescue Guenevere. Indeed, in reference to this scene, P.J.C. Field reminds us that “[h]elmet and steel back and breast plates could weigh as much as ninety pounds, and then there were armor for the arms and legs, weapons, and a shield. A strong man could move about on foot with agility, but not for long.”29 As a result, the cart enables a prompter and less physically taxing journey. Lancelot’s ride in the cart, moreover, recalls his and his fellow knights’ previous disabling injuries while also looking forward to the injuries to come. Thus, while I agree that Malory downplays the shame associated with the cart, his use of it, when considered alongside the book’s repeated uses of carts and litters in the transport of the wounded, resonates as more than simply providing “an efficient way to reach the queen.”30 In the same episode, for instance, Guenevere’s wounded knights are carried by “horse-lytters” procured by Lavain in order to return to Westminster (1135.10). And, in the following chapter, Sir Urry is, of course, brought before the king in a “horse-lytter” (1145.23). Urry may have been inspired by another wounded knight carried on a litter in the Lancelot.31 There, Lancelot is the “best knight” whose touch will heal the wounded knight. In Malory, Urry takes the place of the wounded knight seeking Lancelot’s healing touch; however, it is important to add that “The Knight of Cart” presents a reversal of this scene: Lancelot is carried by a wheeled vehicle just prior to administering Urry’s cure, thus associating him with both the wounded knight and Urry. Instead of riding in a cart carried by horses, Lancelot is followed by his own injured horse, which, having stood in for Lancelot as the target for the arrows of Meleagant’s archers, is covered in bleeding wounds. Malory emphasizes the gruesome sight of the horse’s wounds, noting that “Launcelottes hors folowed the chariot, with mo than fourty arowys in hym” (1126–33–4) and “trode hys guttis and hys paunche undir his feete” as he walked (1127.9–11). Malory’s inclusion of the wounded horse is his own, as the horse dies in his source text, and its maimed body only adds to the crescendo of instances of bodily impairment that follow (here, literally) Lancelot in these post-Grail sections. Kelly, recalling the Vulgate Lady of the Lake’s claim that a knight’s horse symbolizes the people he serves, reads the wounded horse as “a parallel symbol to the cart ride itself” that “represent[s] Lancelot’s violation of that duty in his rash killing of the unarmed carter.”32 Siobhán Wyatt agrees that the horse may indicate Lancelot’s dishonorable actions, particularly his pride, noting the portrayal of the sin of Pride as a rider falling from a horse in medieval literary tradition.33 Nacien’s earlier interpretation of

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  133 Ector’s dream of Lancelot falling from his horse contradicts this reading, however, as he explains that the fall indicates that Lancelot “hath leffte hys pryde and takyn humilité, for he hath cryed mercy lowed for hys synne and sore repenteth hym” (947.11–13). Whether a sign of his pride or humility—or perhaps, more accurately, his struggle between the two—the wounded horse, at the least, reminds readers that Lancelot has been unhorsed and thus hindered from full participation in his chivalric role and recalls the moment when he mourns his inability “to sytte in no sadyll” after being shot by the huntress (1106.3). As Catherine LaFarge has noted, when a knight is “unhorsed,” he is also “unknighted” and, hence, “unmanned.”34 Lancelot’s ride in the cart signifies his willingness to do what it takes to serve Guenevere, the (un)knightly actions he has performed in that service, his struggle to balance earthly and spiritual chivalry, and the multiple ways in which (dis)ability has framed his chivalric identity. His arrival at Meleagant’s castle in a cart, with its associations of criminality, shame, humility, and disability, aptly sets up the events that unfold there. This is the only point in the book where Malory provides explicit textual evidence that Lancelot and Guenevere have engaged in adulterous behavior; in contrast to his source texts, Malory generally obfuscates the particulars of their relationship, so much so that Beverly Kennedy has suggested that this scene depicts the only time the two consummate their relationship. 35 E.M. Bradstock, in contrast, reads it as a resumption of adultery, not a progression to it, and Maureen Fries argues that Malory covers the adultery in a “rich ambivalence,” but does, indeed, indicate an ongoing affair.36 I agree that, although Malory reduces the direct mentions of the adultery in his source throughout the Morte, he does suggest that the two engage in an ongoing affair that is consummated before their night together at Meleagant’s castle. Notably, Malory frames the adulterous encounter, which ultimately contributes to the destruction of the Round Table, with disability. Lancelot is injured on the way into the queen’s room, and their tryst occurs as they are surrounded by ­Guenevere’s ten wounded knights, 37 whom she insists sleep in her antechamber (1130.25–7), a space to which “children or the sick could be brought for warmth” because of its fireplace, as Dhira Mahoney explains.38 ­A fter Lancelot and Guenevere make plans for a clandestine meeting, he climbs a ladder to her window. Once the two have “made their complayntes eyther to othir of many dyverce thyngis,” Lancelot asks if he can “comyn in to her” (1131.11–12, 13). She agrees, but to get inside, he must break the bars of the window: “And than he sette hys hondis uppon the barrys of iron and pulled at them with suche amyght that he braste hem clene oute of the stone wallys” (1131.21–4). In the process, he wounds his hand: “And therewithal one of the barres of iron kutte the brawne of hys hondys thorowoute to the bone” (1131.23–5). The blood from his wound stains the sheets of Guenevere’s bed, where

134  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry he “toke hys plesaunce and hys lykynge untyll hit was the dawning of the day” (1131.30–1). The queen’s bedclothes, which are “all bebled of the bloode of sir Launcelot and of his hurte honde” (1132.10–11), provide further evidence of sexual activity, though inverting the conventional reading of bloody bedsheets as evidence of the consummation of a marriage to a virgin bride. In cases such as this in medieval romance, as Peggy ­McCracken has argued, male blood on bedsheets signifies the winner “of a competition to possess the queen: the blood on the sheets proves adultery,” not virginity.39 Indeed, ­Meleagant interprets the bloody sheets in this way as he immediately accuses Guenevere of illicit activity, although he erroneously charges that “some of the wounded knyghtes had lyne by her all that nyght” (1132.13–14). This incorrect accusation allows Lancelot the leeway to claim honestly “that thys nyght there lay none of thes ten kynghtes wounded with […] quene Gwyenyver” (1133.30–2, my emphasis) and thus “prove” Guenevere’s (and his) innocence based on a technicality when he later defeats ­Meleagant in a trial by combat. Readers, however, know that Lancelot and Guenevere are guilty, and Lancelot’s injury serves as a bodily manifestation of that guilt. In a reversal of the usual motif of blood loss during intercourse, Lancelot’s passionate penetration of the queen’s chamber, which is followed by his penetration of her body, results in damage to his body and the loss of his blood. Megan Leitch, citing the connections between Lancelot’s blood on the sheets and “the blood of both menses and hymen,” notes that “Lancelot’s bloodshed is symbolically emasculating” and looks forward to the “imminent loss of his sociopolitical community and his king’s favour.”40 Atkinson reads the wounds as a kind of divine punishment that “expose[s] the adultery to Melyagaunt and reveal[s] Lancelot’s fallen knighthood to the reader.”41 Though a wound to the hand, in contrast to one of the thigh or buttock, is distant “from a connection to sexual transgression,” Christina Francis notes that “Lancelot’s wound hints at the secret shame of [Lancelot and Guenevere’s] liaison for the astute reader.”42 The placement of Lancelot’s wounds is also significant. As Batt has shown, Malory’s use of hands in relation to knightly combat insinuates a sense of control and physical ability, as well as power, particularly when knights fight “hand for hand.”43 An injury to the hand, therefore, would lessen a knight’s power by impairing his ability to wield the tools necessary for combat. Batt observes that injuries to hands are relatively rare in the Morte; however, Lancelot receives more than one.44 In addition to those received when he breaks the window, Lancelot also hurts his hands during his bout of madness when he breaks his chains to help Sir Blyaunte (820.10–11). Batt contends, “In light of other hand imagery, we can interpret these wounds as intimating threats to the hero’s wholeness: significantly Lancelot sustains wounds to the hand at points in the narrative where his integrity appears to be at issue.”45 ­Timothy O’Brien, who traces the “compulsive” use of hand imagery in

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  135 “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,” adds that Malory repeats images and references to hands at a much higher rate than his sources, especially in “The Knight of the Cart.” In particular, O’Brien notes that Lancelot’s accrual of wounds, which “open[s] his intact body, exposing its interior and therefore exposing the border between outside and inside,” causes Lancelot to elicit “a compensatory response from the hands, a reassertion of manliness.”46 Lancelot is aware of the danger his injured hand poses, both physically and as a sign of his guilt, as the treatment he receives from Lavain involves both medical care and a disguise: “Than sir Lavayne dressed hys honde and staunched hit and putt uppon hit a glove, that hit should nat be aspyed” (1131.36–1132.2).47 The glove that he uses to disguise his injury is what protects him from an accusation of adultery; had Meleagant spied the wound, he surely would have indicted Lancelot by catching him (literally) red-handed. O’Brien connects Lancelot’s hidden hand to the medieval legal notion of mainour, or incriminating evidence found on the person of the criminal, noting “as readers we know there is literally ‘hand evidence’ to be found, if only Mellyagaunt knew where to look.”48 Malory draws further attention to Lancelot’s injury by referencing “gloves” and “hondys” repeatedly throughout the episode, emphasizing just how important Lancelot’s bodily integrity is to his knightly identity. In order to prove Guenevere’s crime with his “hondys” (1133.21), Meleagant offers his “glove” and Lancelot “resceyve[s]” it as a sign of their agreement to fight “hand for hand” (1133.34, 1134.3). Lancelot even asserts that he will “prove with myne hondys” that the accusations are false (1133.32). During the fight, Lancelot quickly overpowers ­Meleagant, who, noticing the likelihood of his defeat, cries for mercy, promising to remain “in the kynges honde and youres” (1138.25–6). Although Guenevere signals for him to slay Meleagant, Lancelot, bound by his chivalric duty to show mercy when requested, refuses to kill his opponent, opting instead to extend “a large proffir”: he will remove his helmet and the armor from the left side of his body and tie his left hand behind his back (1139.8, 9–13). The intent of this action is to level the playing field, so to speak, by putting the men at the same advantage, perhaps even placing Lancelot in a subordinate, more precarious position. Standing in front of Meleagant, half-armored and half-armed, Lancelot is at once abled and disabled, embodying simultaneously the two states necessary to Malorian knighthood. Tying his hand behind his back, moreover, visually performs the wound Lancelot is already hiding under his glove, the wound ­Meleagant and many others would read as a sign of Lancelot’s—and by extension Guenevere’s—guilt. Although Malory does not specify whether ­Lancelot wounds his right or his left hand on the window, Lancelot’s ability to wield his sword without difficulty suggest that his right hand remains uninjured, so it is possible that the very hand he has wounded on G ­ uenevere’s window is the one he now ties behind his back.

136  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry Seemingly, Lancelot’s proffer should place him at a great disadvantage. Indeed, the audience gathered for the fight is openly dubious of his ability to win in this impaired state: “Wyte you well there was many a lady and many a knyght mervayled of sir Launcelot that wolde jouparté hymselff in suche wyse” (1139.27–9). The arrangement, however, assists him in being able to direct and thus react to Meleagant’s moves: Than sir Mellyagaunce com wyth swerde all on hyght, and sir Launcelot shewed hym opynly hys bare hede and the bare lyffte syde. And whan he went to have smytten hym uppon the bare hede, than lightly he devoyded the lyffte legge and the lyffte syde and put hys honde and hys swerde to that stroke, and so put hit onside wyth grete slight. And than with grete force sir Launcelot smote hym on the helmet such a buffett that the stroke carved the hed in two partys. (1139.30–1140.5) Malory again calls attention to Lancelot’s hand in this section, emphasizing that Lancelot uses not only his sword but also “hys honde” to withstand the blow from Meleagant. While most directly the “honde” here is his right hand, the one holding the sword and lifting it to brace for impact from Meleagant, the use of “honde” also brings to mind that the one tied behind his back has also served him in this victory. His “impairment” enables his combat performance and, instead of leading to punishment or shame, results in more worship. After his defeat of Meleagant, Lancelot is more “cherysshed than ever he was aforehande” (1140.12–13, emphasis mine). Malory’s attention to hand imagery in this section underscores his use of Lancelot’s body as a vehicle through which to explore the communal chivalric identity of the Round Table as well as Lancelot’s individual chivalric identity and provides an important link to his role as healer in the upcoming “Tale of Sir Urry.” In medieval culture, hands separated the human from the animal in that they performed the intentions of the mind. Aristotle argued that the hand was analogous to the soul: “So the soul is as the hand; for the hand is a tool of tools, and the intellects is a form of forms and sense a form of objects of perception.”49 In his explication of Aristotle, Galen aligns the hand with the reasoning of the soul in that it can both serve as a tool and have the ability to grasp and use tools: “Now just as man’s body is bare of weapons, so is his soul destitute of skills. Therefore, to compensate for the nakedness of his body, he received hands, and for his soul’s lack of skill, reason, by means of which he arms his body every day.”50 Galen further emphasizes a link between hands, reason, and artistic creativity. With regard to medieval understandings of the hand as an agent of creativity, Kathryn Lynch finds, “Acts of human and divine creativity were both commonly expressed

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  137 as transformations from the ineffable or from the immaterial to the material—and both regularly culminated in an action of the hand.”51 While the agents of creative production, hands, particularly those of the knight, could also be the agents of destruction. The knight’s hands are perhaps his most important tools, for they control his weapons and, should those weapons fail or get lost during battle, can be wielded as weapons themselves. Batt notes that in Malory, hand imagery depicts “ability realized in action” and O’Brien adds that it serves as “the conventional metaphor for prowess.”52 In addition to signifying the physical ability to create or harm, hands were thought to have associations to both good and evil. Penitential literature often grouped vices by fives that correspond to the five fingers of the hand. 53 Lechery, because it is a sin of touch, is often associated with the hands; Chaucer’s “Parson’s Tale,” for example, describes it as “that oothere hand of the devel with fyve fyngers to cacche the peple to his vileynye.”54 In Matthew 18:8, Christ advocates for the removal of limbs responsible for sinful actions: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off or throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire.” Punishment for criminals reflects this view and often included the amputation of the limb or organ involved in committing the illegal act to provide a visual marker of the offender’s crime. 55 Lancelot’s hand wound, received in the act of committing adultery, thus signals his sexual transgression. Indeed, when on the Grail Quest, a hermit specifies that Lancelot is “defouled with lechory” (898.34–5). Lancelot’s disarming of his left side and removal of his left hand from his battle with Meleagant (as well as the possible but unconfirmed prospect that it is his left hand that he has wounded on Guenevere’s window) only serves to deepen the association between his wounded hand and his sinfulness. Biblical tradition frequently links the right hand with wisdom, strength, and righteousness and the left hand with foolishness, ­weakness, and wickedness, and this motif continues in patristic commentary, literature, and art. 56 Batt notes that the left hand is associated with envy in depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins.57 Malory’s text has already associated the left hand with wrongdoing. As noted in Chapter 4, Melyas de Lyle’s wound to his left side serves as a punishment for several unknightly deeds, including erroneously taking a “left-hand” path; in that same episode, Galahad chops off the left hand of the knight that attacks and severely wounds Melyas (885.14–15). The repeated hand imagery in this section not only draws attention to Lancelot’s problematic relationship with Guenevere and the ways in which that relationship will contribute to the disabling and eventual dismantling of the Round Table but also looks forward to the role he will play as a healer in the following tale of Sir Urry. Although the hand has the potential to work sinful acts, it is also the tool through which good

138  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry works are completed. In his analysis of hand imagery in Gawain’s pentangle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piotr Sandowski explains, “The carnal sins classified by the five fingers can […] be counterbalanced by Christian virtues arranged in a similar way, and both can be symbolically linked by the human hand, used either for good or evil works.”58 The seven corporal works of mercy focused on physical acts of charity that would be worked with the hands such as feeding, clothing, and sheltering the poor and caring for the sick and impaired. Medieval religious commentary and art often parallels the Seven Deadly Sins with the opposing virtues found in these corporal works, positioning the works as kinds of remedies for the sins. 59 The medieval topos of Christus medicus, or Christ the Physician, positions Christ as the healer of the wounds or diseases of sin. Stemming from Christ’s healings of the sick and impaired in the New Testament, the Christus medicus topos is used extensively in the work of St. Augustine, among other patristic writers, and it metaphorically associates disability with sinfulness.60 Jesus himself seems to imply this link when he identifies himself as a physician of the soul when he shares a meal with sinful men in Mark 2:16–17: “And the Scribes and the Pharisees, seeing that he ate with publicans and sinners, said to his disciples: Why doth your master eat and drink with publicans and sinners? Jesus, hearing this, saith to them: They that are well have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. For I came not to call the just, but the sinners.” Although he does not assert that all sickness and disability is related to sin, as Edward Wheatley has pointed out, Jesus does suggest that sin sickens and disables.61 As the Divine Physician, Christ heals the bodies and souls of the sick through the laying on of hands.62 Kathryn Lynch affirms that the hands are closely linked to the holy and healing in medieval culture, noting the ways in which priests “handle” sin through confession and hold the body of Christ during mass. Even “the very popularity of the royal touch as cure for the King’s Evil (scrofula) serves as evidence for the importance of the healing or holy hand.”63 In “The Knight of the Cart,” Lavain, as we know, touches Lancelot’s hand as he treats it and gloves it, and Chapter 3 outlines the ways in which touch, administered through the hands of Lavain, ­Badwyn, Elaine, and even Lancelot himself, leads to the healing of wounds. This emphasis on the ability of hands to wound and heal carries over, as we will see, into Lancelot’s healing of Urry.

“The Healing of Sir Urry” No text has been identified as a source for the Urry’s tale, but scholars have noted some analogues, including the Prose Lancelot’s wounded knight of the litter mentioned earlier.64 Bradstock adds two other examples from the Prose Lancelot as possible analogues: Lancelot heals a knight’s spear-wounds and later rescues him from a coffer and, later,

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  139 a knight with a maimed hand seeks treatment from the best knight in the world (who turns out to be Lancelot).65 The tale, then, follows a pattern that stipulates that the best knight in the world is capable not only of military prowess but also of healing. Malory, too, applies this pattern in the Morte. Atkinson observes that Lancelot’s earlier healing of Sir Meliot de Logres at the Chapel Perilous and later rescue of Elaine from boiling water establish Lancelot’s healing potential. Atkinson, however, concedes that the two examples lack the spiritual dimensions of the Urry episode, noting that the healing of Meliot is “magical but not miraculous” and that Elaine’s rescue, though it leads in to the conception of Galahad, “is one of traditional knight errantry.”66 Some aspects from the healing of Meliot, however, do share features with those in the Urry scene. Meliot’s wounds, like Urry’s, are caused by an enchantress, continually bleed, and require the intervention of the marvelous, be it magical or miraculous, in order to cease. In the case of Meliot, the touch of magical objects, Sir Gilbert’s sword and a bloody cloth wrapped around his body, heal Meliot’s wounds, whereas Urry’s cure is hastened by Lancelot’s touch alone. Notably, Gilbert’s left hand has been chopped off (281.13), perhaps hinting at Lancelot’s to-be-wounded hand as well as the healing power his hands will wield upon Urry’s body. Galahad’s later miraculous cures of King Mordrains, the Maimed King, and the crippled man at Sarras, as Chapter 4 analyzes, also serve as precursors to Urry’s healing, this time bringing a decidedly spiritual factor to acts of cure, which we see repeated in Lancelot’s prayer just before the miraculous closure of Urry’s wounds. Most readers of the tale acknowledge that the healing represents a celebration of the chivalric, but are often divided on whether it promotes spiritual or earthly chivalry and whether it exposes the victories or failings of the Round Table. Consequently, the healing itself has been the subject of quite a bit of scholarly debate, with many questioning how Malory’s Lancelot, who has seemingly resumed his adulterous behavior with the queen after the Grail Quest, is able to conduct a miraculous cure that should warrant spiritual integrity. Some position Lancelot’s ability to heal Urry as purely bodily, while others indicate that Lancelot has retained some lessons from the Grail Quest. C. David Benson, for example, reads the scene not as a demonstration of Lancelot’s newfound ability to heal the soul, but as evidence of his status as the best knight of the secular world: “Reaffirmed as the greatest of Arthur’s knights, his achievement remains of this world. He neither reaches nor attempts any spiritual union with God, and his miracle is purely physical—he cures wounds, not souls. The salvation he offers is bodily. He is a chivalric hero rather than a religious saint or courtly lover.”67 Raluca Radulescu similarly argues that the religious ideals set during the Grail Quest are integrated into but still remain subordinate to the chivalric code, and the healing of Urry similarly “reflects a more pragmatic understanding of

140  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry religious demands in chivalric life” that “cherishes Lancelot as the best earthly knight.”68 Indeed, Lancelot is presented throughout the Quest as the best of the “synfull” knights (863.31), and by the end of his adventures after he returns, he is “more cherysshed” than ever for his feats of physical strength (1140.12). Other scholars, following the Quest’s association of spiritual knights with healing and sinful knights with wounds, contend that Lancelot’s sudden ability to heal demonstrates his progress toward spiritual singularity. Edmund Reiss finds that Lancelot’s healing power indicates a reward from God “in spite of his inconstancy” and goes so far as to suggest that Lancelot serves as a “priest who is trying to heal the spiritually sick person,” with Urry serving as “the person cursed—containing a demon within himself.”69 Kennedy notes that the healing shows Lancelot’s triumph over his sin, while, Bradstock adds that the healing of Urry reverses the sin of Lancelot’s adultery, resolving the consummation scene in “The Knight of the Cart.”70 Others find that Lancelot’s use of prayer in the healing demonstrates his continued spiritual progress, despite his relationship with Guenevere.71 In addition to serving as a figuration of the wounded Christ, Urry also represents the wounded in search of divine healing. Indeed, the scene features religious and hagiographical elements. Just as the wounded would be carried to religious shrines or relics in hagiographical literature, Urry, as I note earlier, is brought before the court upon a horse-­ litter. Urry’s mother and sister, in addition, have carried Urry “thorow all londis crystened” in search of the knight with the ability to cure his wounds (1145.28–9).72 In her discussion of hagiographical healing miracles, Metzler notes that the travel of those with impairments to religious sites or shrines “was heavily reliant on help given by other people, either in the form of financial support (paying for the impaired person’s travel) or active support in mobility (carrying the mobility impaired, for example).”73 Urry, like the pilgrims with disabilities that Metzler describes, must rely on “actually being carried [to a shrine] by other, able-bodied people,” whether by hand, baskets, pallets, carriages, carts, or litters.74 Lancelot, moreover, assumes saintly, even Christ-like qualities. Arriving before the court on horseback, he resembles Christ-the-knight, prepared to joust for souls, but, as miraculous healer, he also resembles Christ-the-physician, prepared to heal the body and the soul. Urry’s seven wounds likewise evoke the earthly and the religious. Malory explains the location of the wounds: he had “seven grete woundis, three on the hede and three on hys body, an one uppon hys lyffte hand” (1145.13–14). The wounds never close and continually “fester” and “blede,” leaving Urry “never […] hole untyll the beste knyght of the worlde had serched hys woundis” (1145.18, 19–20). Atkinson explains that wounds caused by magic often follow this pattern, “remain[ing] open […] until a particular knight is able to heal them.”75 Urry’s wounds, however, possess both magical and spiritual elements; they are caused by a sorceress,

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  141 but they are healed through prayer.76 Hodges interprets the wounds as allegorical representations of sin, noting their significant number and placement. He writes, “The number seven is suggestive [of  the Seven Deadly Sins], and the distribution on hand, head, and breast is reminiscent of the d ­ octrine that people sin three ways, in word, in heart, and in deed.”77 As noted earlier, the Morte often connects the left hand to transgression, and medieval discourse on the Seven Deadly Sins associates the left hand with envy; Hodges points out that Urry is motivated to fight Alpheus for “verry envy” (1145.9).78 As a result, we could read Urry’s wounds as punishments for his unknightly behavior during combat. In contrast, Batt underscores the wounds’ Christological connotations, finding that Middle English prayer and hagiography connect Christ’s left hand to divine grace, mercy, and healing and grants it the power to reverse the sin of envy, which I will discuss at more length later.79 Thus, it is also possible to read Urry as a Christ-like figure whose wounds have the power to heal others. Those others that he heals could be the Round Table knights themselves. His body, then, might signify the social body of Malorian knighthood, his wounds betokening the sins of the Round Table community and his healing demonstrating a reunification of the Round Table.80 All 110 knights present and Arthur attempt to heal Urry’s wounds but fail. In this section, Malory offers a catalogue of the knights who search Urry’s wounds, listing their names and offering details with varying degrees of information about their countries and/or families of origin, important deeds, and even failures. This catalogue serves as a kind of monument to the chivalric deeds discussed in the book thus far, while also foreshadowing future events. As Atkinson explains, “The names of the Round Table knights and the associations those names elicit are a way of reviewing the whole history of the Round Table. Thus, Malory interjects commentary, ties up the loose ends of stories left incomplete, and reminds us of events we may by this time have forgotten.”81 Lambert and Kelly note that the list additionally defines knightliness, presenting a standard against which knightly worshipfulness might be measured, with Kelly adding that Lancelot, though not physically present, appears several times throughout the catalogue, which causes readers to recall his “traditional standing as supreme knight” and assume “the healing of Urry has been reserved for him.”82 Hildebrand adds that Urry’s absence from the list underscores the fact that he and, by extension, all knights with impairments are excluded from the chivalric community.83 In addition to focusing on knightly worshipfulness, the catalogue includes references to knights who have died, notes the rivalry between Gawain’s and Lancelot’s families, and draws attention to Grail Quest knights, living and dead, thus pointing out the differences between earthly and spiritual knighthood. Malory, ultimately, “reminds us of both the great triumphs and deepest disgraces of Round Table chivalry.”84 Urry’s

142  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry disabled body, the object that generates this historical narrative, reproduces the fellowship of the Round Table “hole togydirs,” while also presenting a ­summary of Malory’s “hoole booke” thus far. Indeed, Arthur, pointedly, commands Lancelot, who does not want to presume that he will surpass his fellow knights in this task, to attempt the healing for the sake of knightly community: “‘Sir ye take hit wronge,’ seyde kynge Arthur, ‘for ye shall nat do hit for no presumpcion, but for to beare us felyshyp, insomuche as ye be a felow of the Rounde Table’” (1151.31–3). Arthur’s emphasis on fellowship accentuates the link between healing touch and community discussed in Chapter 3. In requesting and receiving healing services, wounded knights forge new social, political, and even erotic bonds. In particular, the touch shared between the healer and the disabled knight precipitates such bonds, facilitating what Margrit Shildrick and Janet Price call a “becoming-in-the-world-with-others” that is enabled through intercorporeal encounters. Touch, Shildrick and Price explain, disrupts “the usual notion of subject/object that is used to analyse the relationship between doctor/patient, or assistant/disabled person”85 or, in the case of Lancelot and Urry, healer/wounded. Urry’s healing, notably, does not require a magic potion, religious object, or medicinal salve; instead the hands of “the beste knyght of the worlde” must “serche” the wounds in order to render them whole (1145.19–20). Arthur and his 110 knights all lay their hands upon the wounds, and Malory emphasizes the use of hands in the description of Arthur’s failed attempt. Arthur explains to Urry’s mother, “And for to gyff all othir men of worshyp a currayge, I myselff woll asay to handyll your sonne, and so shall all the kynges, dukis and erlis that ben here presente at thys tyme” (1146.24–7, my emphasis). Malory repeats the word “handyll” twice more in referencing Arthur’s attempt to heal Urry (1147.13, 17). After the other knights try and fail at their “serching,” Lancelot appears, and Arthur apprises him of the situation and twice commands him to “do as we all have done” (1151.25 and 1152.3–4). Lancelot makes clear that he is only participating in the act because his king and fellow knights have requested it, and, interestingly, he couches his concerns about his skill in working a miracle in terms of ability: “For I shame sore with myself that I shulde be thus required, for never was I able in worthynes to do so hyghe a thynge” (1152.13–15, my emphasis). It appears as if Lancelot is remembering his failed attempts to access the Grail (another “hyghe thynge”), which as we have noted, are similarly expressed in terms of ability. In this case, the text connects Lancelot’s hands, which we have seen injure others and suffer an injury, to the ability to heal. O’Brien has suggested that the attention to hands in the “Urry” scene “recall[s] the earlier tale of misappropriated ‘handiness,’” reflecting “Lancelot’s earlier self-interested use of force” in the matter of Meleagant.86 As in the depiction of Arthur’s “handylling” of Urry’s wounds, Malory refers to touch and especially the hands when describing Lancelot’s attempt.

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  143 However, unlike Arthur, and the knights after him, who treat the touching of wounds as a purely physical act, Lancelot unites the physical and the spiritual by holding his hands in prayer before placing them on ­Urry’s body: “And than he hylde up hys hondys and loked unto the este, saiynge secretely unto hyselff, ‘Now Blyssed Fadir and Son and Holy Goste, I beseche The of Thy mercy that […] Thou mayste yeff me power to hele thys syke knyght by the grete vertu and grace of The, but, Good Lorde, never of myselff’” (1152.18–25). By raising his hands up before the crowd, but silently praying, Lancelot performs his earthly spirituality. As Batt affirms, “The gesture Lancelot makes publicly declares his fealty to God, while his words belong to the private realm of prayer.”87 Next, Malory describes the act of healing: And than sir Launcelot prayed sir Urré to lat hym se hys hede; and than, devoutly knelyng, he ransacked the three woundis, that they bled a lytyll; and forthwithall the woundis fayre heled and semed as they had bene hole a seven yere. And in lyke wys he serched hys body of other three woundis, and they healed in lyke wyse. And than the laste of all he serched hys honde, and anone hit fayre heled. (1152.26–32) Lancelot works his way from Urry’s head to his torso, ending with his left hand. As noted earlier, the left hand could imply sinfulness, but it could also suggest the reversal of sin. Wounds to the left hand were directly connected to lechery and envy, sins both Lancelot and Urry are guilty of committing. Here, Lancelot’s hand, once wounded in the act of adultery, now heals Urry’s hand, whose wound is incurred when fighting another for “verry envy.” The healing ability of Lancelot’s hand reflects the medieval association of Christ’s left hand with the reversal of envy. As Batt reports, “A Middle English prayer to Christ’s wounds has the petitioner pray the wound on the left hand will preserve one from the sin of envy.”88 As a result, the two hands coming together, one healed and the other wounded, emulate, yet reverse one another; it is almost as if each man reaches out and places his hand upon the surface of a mirror. The image of the two men’s hands touching invites a reading of Urry as Lancelot’s double. That Urry arrives to court just after Lancelot has endured a series of wounds to his own body only bolsters the links between the two men. Throughout “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,” Lancelot has been identified by a wound on his cheek and suffers a spearwound in his side, an arrow-wound in the buttock, and a punctured hand. His wounds cover the same bodily terrain as U ­ rry’s: the head, the torso, and the hand.89 Lancelot, thus, finds his own broken body reflected in Urry’s. Perhaps, more aptly, Lancelot views his own fractured inner state replicated in Urry’s wounds as Lancelot’s bodily sufferings have continued to accrue spiritual significance from the Grail Quest on.

144  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry As Hodges surmises, “Readers of Le Morte Darthur have no particular reason to be interested in the state of Urry’s soul, so his wounds probably function as the visible signs of the sins of either Launcelot or the whole of Arthur’s court.”90 Like Urry, Lancelot has received and given out wounds, and his wounds have implied his unstable inward spiritual state as well as the volatile state of the knightly community. Lambert has noted the scene’s punning on the concept of “holeness,” both physical, bodily health and social cohesion, and notes that both kinds of wholeness are “doomed.”91 He writes, “The Round Table is whole, and wholeness cures into wholeness, but this is true for the last time: Urry is an image of the order which is about to end.”92 LaFarge similarly finds that Urry, as a doubling of Lancelot, reveals both Lancelot’s potential for wholeness while also exposing his vulnerability. This scene, which La Farge calls a “pageant of unwholeness,” forces Lancelot to come face to face (perhaps hand to hand) with his own lack of physical and spiritual integrity.93 She continues, “Wholeness, a state verbally linked with the desired unity and completeness of male fellowship, ‘all wholly togydirs’, is the conceit in Malory around which revolves all sense of self and of the possibility for effective human actions.”94 Urry, however, forces Lancelot and the audience of knights to confront the possibility of their own individual and collective “unwholeness” by mirroring for them the vulnerability of the knight’s body and the body chivalric. His wounds, received in battle, are evidence of the perpetual risk in which a knight places himself. Unhorsed and carried on a litter by his mother and sister, Urry travels for seven years in search of a cure, remaining outside of the chivalric community. Despite his identity being contingent upon “chivalric activities”95 and “established only through fighting,”96 Urry’s wounds render him incapable of completing the deeds necessary to proving his knightly worth and thus demonstrate that any stable sense of knightly cohesion is impossible to sustain. The healing of Urry reasserts the fantasy of cohesion, albeit only temporarily, and Arthur’s court reacts in celebration, viewing the miracle as a reestablishment of the chivalric order; thanks are given to God, Urry is clothed “in ryche maner” (1153.4), and a joust is quickly organized. Lancelot, however, reacts to Urry’s healing with tears, weeping “as he had bene a chylde that had bene beatyn!” (1152.35–6). Responses to Lancelot’s tears differ, with most agreeing that the disjunction between the court’s triumph and Lancelot’s weeping is significant, but disagreeing on the meaning behind Lancelot’s tears. Readers question whether Lancelot weeps for his own shame, a sense of relief, as a showing of his humility, or because he has been punished. C.S. Lewis first argued that Lancelot weeps with awareness of his own sinful nature and unworthiness of performing such a miracle, a critical reading many scholars share.97 Reiss, agreeing with Vinaver that Lancelot weeps with joy,98 adds that he also cries with relief at what he has accomplished despite his

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  145 sinfulness and laments “what he would have had and been if it had not been for his instability and earthly love.”99 Lynch similarly notes that the tears provide evidence of Lancelot’s moral self-awareness and thus guilt over his actions.100 Moore adds that Lancelot’s continued success in learning to pray over the course of Grail Quest deepens his guilt; while early prayers lead to peace and joy, his prayer over Urry’s body, which results in weeping, suggests “a deep disturbance of the soul” caused by a disjunction between “his inward desires and outward appearance.”101 Kennedy goes even further to suggest that Lancelot’s tears are those “of a holy man […]filled with the Holy Ghost.”102 Conversely, Lumiansky indicates that Lancelot feels no remorse over his transgressions and suggests that the healing has been a “test” of Lancelot’s fidelity by Arthur. Lancelot’s tears, then, according to Lumiansky are of relief that his sinful actions remain secret.103 Atkinson, finally, asserts that the tears are “a stinging rebuke” from God.104 Lancelot’s tears, thus, invite multiple interpretations that emphasize his act of healing and reaction to it as chivalric, spiritual, or both. As Moore succinctly summarizes, “Lancelot is surely relieved, exhausted, stunned, grateful, overcome, joyful, and sorrowful all at once.”105 Most important to our discussion here, however, is the way in which Malory describes the extent to which Lancelot weeps as it suggests that his emotions are a result of physical harm: “And ever Sir Launcelote wepte, as he had bene a chylde that had been beatyn” (1152.35–6).106 For Lancelot to weep as if he has been physically injured could indicate that the tears are a result of a chastisement of some kind. Batt, considering the phrase within a religious frame, suggests that it fits with “fifteenth-century language of human-divine relations” that positions humans as children whom God must discipline.107 Whetter, in contrast, adopts a secular reading of Lancelot’s reaction: “Given the very public revelation of Launcelot’s worship that is enacted through the healing, as well as the restoration of bodily wholeness to a knight long injured and suffering with a septic wound, it is impossible to read the healing as the chastisement of Launcelot initially suggested by the language and imagery of the beaten child.”108 Whetter, who ultimately argues that the Urry episode is a celebration of secular knighthood, draws from Earl Anderson’s linkage of Lancelot’s tears to the “warrior medicine” shared between the warriors and heroes of medieval romance. Anderson notes that “warrior medicine,” or medical treatment “presided over by men” involving “‘staunchyng’ and ‘serchyng’ of wounds and other forms of surgery,” is often coupled with sympathy for another’s injuries in the form of tears.109 He contends, “Launcelot weeps ‘ever’ Urry’s wounds for the same reason that Arthur weeps over Kay’s wounds and Mark weeps over Trystram’s wounds: so far as Malory is concerned, weeping is part of the tradition in healing episodes and perhaps is a form of ‘sympathetic medicine.’”110 Lancelot’s actions—his “serchyng” of Urry’s

146  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry wounds followed by tears—do fit the paradigm suggested by Anderson and endorsed by Whetter and add another layer to the scene’s multivalence; if the tears shed during the practice of “warrior medicine” most often occur on the field of battle, perhaps we can compare the interaction between Urry and Lancelot to an act of combat. The “beatyn chylde” simile, in emphasizing Lancelot’s somatic reaction, suggests that Lancelot feels as if his own body has been harmed during the healing of Urry’s. Chapter 4 discusses the healing of the ­L eprous Lady by Percival’s sister as a kind of combat through which ­Percival’s sister asserts her worshipfulness, noting the structural similarities between the healing and Malory’s depictions of battles: an “opponent” is brought forth, at least one participant bleeds, and the wounded is treated at the scene. Malory repeats this structure in the case of Urry’s healing: Lancelot is brought forth to perform a duty to his king; L ­ ancelot handles Urry’s wounds, causing them to bleed as if wounded anew; and Urry’s wounds close, the bleeding finally staunched. By mirroring a scene of combat, this episode illustrates the Morte’s overall assertion that Lancelot’s worshipfulness is tied to (dis)ability caused in knightly acts of prowess, as even his act of healing parallels a physical battle. Here, our knight-hero does not use his hands to fight Urry, instead raising them in prayer before placing them upon Urry’s body; afterwards, he reacts as if he has been harmed by someone’s hands. His tears, as a result, function as a kind of bleeding in that they flow as a consequence of a “wound,” albeit an emotional one. Anderson has argued that Lancelot’s tears function as signifiers in an open-ended chain that ties the tears to Urry’s wounds; in this case, the tears are wounds themselves that simultaneously evoke Urry’s wounded body, the body of the beaten child suggested in the simile, and the site upon which knightly injury occurs: the battlefield.111 In this moment, Lancelot is both a healer and victim of wounds, a caregiver and a patient. He cures Urry’s wounds, but experiences psychological pain as if it were a wound his body. This demonstrates not that Lancelot and the Morte have resumed attention to the earthly and bodily elements of chivalry at the expense of the spiritual after the Grail Quest but that Lancelot remains in and of the body, even in his most spiritual moments. Theoretically, as Urry’s body heals, Lancelot and the Round Table should also regain their wholeness as the three bodies have been closely linked through the text’s wound imagery. Batt observes, “Urry is, for Lancelot, a physical figuring of integrity […]. That such an embodiment should manifest itself in the public sphere, where the rest of the Round Table is both involved and implicated” suggests that “Lancelot’s identity is contingent upon others and linked with the body of Round Table knights.”112 At first, it seems as if Urry, Lancelot, and the Round Table have regained their physical and social integrity. Arthur, after giving thanks to God, “lat clothe [Urry] in ryche maner” and asks him if he

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  147 will “juste and do ony armys” (1153.4, 10), to which he agrees heartily. The narrator here draws attention to Urry’s physical appearance and ability. Now healed and dressed in fine clothing, Urry is “passyngly well made and bygly,” feels “lusty,” and asserts that he “longe[s] unto justis” (1153.6, 9, 12). Along with Lavain, Urry performs triumphantly in the joust, and both men, having demonstrated their prowess, are promptly “made knyghtes of the Table Rounde” (1153.21). Lavain then marries Filleloly, and the court celebrates “with grete joy” (1153.23). Although Urry’s body heals and the Round Table makes a show of its wholeness through the rituals of feasting, jousting, and marriage, Urry goes right back to participating in the chivalric deeds that led to his wounds in the first place; as a result, the specter of his wounded body remains. His willingness to again risk his body and life for the sake of worshipfulness so soon after his recovery demonstrates a knight’s precarious position: though his wounds may be healed, he must continue to participate in physical acts that endanger his body in order to maintain his knightly identity. Another specter of (dis)ability appears after Urry’s healing, that of Lancelot’s ride in the cart. “Urry” closes with a rubric that calls back to “The Knight of the Cart”: And so I leve here of this tale, and overlepe grete bookis of sir Launcelot, what grete adventures he ded whan he was called ‘le ­Shyvalere de Charyot’. For, as the Freynshe booke sayth, because of dispyte that knyghtes and ladyes were juged to the jubett, therefore, in the despite of all them that named hym so, he was caryed in a charyotte at twelve-moneth; for buy lytill aftir that he had slayne sir Mellyagaunte in the quenys quarell, he never of a twelve-moneth com on horseback. And, as the Freynshe booke sayth, he ded that twelve-moneth more than fourty batayles. And bycause I haue lost the very mater of La Shevalere du Charyot, I departe frome the tale of sir Launcelot; and here I go unto the morte Arthur, and that caused sir Aggravayne. (1154.1–15) The reference to “le Shyvalere de Charyot” is curious here as Malory has already reported on Lancelot’s ride in the cart and glossed over his subsequent adventures in the tale just prior to “Urry.” Moreover, ­Lancelot’s adventures while traveling by cart seem to have ended prior to his healing of Urry as Malory writes that Lancelot approaches the court on horseback (1151.2, 6), whereas, according to the previous passage, Lancelot does not mount a horse at all during his year-long adventures on the cart.113 Vinaver has suggested that the passage refers to “the portion of the prose Lancelot which comes immediately after the Charrette episode.”114 Walsh, however, posits that the detail concerning

148  Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry Lancelot’s year-long ride “does not tally with the Vulgate Cycle as it has come down to us,” as the Vulgate does not include a reference to such a ride.115 Walsh suggests, instead, that the inclusion of this passage is meant to “conceal the fact that the story of the healing of Urry is actually Malory’s own creation,” by insinuating “a mythical French book” as his source.116 The reference, at the least, draws attention to the connection between the two tales and provides further evidence that Malory purposely placed the cart episode just prior to the healing episode. Walsh notes that this juxtaposition of the tales creates a progression that moves from ­Lancelot’s objectionable acts of adultery and slaying of Meleagant that occur in the “Cart” to the act of healing in “Urry,” which confirms his spirituality.117 The juxtaposition of the tales also moves from ­Lancelot as disabled and disabling to healer of bodies, while the mention of the cart in the rubric of “Urry,” moreover, reasserts the images of disability so necessary to both episodes and to Lancelot’s identity as it brings to mind the litters and carts that carry the wounded throughout the Morte and, by extension, evokes the wounds themselves. The cart, as an emblem of (dis)ability, recalls the acts of disabling Lancelot has endured, exploited, and doled out in the previous sequence of tales. Its reintroduction at the end of an episode in which physical and social bodies are healed reminds us of the ever-present possibility of disintegration that threatens desires for and notions of bodily or social wholeness. The wounding sequence of the “Book Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,” capped off by “Urry,” also provides an ideal vantage point from which to view the Morte’s closing sequence wherein the text’s final, fatal wounds mark the end of the Round Table and its occupants. Ending Lancelot’s series of woundings with his healing of Urry reiterates the Morte’s reliance on the imagery of (dis)ability to narrate the rise and fall of Arthur and his knights and provides readers with a material representation of chivalric and bodily wholeness just prior to the Round Table’s fall. “Urry,” Walsh explains, “forms a bright contrasting bridge between the near-exposure of [Lancelot and Guenevere’s] adultery by Melyagaunt and the actual exposure by Agravain” in the next chapter. Indeed, despite the emphasis on healing, celebration, and chivalric activity after Urry is cured, the tale ends with the dark implications of Aggravain’s suspicions: “But every nyght and day sir Aggravayne, sir  ­Gawaynes brother, awayted quene Gwenyver and sir Launcelot to put hem bothe to a rebuke and a shame” (1153.32–4). Hodges casts the actions of Aggravain and later Mordred as akin to envy, the “opposite to the virtue of love” and the greatest threat to Arthur’s kingdom.118 Hodges cites the numerous instances in which envy has infected Arthur’s court, including the conflicts between Tristram and Palomides and the sons of Pellinore and Lot.119 Urry’s wounded hand and its associations with envy that I outline earlier, moreover, echo Lancelot’s wounded hand and its associations with adultery, thereby linking the envy of others

Lancelot’s Wounds, the Healing of Urry  149 with both adultery and wounds.120 Although Urry receives his healing cure, the wounds within the Round Table community, caused by envy, continue to fester. Lancelot will continue to “lyeth dayly and nyghtly by the quene” (1161.20), Aggravain and Mordred will expose the couple, and unhealed wounds will punctuate the final episodes until a wounded Arthur is swept “into the vale of Avylyon” for a healing miracle that is continuously deferred (1240.33). Urry’s body—which is also Lancelot’s body and the body chivalric—thus ties together Arthur’s knights for one last communal triumph before the imminent fall.

Afterword

By tracing the ways in which disability operates as a central facet of masculine knighthood and of narrative structure in Malory’s Morte Darthur, this study has sought to enhance not only Malory’s investigations but also medieval conceptions of the body, ability, and gender, both literary and literal. Instead of completely removing a knight from the chivalric community, disability, I have suggested, is fundamental to a knight’s participation in that community. Enduring and doling out injuries is requisite to knightly worship; moreover, while permanent disability might deny a knight access to the chivalric community, healing from such injuries grants him reentry. The intersection between disability and knighthood thus reveals a particularly medieval instance of the social function(s) of disability, highlighting the potential fruitfulness of bringing chivalry into discussions of medieval disability and disability into discussions of chivalry. Because this intersection is unique to the Middle Ages, it also deepens modern understandings of disability and chivalry, and may help to inform and refine considerations of medieval disability in the larger field of disability studies, which often oversimplifies or even neglects the Middle Ages. In particular, considering the role of disability in the medieval chivalric community may also deepen current scholarly conversations regarding disabled war veterans.1 I do not purport here to offer the final word on disability in Malory’s Morte; this book represents only a beginning into such investigations, and I look forward to the further readings and inquiries that it might encourage. As Kenneth Hodges has explained, chivalry in the Morte is shifting and operates in various forms, serving the needs and values of diverse communities of knights. As a result, the Morte does not present a unified vision of chivalry; instead “chivalry is noble but fatally flawed, fatally unstable, and so too must be its practitioners.”2 As this study has shown, at the heart of this unstable chivalric code lies the equally unstable physical body of the knight whose movement between injury and cure is central to his performance of knightly identity. This oscillation between able-bodiedness and disability becomes a recurring pattern throughout the text, establishing chivalry as a repeated performance that d ­ emands the breaking and subsequent restoration of the knight’s body. Robert

152 Afterword McRuer has noted that “able-bodied identity is simultaneously a compulsory identity and one that is impossible to embody fully, permanently, or without incoherence.”3 Likewise, in Malory’s ability/disability system of knighthood, knights can never fully embody able-bodiedness or disability as total adherence to either status would remove them from the chivalric community. Because it depends upon (dis)ability, an already unstable bodily category, Malory’s system of knighthood is thus exposed as equally unstable. Throughout this book, I have discussed the instability of physical and social bodies in the Morte in terms of liminality as the liminal describes that which is poised between two borders. As they work to prove their worshipfulness, Malory’s knights exist between the limits of ability and disability, illness and health, and, importantly, masculinity and femininity. Although a knight’s worshipfulness demands violent physical displays of masculinity in order to evidence his bravery and skill in combat, or hardinesse, those violent acts result in wounds and penetrations that paradoxically feminize because they break the boundaries of a knight’s body and thus the fantasy of a masculinity that is inviolable. The blood lost in such wounds obscures a cohesive notion of knightly masculinity, evoking feminine notions of parturition and menstruation in tandem with the masculine blood of combat. Masculine knightliness is further imbricated with the feminine in its dependence upon acts of feminine enchantment as catalysts or barriers to a knight’s movement through the ability/disability system. In particular, women’s roles as enchantresses or the objects of desire in a knight’s contraction and cure of lovesickness or love-madness mark them as vectors of (dis)ability that transform a knight’s body and mind and, subsequently, his social status. The  feminizing symptoms of lovesickness and love-madness as well as the associations between the female body and madness further disrupt the gendered performance of the Morte’s lovesick and love-mad knights and again trouble a coherent notion of knightly masculinity. Disability’s presence in the text continues to upset not only notions of gender but also of heteronormativity. The overtly normative drives of the Morte’s narrative seek to control the “deviance” of not only disability, which transgresses the compulsory able-bodiedness that knights must follow, but also non-heteronormative sexuality, which transgresses knighthood’s compulsory heteronormativity. The repeated motif of the thigh wound, which serves as the textual and bodily sign of both subversive bodies and desires, attempts to rein in such transgressions, but some non-heteronormative acts, desires, and behaviors escape this normalization, particularly when shared between a disabled knight and a healer. Lavain’s roles in the healings of Lancelot, for instance, operate as expressions of the queer/crip that upend the compulsorily heteronormative and able-bodied narrative tendencies of the book.

Afterword  153 Healing becomes central to the text’s explorations of (dis)ability and knighthood when the Grail Quest inaugurates a collision of the spiritual and the secular as actively healing injuries instead of receiving them or doling them out becomes requisite to a chivalry that attempts to reconcile the celestial and the earthly. The Grail, with its disabling and healing powers, frames the experiences of Galahad, Percival’s sister, and Lancelot on the Quest. Galahad’s celestial chivalry, which insists upon a physically and sexually intact body proves unsustainable in the earthly realm. Although Lancelot remains in the “unsyker” world, his practice of chivalry takes on a spiritual significance in a way that brings together the earthly and celestial, and we see his “double-codedness” reverberate throughout the Morte’s final sequences, where Lancelot’s interactions with (dis)ability accelerate. Throughout The Book of Launcelot and Guinevere, Lancelot functions as one who is harmed, one who harms, and, finally, one who heals. While it may be tempting to read Lancelot’s final acts as Urry’s healer and later as saintly hermit who dies a hagiographical death as proof that the spiritual has overwhelmed the Morte’s treatment of disability and knighthood, it is more likely that the book holds the secular and the spiritual aspects of disability and chivalry concurrently. Lancelot is at once harmed, harmer, and healer as well as spiritual saint and love-mad lover. The dual endings of Malory’s “hoole book” support a reading of the Morte—and of Lancelot—as both sacred and secular, as Barbara ­Newman has noted, and (dis)ability only heightens this doubling. ­A rthur, we are told, is swept “in the vale of Avylyon” for healing, along with the three queens (1240.33). When Bedevere comes upon a new grave at a hermitage the next day, however, “the ermyte knew nat in sertayne that he was verily the body of kynge Arthur” (1242.18–20). Malory neither confirms nor denies the authenticity of the body, affirming only that “here in thys worlde he chaunged hys lyff. And many men say that there ys written uppon hys tumbe thys: HIC IACET ARTHURUS, REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS” (1242.29). Newman explains that ­Malory’s Arthur has three possible endings: a Christian folk hero destined to “wynne the Holy Crosse” (1242.25) when he returns from heaven; an English folk hero buried at Glastonbury; or a pagan folk hero, residing in the realm of Avalon.4 For Arthur, the possibility of healing or death, the two endings for disability that the text has offered most often, exists simultaneously. His “greveous wounde” (1240.33–4), thus, is not conclusively prostheticized, its cure instead continuously deferred. The book’s second end, the death of Lancelot, also invites a reading that holds the secular alongside the spiritual and evokes the liminal quality of (dis)ability. As Chapter 2 explains, Lancelot is not depicted as the wholly spiritual hermit that the text’s hagiographical structure and impulses suggest.5 Indeed, Malory informs Lancelot’s monastic experiences through the frame of his disabling love-madness as it is Guenevere’s

154 Afterword rejection and his physical and emotional responses to it that lead him to seek out an ascetic life. His body and appearance, we find, are so altered by his experience that he is no longer recognizable. Thus, though he dies like a saint, complete with an odor of incorruptibility, the cause of his death is linked to his earthly love for Guenevere. Unlike Arthur’s, Lancelot’s death is described as certain; it is the cause of his monasticism that is not clear. Newman explains, “These circumstances have provoked a debate about the true motive of Lancelot’s penance: is it love of God or of Guenevere? Has he really become a saint, or does he remain a faithful courtly lover to the end?”6 As lover, Lancelot’s death recalls the disabling and sometimes fatal illnesses that may befall knights who come under the enchantment of women and the roles that women play in harming and/or healing such knights. As saint, Lancelot’s death calls to mind the potentially healing properties attributed to saints and their relics. As with Arthur, Lancelot’s “double” end simultaneously evokes the sacred and the secular, healing and death; positioned between two borders, their ends are thus liminal. Indeed, as Newman asserts, there is no reason to choose one view over the other as “Malory so obviously wants to have it both ways.”7 The Morte’s doubled endings frustrate an overarching narrative drive toward closure and resolution. This project has noted that the narrative movement of Malory’s “hoole book” attempts to maintain a “linear temporal progression,”8 in part by “repairing” broken bodies, both physical and social. This drive toward normalization, which surfaces as an insistence on bodily wholeness, however, proves untenable, particularly for knights who must put their bodies at risk repeatedly in order to maintain membership a chivalric community that is always on the verge of collapse. Malory’s conception of chivalric perfection has been called nostalgic in that it both exhibits the values of an imagined ­A rthurian past as a way to invigorate his present and expresses the pain and longing associated with the inevitable decline of that past.9 While not a medieval term, the concept of nostalgia as a longing for the past did exist in medieval culture. Writers, including Malory, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower, among others, express a melancholic desire for days past.10 But, unlike a simplistic notion of nostalgia as a naïve wish for the past or even an expression of primitivism, “premodern nostalgia looks both forward and back: back to homes lost, forward to future conversions of imagined ‘wilderness’ into orderly habitation.”11 When the term is coined in 1688 by Swiss physician Johaness Höfer, nostalgia takes on a pathologized significance. Blending the Latin nostos, “homecoming,” and algia, “pain,” Höfer uses the term to name a debilitating condition he observed in those who spent time away from home, including students, servants, and soldiers. Höfer describes nostalgia as a disorder of the brain that resulted in physical and psychological symptoms including depression, loss of appetite, hallucinations, and weakness. While Höfer

Afterword  155 pointed to an overactive imagination that led to a longing for home, later notions of nostalgia pinpoint memories as the major contributor; but, whether imagined or remembered, nostalgic visions created an idealized fantasy of home.12 While we do not know whether Malory personally experienced psychological or physical pain as he worked to portray ­A rthurian knighthood (nor should we speculate), it is apt that the disabled body frames his nostalgic vision of chivalry, ultimately exposing a desire for a fantasy of wholeness that is simply unsustainable. Helen Cooper explains, “Malory’s Morte Darthur is not an exercise in nostalgia for a golden age: it is an account of the destruction of an ideal.”13 His reliance upon the (dis)abled body of the knight as a vehicle through which to shape his conception of the chivalric demonstrates the illusory nature of both an ideal chivalric community and an ideal able body. The body is perhaps the Morte’s most predominant image: bodies bleed, heal, disable, become disabled, die, (re)assemble, and disintegrate. The bodies of the Morte ultimately prove to be vulnerable, always at the risk of breaking down or apart. In its continual movement between ability and disability, the (dis)abled body of the knight embodies this fixation on the wholeness and fragmentation of physical and social bodies and coheres the “hoole book.” As a textual body, Malory’s corpus, like the bodies of his knights, proves itself to be flawed: Le Morte Darthur departs from the central narrative, adds on appendages that go nowhere, amputates others that may have been generative, repeats itself, is confused, has moments of clarity, and offers endings that straddle the line between disability and cure, life and death. In its fragmented wholeness, Malory’s book becomes a representation of the very bodies it narrates.

Notes

Introduction 1 Stephen Atkinson, “‘They…toke their shyldys before them and drew oute their swerdys…’: Inflicting and Healing Wounds in Malory’s Morte ­Darthur,” in Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, eds. Larissa Tracy and Kelly DeVries (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 519. 2 In addition to Atkinson’s chapter, such works include Laurie Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, “No Pain, No Gain: Violence as Symbolic ­Capital in Malory’s ‘Morte d’Arthur’,” Arthuriana 8, no. 2 (1998): 115–34; ­Kathleen Coyne Kelly, “Malory’s Body Chivalric,” Arthuriana 6, no. 4 (1996): 52–71; ­ edieval Jill Mann, “Malory: Knightly Combat in Le Morte ­D’Arthur,” in M ­ oris Ford, The Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition, ed. B New Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol. 1, pt. 1. ­(Harmondsworth: ­Penguin, 1982), 331–9; Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte ­Darthur, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992); Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte ­Darthur (­Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997); Kenneth Hodges, “Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte ­Darthur,” Studies in Philology 106, no. 1 (2009): 14–31; and Jennifer Feather, “Lo, Ye All Englishmen,” in Writing Combat and the Self in Early Modern English Literature: The Pen and the Sword (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 115–46. ­Recently, Kristina Hildebrand has published on Malory’s use of disability, arguing that disability is marginalized to the point of invisibility in his text, in “ ­ Sitting on the Sidelines: Disability in Malory,” Arthuriana 27, no. 3 (2017): 66–80. Although not focused on Malory, another notable addition that brings together disability and chivalry is Richard Godden’s examination of the prosthetic qualities of Gawain’s armor and weaponry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. See “Prosthetic Ecologies: Vulnerable Bodies and the Dismodern Subject in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Textual Practice 30, no. 7 (2016): 1273–90. 3 Terence McCarthy, “Malory and His Sources,” in A Companion to Malory, eds. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 91. 4 K.S. Whetter, “The Historicity of Combat in Le Morte Darthur,” in ­Arthurian Studies of P.J.C. Field, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), 261–70, offers a detailed study of Malory’s presentation of warfare in relation to fifteenth-century historical practice, noting that Malory merges elements of combat reflective of his source material with his own experiences. 5 Irina Metzler, A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment (New York: Routledge, 2013), 36.

158 Notes 6 See P.J.C. Field, “Malory and the Battle of Towtown,” in The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. and Jessica Gentry Brogdon (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000), 68–74. Field argues that Malory’s representation of looters after Arthur’s last battle was inspired by Malory’s experiences at Towtown. 7 Metzler, A Social History, 38–9. 8 Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel is most likely the author of the Morte. This Thomas Malory was a soldier who fought at Calais as well as a member of Parliament. He was accused of ambushing the Lancastrian Duke of ­Buckingham, although he later seems to change political sides, and spent time in prison for a number of other crimes, including extortion, burglary, and rape. It was during his last years in prison (1468–70) that he wrote the Morte. See Gweneth Whitteridge, “The Identity of Sir Thomas Malory,  Knight ­Prisoner,” Review of English Studies 24, no. 95 (1973): 257–65; ­Felicity Riddy, Sir Thomas Malory (Leiden: Brill, 1987); and P.J.C. Field, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1993). 9 I borrow the term “normate” from Rosemarie Garland Thomson, who explains, “The neologism names the veiled subject position of cultural self, the figure outlined by the array of deviant others whose marked bodies shore up the normate’s boundaries. […]. Normate, then is the constructed identity of those who, by way of the bodily configuration and cultural capital they assume, can step into a position of authority and wield the power it grants them.” See Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 9. 10 Ato Quayson, Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 11 Lennard Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (London: Verson, 1995), 24. 12 Ibid., 49. 13 Tom Shakespeare and Nicholas Watson, “The Social Model of Disability: An Outdated Ideology?,” Research in Social Science and Disability 2 (2002): 23. See also, Tom Shakespeare, “The Social Model of D ­ isability,” in The Disability Studies Reader, 3rd ed., ed. Lennard J. Davis (New York: Routledge, 2010), 266–73; and Colin Barnes, “The Social Model of ­Disability: A Sociological Phenomenon Ignored by Sociologists?,” in The Disability Studies Reader, 1st ed., ed. Tom Shakespeare (London: Cassell, 1998), 65–79. 14 Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell, Cultural Locations of Disability (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 7. 15 Snyder and Mitchell, Cultural Locations, 6, 7. 16 Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About I­ mpairment during the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (New York: Routledge, 2006) and A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural ­C onsiderations of Physical Impairment (New York: Routledge, 2013). 17 Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010). 18 Joshua R. Eyler, “Introduction,” in Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, ed. Joshua R. Eyler (Burlington, VT: ­Ashgate, 2010), 8. 19 Other important contributions to medieval disability studies include Christopher Baswell, “King Edward and the Cripple,” in Chaucer and the ­C hallenges of Medievalism, ed. Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle

Notes  159 (Frankfurt: Lang, 2003), 15–29; Edna Edith Sayers (formerly Lois Bragg) Oedipus borealis: The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickison, 2004); Tory V. Pearman, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); The Treatment of Disabled Persons in Medieval Europe: Examining Disability in the Historical, Legal, Literary, Medical, and Religious Discourses of the Middle Ages, eds. Wendy Turner and Tory Pearman (Lewiston: Mellen, 2010); Julie Singer, Blindness and Therapy in Late ­Medieval French Poetry (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011); and Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations. For a recent, comprehensive survey of medieval disability scholarship, see Rick Godden and Jonathan Hsy, “Analytical Survey: Encountering Disability in the Middle Ages,” New Medieval Literatures 15 (2013): 313–35. 20 Julie Singer, “Disability and the Social Body,” Postmedieval 3 (2012): 137. 21 Susan Wendell, The Rejected Body (New York: Routledge, 1996), 66. 22 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain (New York: Palgrave, 2006), 11–13. 23 Ramon Llull, The Book of the Order of Chivalry, trans. William ­Caxton, ed. A.T. Byles (London: EETS, 1926), 64. Llull’s text is one of the most popular and influential treatises on knighthood available in the Middle Ages. Translated into English three times, it was widely read and disseminated. Caxton’s English translation of the text appeared one year before Malory’s Morte Darthur. 24 Ibid., 63–4. 25 Richard W. Kaueper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 85, 87, 175. The French: “gens d’armes qui bien font a loer […]. Ce sont li aucun qui bon corps sain et appert” (84, 86); and “les paines, travaux, douleurs, mesaises, grans paours, perilz, froisseures et bleceures” (174). 26 Leprosy in the Middle Ages is well studied. One of the most important contributions is Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England ­(Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2006). Likewise, scholars of medieval madness have ­produced several articles and books in recent years. See, for example, the collection Madness in Medieval Law and Custom, ed. Wendy Turner (Boston, MA: Brill, 2010); and Wendy Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, I­ ncompetent, and Disabled in Medieval England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). Leigh Ann Craig, “The History of Madness and Mental Illness in the Middle Ages: Directions and Questions,” History Compass 12, no. 9 (2014): 729–44, presents a thorough overview of medieval madness studies. 27 Susan Wendell, “Unhealthy Disabled: Treating Chronic Illnesses as Disabilities,” Hypatia 16, no. 4 (2001): 17, author’s emphasis. Beth Linker’s “On the Borderland of Medical and Disability History: A Survey of the Fields,” Bulletin of Medical History 87 (2013): 499–535 offers a cogent discussion of the links between disability and disease, and calls for a merging of the two in disability studies scholarship. 28 Wendell, “Unhealthy Disabled,” 21–2. 29 Metzler, A Social History, 41. 30 For more on Malory’s sources, see McCarthy, “Malory and His Sources.” 31 Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 3. 32 McCarthy, “Malory and His Sources,” 78.

160 Notes 33 Throughout this study, I will discuss the connections Malory’s text makes between wholeness and ability, and fragmentation and disability. This is not to suggest that I am forwarding the notion that the disabled body is somehow broken or incomplete and thus inferior to the able body; instead, I am following other literary scholars of disability by examining the ways in which the normative drives of narrative seek to close the “deviance” created by disabled characters. As I will show, Malory explicitly links the fragmentation of the social body of the Round Table with the injured physical bodies of his knights. In turn, he associates a cohesive Round Table with the healing of his knights’ injuries. The fact that knights must repeatedly endure and heal from injuries in order to prove their knightly identities reveals that the desire for wholeness driving the project of chivalric knighthood is itself illusory. 34 David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 53. 35 Ibid. 36 All citations are to Sir Thomas Malory, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3rd ed., 3 vols, ed. Eugène Vinaver, rev. P.J.C. Field (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), and appear parenthetically by page and line numbers. 37 Hodges argues that injuries are integral not detrimental to masculinity in the Morte: “In general, […], wounds increase masculine worth” (“Wounded Masculinity,” 17). 38 Lisa Robeson, “Women’s Worship: Female Versions of Chivalric Honour,” in Re-Viewing the Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes, eds. K.S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005), 107. Elizabeth Archibald discusses the importance of worship and the detriment of its opposite, “disworship,” to the Round Table knights. See Elizabeth Archibald, “Beginnings: The Tale of King Arthur and King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius,” in A Companion to Malory, eds. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 142. 39 Kennedy, Knighthood, 212. 40 Ibid., 148. 41 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 6; and Richard ­Barber, “Chivalry and the Morte Darthur,” in A Companion to Malory, ed. ­Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 19–36. 42 Kennedy, Knighthood, 212. 43 Robeson, “Women’s Worship,” 107. 44 MED, def. 1a and b. 45 MED, def. 3a. 46 MED, “hardy,” def. 1a. 47 Finke and Shictman, “No Pain,” 118. 48 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 69. 49 Such figures include Morgan le Fay, Galahad, and Percival’s sister. All three repeatedly reject their proscribed gender roles, thus upsetting a binary system of masculine/feminine throughout the text. 50 Kelly, “Malory’s Body Chivalric.” The “body chivalric” simultaneously refers to the physical body of the knight and the social body of chivalry to which he belongs. I make use of Kelly’s phrase throughout this book project in order to demonstrate how a knight’s membership within the institutional body of chivalry is dependent upon the physical ability of his body.

Notes  161 51 Ibid., 54. 52 Ibid., 64. 53 Hodges, “Wounded Masculinity,” 14. 54 Ibid.,19–21. 55 Ibid., 16–17. Elaine Scarry has famously studied the practical and metaphorical meanings of wounds and bodily pain in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 56 Lenore Manderson and Susan Peake, “Men in Motion: Disability and the Performance of Masculinity,” in Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, eds. Carrie Sandahl and Philip Auslander (Ann Arbor: ­University of Michigan Press, 2005), 231. 57 Tom Shakespeare, “The Sexual Politics of Disabled Masculinity,” Sexuality and Disability 17, no. 1 (1999): 63. 58 Ibid., 234. 59 Ibid., 233, 238. 60 See, Pearman, Women and Disability. 61 Peggy McCracken, The Curse of Eve, The Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), ix. 62 Ibid., ix–x, 10–15. 63 Ibid., 14. 64 Metzler, A Social History, 5. 65 Ibid., 7. 66 Ibid., 42. 67 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966). 68 Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 154. 69 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 60. 70 In medieval romance, thigh wounds often represent wounds to the genitals and can be indicative of feminization, sterility, or even sexual deviancy. Percival, for instance, wounds his own thigh as a punishment for almost giving in to sexual temptation (919.10–17). I discuss thigh wounds at length in Chapter 3. 71 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 76. 72 Such studies include Mark Lambert, Style and Vision in Le Morte Darthur (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); and Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms. Jill Mann has mentioned this in several of her works, including “Malory: Knightly Combat in ‘Le Morte D’Arthur’,” in ­Medieval ­Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition, ed. Boris Ford. The New ­Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Harmondsworth: P ­ enguin, 1982), ­ arrative in Malory’s 331–9; The Narrative of Distance, The Distance of N Morte Darthur (London: Birckbeck College, 1991); and “Malory and the Grail Legend,” in A Companion to Malory, eds. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 203–30. 73 Mann, “Malory: Knightly Combat,” 332. 74 Ibid. 75 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 77. 76 Ibid. 77 Mann, “Malory: Knightly Combat,” 332. 78 Lanfranc of Milan, Lanfrank’s Science of Cirurgie, ed. Robert V. ­Fleischhacker, (London: EETS, 1894); John Gower, The Complete Works of

162 Notes John Gower, ed. G.C. Macaulay, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1899–1902), Prol. 643. See Tory V. Pearman, “Blindness, Confession, and Re-­membering in Gower’s Confessio,” in Accessus 1, no. 1 (2013): 1–37 for an analysis of Gower’s use of departed. 79 Richard Rolle, Prik of Conscience, ed. James H. Morey, TEAMS (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2012), 887. 80 Ibid., 889, 890, 891. Chapter 1 1 The scholarship on women and gender in Malory’s Morte Darthur is extensive. Notable examples include Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003); “Gender, Marriage, and Knighthood: Single Ladies,” in The Single Woman in ­Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and ­Representation, ed. Laurel Amtower (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and ­Renaissance Studies, 2003), 41–61; Catherine Batt, “Malory and Rape,” ­Arthuriana 7, no. 3 (1997): 78–99; Elizabeth Edwards, “Place of Women in the Morte Darthur,” in A Companion to Malory, eds. Elizabeth A ­ rchibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 37–54; ­Roberta ­Davidson, “Reading Like a Woman in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 16, no. 1 (2006): 21–33; Maureen Fries, “Female Heroes, ­Heroines and Counter-Heroes: Images of Women in the Arthurian T ­ radition,” in ­Arthurian Women: A Casebook, ed. Thelma S. Fenster (New  York: ­Garland, 1996), 59–76; Geraldine Heng, “Enchanted Ground: The Feminine ­Subtext in Malory,” in Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, eds. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990), 283–300. Rpt. in Arthurian Women: A Casebook, ed. Thelma S. F ­ enster (New York: ­Garland, 1996), 97–115; Janet Jesmok, “Guiding Lights: ­Feminine Judgment and Wisdom in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 19, no. 3 (2009): 34–42; Molly Martin, Vision and Gender in M ­ alory’s Morte Darthur (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010); and Lisa Robeson, “Women’s Worship: Female Versions of Chivalric Honor,” in Re-viewing Le Morte D’Arthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes, ed. K. S. Whetter and Raluca Radulescu (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005), 107–18. 2 In Gender and the Chivalric Community, Armstrong explains, “The ubiquitous seemingly necessary presence of female characters who ask favors, bestow gifts, intercede for, and pass judgment on knights, points to the importance of the feminine in establishing, shaping, and confirming masculine knightly identity” (38). 3 Tory V. Pearman, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave, 2010). 4 Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia ­University Press, 1997), 16. 5 Rosemarie Garland Thomson, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,” NWSA 14, no. 3 (2002): 8. 6 I follow Martin B. Shichtman and Kathleen Coyne Kelly in calling the woman “the Leprous Lady.” See Shichtman, “Percival’s Sister: Genealogy, Virginity, and Blood,” Arthuriana 9, no. 2 (1999): 11–20; and Kelly, “The Writable Lesbian and Lesbian Desire in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Exemplaria 14, no. 2 (2002): 239–70. I discuss the mute maiden in Note 26, and I discuss the Leprous Lady at greater length in Chapters 3 and 4.

Notes  163 7 Corrine Saunders, Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010), 118. See also Saunders’s earlier essay “Bodily Narratives: Illness, Medicine and Healing in Middle E ­ nglish Romance,” in Boundaries in Medieval Romance, ed. Neil Cartlidge (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), 175–90. 8 Saunders, Magic, 122. See also Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990) and Monica H. Green, “Women’s Medical Practice and Medical Care in Medieval Europe,” Signs 14 (1989): 434–73. Readers have long attributed a collection of medical treatises known as the Trotula to an unnamed woman who may have practiced medicine in Salerno in the eleventh or twelfth century. She later became called by the title of the texts she is thought to have authored. For more on the Trotula and its possible author(s), see John F. Benton’s “Trotula, Women’s Problems, and the Professionalization of Medicine in the Middle Ages,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 59 (1985): 30–53, and Monica H. Green, The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). 9 Saunders, Magic, 118. 10 Heng, “Enchanted Ground,” 97. 11 Ibid. 12 Saunders, Magic, 130. 13 Donald L. Hoffman’s “Guenevere the Enchantress,” Arthuriana 9, no. 2 (1999): 30–6 further discusses the ways in which the text’s portrayal of Guenevere and Morgan blurs the lines between “queen” and “sorceress.” 14 Heng, “Enchanted Ground,” 99. 15 Saunders, Magic, 235. 16 Ibid., 236. 17 Daniel McGuiness, “Purple Hearts and Coronets: Caring for Wounds in Malory,” Arthurian Interpretations 4, no. 1 (1989): 48. 18 Ibid., 49. 19 The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G.C. Macaulay, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1899–1902), I.144–5. 20 Geoffrey Chaucer, “Troilus and Crisyede,” The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., ed. Larry Benson (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 1.325, and 2.533–4. 21 The modern English translation is from The Lais of Marie de France, trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1978), Lines 483–4, 381. The original is from Lais de Marie de France, ed. Karl Warnke (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1990), Lines 483–4, 381. 22 Laine E. Doggett, Love Cures: Healing and Love Magic in Old French Romance (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). 23 Molly Martin explains, “The explicit connection between Uther’s sickness and being ‘hool’ suggests a lapse in masculinity. Indeed the frequently used word ‘hool’ connotes both individual and communal healths throughout the Morte, thus linking this episode with what follows. Malory’s text becomes then a cycle of absence and wholeness” (20). See also Armstrong’s Gender and the Chivalric Community, which contends that this scene positions Igrayne as an object to be passed between men and thus shore up the masculine bonds essential to keeping whole the Arthurian community (44–8). 24 Martin, Vision and Gender, 18–20. 25 Peter of Spain, in his Viaticum, claims, “Avicenna says that a better cure [for lovesickness] is to lie with the beloved object.” I will discuss the causes,

164 Notes symptoms, and treatments for lovesickness at length later. See Mary F ­ rances Wack, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and Its Commentaries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 234–5. 26 According to Ralph Straus, though some kings were conveyed via horse-­ litter, “Generally, […] the horse-litter was reserved for women, men being unwilling to risk an accusation of effeminacy” (Ch. 1). As a result, the horse-litter was more often used to carry royal women, the sick, the infirm, and the dead. Many of Malory’s injured knights are carried away via horse-litter, including Kay, Tristram, Urry, Lancelot, and Alexander. Guenevere is also transported via horse-litter just before her death. See Ralph Straus, “Carriages and Coaches—Their History and Evolution,” in A History of the Horse-drawn Carriage, Kindle ed., (Hunstanton, ­Norfolk: Whitley Press, 2013). 27 Uther’s cure is recalled later in the Morte, when Percival is publicly assigned his seat at the Round Table in a similar fashion. After being knighted and seated “amonge meane knyghtes,” Percival is approached by a young woman “of hyghe blood” who the narrator explains is “domme and never spak word” (611.17, 20). The woman takes Percival’s hand, leads him to his proper seat at the Round Table, and says, “‘Fair knyghte, take here thy sege, for that sege apperteyneth to the and to none other’” (611.28–9). Just as Uther does, the young maiden dies after guiding Percival to his rightful place. In both cases, an act of cure allows a character to publicly appoint an unknown to a position of power. And, in both cases, those unknowns go on to assume important roles in the book, Arthur as king and Percival as one of the successful Grail Quest knights. 28 Susan Wendell, “Unhealthy Disabled: Treating Chronic Illnesses as ­Disabilities,” Hypatia 16, no. 4 (2001): 24, 24, 20. 29 Wack, Lovesickness, 189. 30 Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John Jay Parry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 33. 31 Julie Singer, Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French Poetry ­(Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011), 14–15, 23–53. The Palamon-Emelye-­ Arcite love-triangle in Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” provides a well-known example of the poetic topos of the love-imprint. After spying Emelye in the garden, both men immediately fall in love. Palamon’s explanation that he “was hurt right now throughout [his] ye / Into [his] herte” succinctly summarizes the process. Chaucer, “The Knight’s Tale,” The Riverside ­C haucer, l. 1096–7. Medical texts, on the other hand, claim that the lover’s image is imprinted in the lover’s brain. 32 For a comprehensive overview of intromission and extramission, see David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 1–42. 33 Singer, Blindness and Therapy, 48. 34 Martin, Vision and Gender, 6–12. For more on gender and vision in the Middle Ages, see Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image, eds. Emma Campbell and Robert Mills (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004). 35 Ibid., 12. 36 Although the text makes explicit that lovesickness is fatal for Elaine and Ettarde, it is less clear about Hallewes, whose intense desire for Lancelot leads her to contemplate necrophilia. When Lancelot renounces her, “she toke suche sorow that she deyde within a fourtenyte” (281.25). Though beyond the scope of this chapter, it bears mentioning that Hallewes is also

Notes  165 associated with disabling and healing as we find that she is the mastermind behind the events in Chapel Perilous (281.91–100), where Lancelot must find the sword and bloody cloth needed to heal Meliot’s wounds (279.19–26 and 281.35–282.1–3). 37 Wack, Lovesickness, 338. 38 Ibid., 175. 39 Vern L. Bullough, “On Being Male in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 38. 40 Pearman, Women and Disability, especially 1–18. 41 For more on the female body and difference in medieval medical literature, see Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and “Western Medicine and Natural Philosophy,” Handbook of Medieval Sexuality Studies, eds. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland, 1996), 51–80; Monica Green, “Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease: Recent Work on Medieval Women’s Medicine,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History: Sexuality and Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, ed. Philip M. Soergel (New York: AMS Press, 2005), 1–46; and Helen King, “The Mathematics of Sex: One to Two, or Two to One?,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History: Sexuality and Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, ed. Phillip M. Soegrel (New York: AMS Press, 2005), 47–58. Despite Thomas Laqueur’s proposal of a “one-sex” mode that describes the female genitals as the inverse of the male’s, Joan Cadden, Monica Green, and Helen King argue that most classical physiological notions of sex identify clear anatomical differences between the male and female bodies. 42 Aristotle writes, “The female always provides the material, the male that which fashions it shape, for this is the power that we say they each possess, and this is what is meant by calling them male and female (738). See De Generatione Animalium, trans. Arthur Platt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910). 43 Galen, following the work of Soranus, discusses “womb suffocation,” an enlargement caused by retained menses that can lead to loss of appetite, respiratory distress, and infirmity. Plato describes the wandering womb, which occurs after the womb’s desire for childbearing is not met and it becomes “vexed and takes ill,” moving throughout the body and causing serious physical ailments. Avicenna underscores the womb’s physical inferiority, noting that, because it is the last organ to be formed, it is the weakest. See Galen, On the Affected Parts, trans. Rudolph E. Siegel (Basel: Karger, 1976), 182–90; Plato, “The Timaeus,” in Plato, vol. 7, trans. R.C. Bury ­(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 251; and Janice Delaney, ­ upton, and Emily Toth, The Curse: A Cultural History of Mary Jane L ­Menstruation, rev. ed. ­(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 47. 44 Peggy McCracken offers a succinct survey of negative discourses on menstruation in the chapter “Menstruation and Monstrous Birth,” in The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval L ­ iterature (­Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 61–76. See also D ­ elaney, Lupton, and Toth, The Curse; Helen Rodnite Lemay, “Introduction,” ­Women’s Secrets: A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’ De ­Secretis Mulierum with Commentaries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 1–58, esp. 35–7; and Green, “Introduction,” esp. 19–22, 39–40.

166 Notes 45 Chapters emphasizing the contaminating power of menstrual blood include Genesis 3.16, Genesis 31.35, Leviticus 15.19–33, Isaiah 30.22, and Esther 14.16. 46 Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 738. 47 Galen, “On the Usefulness of Parts of the Body,” in Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts, ed. Alcuin Blamires (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 41, 42. 48 Carole Everest, “Sight and Sexual Performance in the Merchant’s Tale,” in Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Peter G. Biedler (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1998), 92–3. 49 Wack, Lovesickness, 56. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 101, 63. Wack notes that Gerard of Berry’s Glosses on the Viaticum explains, “From the body’s part are the signs: sunken eyes, since they follow the spiritus racing to the place of the estimative [faculty]; also dryness of the eyes and lack of tears unless weeping occurs on account of the desired object” (201). 52 Jerome, “Against Jovinian,” in The Principal Works of St. Jerome, trans. W. H. Freemantle (New York: Christian Literature Publishing, 1892), 594. 53 Wack, Lovesickness, 219. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., 94. 57 Interestingly, although Pelleas’s lovesickness impedes his ability to perform physical feats of strength, it does not interfere with his chivalrous behavior. In fact, he acknowledges that it is “the hyge Ordir of Knyghthode” that stops him twice from killing Ettarde and Gawain (170.24). In this tale, it is Gawain that is deficient in this area. 58 Edwards, “The Place of Women” and Fries’s “Female Heroes” identify Nyneve as a powerful, yet ambivalent figure capable of both helping and harming knights and upholding and critiquing the Arthurian court. Anne Berthelot’s study illustrates the demonization of Nyneve in Arthurian literature in “From Niniane to Nimue: Demonizing the Lady of the Lake,” in On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas, TX: Scriptorium Press, 2001), 89–101. For Nyneve as chivalric, knightly figure, see Kenneth Hodges, “Swords and Sorceresses: The Chivalry of Malory’s Nyneve,” Arthuriana 12, no. 2 (2002): 78–96. Sue Ellen Holbrook’s “Nymue, the Chief Lady of the Lake, in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” in Speculum 53, no. 4 (1978): 761–77, rpt. in Arthurian Women: A Casebook, ed. Thelma S. Fenster (New York: Routledge, 1996), 97–113, also finds Nyveve to be a positive figure, though she concedes that Nyneve “receives her light from the male heroes whose orbit she moves in” (113). Her later essay ­“Elemental ­G oddesses: Nymue, the Chief Lady of the Lake, and Her Sisters,” in On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas, TX: Scriptorium Press, 2001), 71–88, discusses Nyneve’s role as a kind of goddess in Arthurian literature. Helen Cooper’s The English ­Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) emphasizes that Nyneve’s supernatural powers provide her with the ability to serve as an arbiter of justice, while Amy S. Kaufman identifies Nyneve as a “sovereign” figure who unmoors gender roles in “The Law of the Lake:

Notes  167 Malory’s Sovereign Lady,” Arthuriana 17, no. 3 (2007): 56–73. Kristin Bovaird-Abbo takes these positive readings a step further, arguing for Nyneve’s deliberate political agency and heroism, in “Neglected Yet ­Noble: Nyneve and Female Heroism in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte ­Darthur,” in A Quest of Her Own: Essays on the Female Hero in Modern Fantasy, ed. Lori M. Campbell (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2014), 35–54. 59 La Suite du Merlin, 2:419–20. 60 Holbrook, “Nymue, the Chief Lady of the Lake,” 772; Hodges, “Swords and Sorceresses,” 89. 61 Holbrook, “Nymue, the Chief Lady of the Lake,” 772. 62 Kaufman, “The Law of the Lake,” 63. 63 See Anna Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education in Fifteenth-Century Conduct Books,” in Medieval Conduct, ed. Robert L. A. Clark (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 131–59. 64 For an extended discussion of the punishments of Lady Bisclavret, Gwenore, and Cresseid, see Pearman, Women and Disability, 73–112. 65 Hodges, in “Swords and Sorceresses,” asserts that Nyneve’s “career, defeating a lustful sorcerer, rescuing the king, and then winning a spouse, is suitable for a knight” (90). 66 Kaufman, “The Law of the Lake,” 63. 67 Bovaird-Abbo, “Neglected Yet Noble,” 47. 68 For an extended discussion of Tryamour’s role in this text, see Pearman, Women and Disability, 84–96. 69 Cooper, The English Romance, 197. 70 Hodges, “Swords and Sorceresses,” 90. 71 Kaufman, “The Law of the Lake,” 63. 72 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 142. 73 Ibid., 110. 74 Catherine Batt, “‘Hand for Hand’ and ‘Body for Body’: Aspects of ­Malory’s Vocabulary of Identity and Integrity with Regard to Gareth and Lancelot,” Modern Philology (1994): 269–87. Batt finds that the repeated phrases “hand for hand” and “body for body” occur throughout the Morte and allow Malory to figure in physical terms the text’s thematic exploration of social and individual wholeness. The example of Gareth provides a “straightforward realization of worship” that presents a “model of chivalric progress and social cohesion” that “is inimitable” when used to measure the chivalric identities of other knights, specifically Lancelot (280). I discuss the intersection between physical and spiritual ability and hand imagery in the “Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” in Chapter 5. 75 Ibid., 277. 76 In “‘Hand for Hand,’” Batt writes, “Lyonett is the guardian of Gareth’s ‘worship,’ his public self, while Lyonesse’s affections are the measure of his worth as a lover” (278). 77 Martin, in Vision and Gender, argues that Gareth’s renewed energy is a result of his becoming cognizant that his performance has affected L ­ yonesse negatively, causing her to shriek and cry. In this moment, Gareth “is made aware of his own visibility within a matrix of courtly gazes and the effect of that image on his beloved Lyones” and reacts “with a redoubled masculine effort” (39). 78 Scholars have focused on the ways in which Lyonet’s mistreatment of ­Gareth helps aid his character development. See Armstrong, “Forecast and Recall: Gareth and Tristram,” in Gender and the Chivalric Community,

168 Notes 114–120; Edwards, “Place of Women in the Morte Darthur,” 37–54; Melanie ­McGarrahan Gibson, “Lyonet, Lunete, and Laudine: Carnivalesque Arthurian Women,” in On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas, TX: Scriptorium Press, 2001), 213–27; Joseph R. Ruff, “Malory’s Gareth and Fifteenth-­ Century Chivalry,” in Chivalric Literature: Essays on R ­ elations between Literature and Life in the Latter Middle Ages, ed. Larry D. B ­ enson and John ­L eyerle (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1980), 101–16; Siobhán Mary ­Wyatt, “‘Gyff me goodly langage, and than my care is paste’: Reproach and ­Recognition in Malory’s Tale of Sir Gareth,” ­Arthuriana 25, no. 2 (2015): 129–42. Miriam Rheingold Fuller reads ­Lyonet as a mentor for Gareth in “Method in her Malice: A Reconsideration of Lynet in ­Malory’s Tale of Sir Gareth,” Fifteenth Century Studies 25 (2000): 253–67; and Kristin Bovaird-Abbo finds that Lyonet establishes her own identity throughout her quest with Gareth in “Tough Talk or Tough Love: Lynet and the Construction of Feminine Identity in Thomas M ­ alory’s ‘Tale of Sir Gareth’,” Arthuriana 24, no. 2 (2014): 126–57. 79 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 119. 80 It should be noted that another “feminized” figure, Gareth’s dwarf, who was earlier kidnapped by Sir Gryngamour and then “won” back by Gareth, hides the magical ring in order to make public the knight’s identity. As Emily Huber notes, “This action provokes Gareth’s anger, but establishes Gareth’s fame, for the next time he rides onto the field, he is recognized and announced by the heralds,” thus emphasizing his masculinity (52). H ­ uber notes that Gareth’s dwarf serves an ambivalent role reminiscent of the female enchanters discussed here; he is first presented as a passive object to be exchanged between men, but then “assumes the role of supernatural helper” who proves essential to verifying a knight’s chivalric identity. See “‘Delyver Me My Dwarff!’: Gareth’s Dwarf and Chivalric Identity,” ­Arthuriana 16, no. 2 (2006): 49–53. See also D. Thomas Hanks, Jr., “The Rhetoric of the Folk Fairy Tale in Sir Thomas Malory’s Tale of Sir Gareth,” Arthuriana 13, no. 3 (2003): 52–67. 81 McGuiness, “Purple Hearts and Coronets,” 48. 82 Larry D. Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge: Harvard ­University Press, 1976), 118–19. The tale of La Cote Male Tayle, although it does illustrate the importance of physical ability and wounding to knightly identity, less overtly emphasizes the healing power of women, so I do not discuss it at length here. Indeed, La Cote explicitly affirms that he will not accept a healing salve from his lady, Maledysaunte (462.12–13). His coat, however, stained with the blood of his father’s fatal wounds, aptly reiterates the body chivalric’s dependence upon physical violence. Maledysaunte possesses an uncanny knowledge of this dependence when she reacts to his clothing and nickname upon meeting him: “‘Well may thou be callyd so,’ seyde the damesell, ‘the knyght wyth the evyll-shapyn coote’! But and thou be so hardy to take on the to beare that shylde and to folowe me, wete thou well thy skynne shall be as well hewyn as thy cote’” (462.7–11, my emphasis). Maledysaunte here invokes the “hardinesse” essential to true knighthood and affirms that in order to achieve it, a knight must suffer with his own body. Maledysaunte’s prediction that his own flesh will retain the wounds symbolized by his father’s coat is proven when La Cote, despite attempting to readopt his true name, Sir Breune le Noyre, is “ever aftir for the more party […]called La Cote Male Tayle” (476.16–17). 83 The motif of the Fair Unknown is common in Arthurian romance. This (usually) male character of aristocratic lineage, who either does not know

Notes  169 or conceals his true identity, endures a number of tests to prove his worth as a knight to the Arthurian court. After proving his worth, the character generally becomes aware of or reveals his name and noble origins, thus demonstrating that the motif seeks to show, not that one may move up in society based on his actions, but that a nobleman will behave nobly. As Elizabeth Scala notes, “In the end, we have always already known the origin of the fair unknown; his identity will always be revealed as inherently noble, and that nobility explains rather than is explained by his behavior” (36). See Elizabeth Scala, “Pretty Women: The Romance of the Fair Unknown, Feminism, and Contemporary Romantic Comedy,” Film and History 29, no. 1–2 (1999): 34–45. For a discussion of the history of the motif and its use by Malory, see Robert H. Wilson, “The ‘Fair ­Unknown’ in Malory,” PMLA 58, no. 1 (1943): 1–21; and Thomas L. Wright, “On the Genesis of Malory’s Gareth,” Speculum 57, no. 3 (1982): 569–82. ­A rnold Sanders discusses Malory’s use of the Fair Unknown to comic effect in “Sir ­Gareth and the ‘Unfair Unknown’: Malory’s Use of the Gawain ­Romances,” ­Arthuriana 16, no. 1 (2006): 34–46. 84 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 128. 85 Felicity Riddy, Sir Thomas Malory (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 99. 86 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 125. 87 Saunders, Magic, 247. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid., 248. 90 Mark’s letter of request reveals not only the existence, but also the power, of female enchanters. The women are organized and able to join forces in order to reach the common goal of destroying Alexander. That they work in conjunction with knights also demonstrates the importance of enchanting women to the production, preservation, and even destruction of knighthood. 91 Saunders postulates that this line might be indicative of Malory’s own experience with illness and pain while in prison. See Magic, 251. 92 Ibid., 250–1. 93 Martin, Vision and Gender, 97; and William Fitzhenry, “Comedies of Contingency: Language and Gender in the Book of Sir Tristram,” Arthuriana 14, no. 4 (2004): 11. 94 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 127. 95 Martin, Vision and Gender, 98.

Chapter 2 1 In the Prose Lancelot, Lancelot goes mad a total of three times. Vinaver notes that Malory increases the period of madness in the French Prose Tristan from one month to two years (1528). 2 Thomas Rumble notes the parallels between the two knights in “‘The Tale of Tristram’: Development by Analogy,” in Malory’s Originality: A ­Critical Study of Le Morte Darthur, ed. R.M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns ­Hopkins University Press, 1964), 118–83. Danielle MacBain finds that the knights’ similarities extend beyond the “Tristram” to the Morte’s final books, asserting that Malory’s portrayal of Tristram serves as a paradigm that then governs his representation of Lancelot’s inevitable fall in “The Tristramization of Malory’s Lancelot,” English Studies 1 (1993): 57–65. 3 Judith Silverman Neaman, The Distracted Knight: A Study of Insanity in the Arthurian Romances, Columbia University, PhD dissertation, 1967,

170 Notes 157. Neaman’s study is the first comprehensive examination of mental illness in Arthurian literature; however, due to its publication well before the rise of disability studies in the humanities, it does not analyze mental illness through the lens of disability studies. 4 Mary Frances Wack, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and Its Commentaries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 6. 5 Neaman, The Distracted Knight, 27. 6 Edward Wheatley’s Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval ­C onstructions of a Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010) argues that the Church exerted a great deal of control over medieval notions of disability in its linking of impaired spirituality, or sin, to cultural understandings of the impaired body. The religious aspect of disability, I contend, is one contributing factor out of many that significantly influenced medieval notions of impaired bodies. 7 Penelope Doob, Nebudchadnezzar’s Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 2. 8 Neaman, The Distracted Knight, 277. 9 Dorothy Winters adds that the late twelfth-century romance Robert le ­Diable is an even closer parallel to the Prose Lancelot. See Dorothy ­Winters, “A New Source for Lancelot’s Madness,” Studies in Philology 31, no. 3 (1934): 379–84. 10 Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992), 248. 11 Neaman, The Distracted Knight, especially 143–98. 12 Gwenyth E. Hood, “Medieval Love-Madness and Divine Love,” Mythlore 61 (1990): 20–8, 27. 13 Maureen Fries, “Indiscreet Objects of Desire: Malory’s ‘Tristram’ and the Necessity of Deceit,” in Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), 101. 14 Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte D’Arthur: Re-making Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), 116–24. 15 Molly Martin, Vision and Gender in Malory’s Morte Darthur (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010), 72–3, 77–8. 16 Aleksandra Pfau, “Protecting or Restraining? Madness as a Disability in Late Medieval France,” in Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, ed. Joshua R. Eyler, (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 95. 17 Leigh Ann Craig, “The History of Madness and Mental Illness in the Middle Ages: Directions and Questions,” History Compass 12, no. 9 (2014): 731. Craig offers a cogent overview of the scholarship on madness in the Middle Ages. 18 Pfau, “Protecting or Restraining?,” 96. See also Wendy Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medieval ­England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), for more on the legal treatment of the mentally ill in the Middle Ages. 19 Doob, Nebudchadnezzar’s Children, 27–8. 20 Ibid., 11. 21 Laura Jose, “Monstrous Conceptions: Sex, Madness and Gender,” Critical Studies 5, no. 2–3 (2008): 154–5. 22 Martin, Vision and Gender, 72–8. 23 Neaman, The Distracted Knight, 13. 24 Martin, Vision and Gender, 78. Neaman also notes, “The mad man’s casting off his clothes represents his rejection of his own humanity,” in The Distracted Knight, 175. For more on clothing and gender in Malory,

Notes  171 see Kathleen Coyne Kelly, “Malory’s Body Chivalric” Arthuriana 6, no. 4 (1996): 52–71; and Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 129–33. 25 For more on the wild man motif, see Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment, and Demonology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952); Larry D. Benson, Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 67–83; Neaman, The Distracted Knight, 143–269; and Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children, 134–207. 26 Neaman, The Distracted Knight, 200, 201. 27 Sylvia Huot explains, “Many [court fools] were undoubtedly skilled comedians whose witty banter and astute grasp of social and political trends allowed them to provide both entertainment and commentary. It is equally clear, however, that medieval courts often kept people whose comic function was far from voluntary, and who might today be categorized as mentally ill or mentally disabled” (44), in Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Found and Lost (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 28 See Eilza Buhrer, “‘But what is to be said of a fool?’: Intellectual Disability in Medieval Thought and Culture,” in Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age,” ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 314–43; and Irina Metzler, Fools and ­Idiots?: Intellectual Disability in the Middle Ages (Manchester: ­Manchester University Press, 2016). As Buhrer notes, while medical and religious authorities did not categorize intellectual disability as a separate, natural, and incurable condition, legal discourse began to produce this distinction, perhaps serving as one point of many influences that led to our modern view. For more on the medieval juridical distinction between idiocy and madness, see also Richard Neugebauer, “Mental H ­ andicap in M ­ edieval and Early Modern England,” in From Idiocy to Mental D ­ eficiency: ­Historical Perspectives on People with Learning Disabilities, ed. David Wright and Anne Digby (London: Routledge, 1996), 22–43. 29 Metzler, Fools and Idiots?, 208–9. 30 Interestingly, in the Guiron le Courtois, part of the thirteenth-century French Palamedes, Dagonet is portrayed as a madman. Later retellings, including Sophie Jewett’s 1905 The Dwarf’s Quest: A Ballad, Oscar Fay Adams’s 1906 poem “The Pleading of Dagonet,” and Alfred Angelo ­Attanasio’s 1998 novel, The Wolf and the Crown, depict him as a dwarf. 31 Gergely Nagy, “A Fool of a Knight, a Knight of a Fool: Malory’s Comic Knights,” in Arthuriana 14, no. 4 (2004): 63, emphasis in original, and 64. 32 Kennedy, Knighthood, 36. 33 Nagy, “A Fool of a Knight,” 64. 34 It should be noted that the brachet, a gift from Tristram to Isode, was originally given to him by Faramon’s daughter, who earlier dies of lovesickness for Tristram. The dog is thus passed from one lovesick lover (Faramon’s daughter) to her beloved (Tristram) who then passes it along to his beloved by whom he suffers lovesickness (Isode). 35 In Vision and Gender, Martin writes, “Palomydes’s liminality is of course greatly heightened by his Saracen status” (109). In “The (Non-) ­C hristian Knight in Malory: A Contradiction in Terms?,” Arthuriana 16, no. 2 (2006): 30–4, Dorsey Armstrong explains that Palomides’s identity as a Saracen upsets a cohesive notion of knighthood in the Morte: “[A]s the outsider who wants in, a figure of otherness who aspires the

172 Notes sameness and inclusion, Palomides challenges the idealized homogeneity of knightly Arthurian identity” (30). See also Armstrong’s, “Postcolonial Palomides: Malory’s Saracen Knight and the Making of Arthurian Community,” ­E xemplaria 18, no. 1 (2006): 175–203. For more on ­Palomides as Other, see also Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms: The Narrative of ­C ombat in Le Morte Darthur (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), 108–33; Paul R. ­Rovang, Malory’s Anatomy of Chivalry (Madison, NJ: ­Fairleigh ­Dickinson University Press, 2015): 117–32; and ­B onnie Wheeler, “Grief in Avalon: Sir Palomydes’s Psychic Pain,” in Grief and Gender: 700–1700, ed. Jennifer C. Vaught (New York: Palgrave M ­ acmillan, 2003), 65–80. 36 The lovesickness of Kehydyns and Palomides illustrates the distinction between lovesickness and love-madness in Malory. Although the two clearly suffer from many of the symptoms of lovesickness—pallor, melancholy, and obsessive thoughts—neither suffers from total loss of sanity. 37 While it may be tempting for readers to examine Blyaunte’s dwarf as a disabled figure, as he is depicted here, his size does not disable him in the social sense of the term. He does not seem to have any physical impairments, behaves rationally, and is the most knowledgeable on how best to treat Lancelot in his condition. 38 Bartholomeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, trans. John Trevisa (1397), Book 7, Ch. 6. Two examples of binding occur in The Book of Margery Kempe; both she and woman she later encounters are restrained during fits of madness after childbirth. In both cases, the women are bound in order to prevent them from self-harm. See The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), 55 and 328. 39 Pfau, “Protecting or Restraining?,” 102. 40 Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children, 41. 41 Lancelot’s injury to his hands, which renders him incapable of participating in physical combat, perhaps foreshadows the injury he will receive later when he breaks Guenevere’s window in order to spend the night with her. Chapter 5 discusses this episode and the plenitude of hand imagery that pervades Lancelot’s experiences with disability after the Grail Quest. 42 Anne Rooney, Hunting in Middle English Literature (Cambridge: Boydell, 1993), 78. 43 Ibid., 81. 44 Ibid., 81–2. 45 Batt, Malory’s Morte, 120, 121. 46 MED, d. 1a. and 2a. 47 Ibid., 3a. 48 Batt, Malory’s Morte, 121. 49 Huot, Madness in Medieval French Literature, 11. 50 E. Kay Harris, “Lancelot’s Vocation: Traitor Saint,” in The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations, ed. William W. Kibler (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 232. 51 Ibid., 233. 52 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 207. Chapter 3 1 Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 50, 51. Karras cites the examples of Isode’s contestation of Sir Dinadan’s

Notes  173 knightliness because he lacks a lover and Tristram’s assertion to him that a knight does not have prowess unless he is a lover (693.29–30, 689, 5–6). 2 Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003), 70. In particular, Armstrong discusses Lancelot’s repeated service to ladies in “A Noble Tale of Sir ­Launcelot du Lake” as an illustration of the ways in which knights must publicly demonstrate their heteronormativity in order to maintain their masculine identities, see 70–97. 3 I borrow the addition of “compulsory able-mindedness” from Alison Kafer, who expands Robert McRuer’s queer/crip focus to include considerations of mental, cognitive, and sensory impairments in critical conversations about disability. The existence of compulsory able-mindedness in Malorian knighthood is demonstrated in the examples of the madness of Tristram and Lancelot; Chapter 2 reveals that knights must be of sound body and mind in order to reenter the chivalric community. In my analysis of the impairments in this chapter, I most frequently use the phrase “compulsory able-bodiedness,” as the impairments I study here are all physical in nature. See Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013), esp. 15–17; and Robert McRuer, Crip ­Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: New York ­University Press), 2006. 4 Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip, 17. 5 McRuer, Crip Theory, 9. 6 Ibid., 2. 7 Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip, 17. 8 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, Reprint, (New York: Routledge, 1999); and McRuer, Crip Theory, 10. 9 In Gender Trouble, Butler writes, “The replication of heterosexual constructs in non-heterosexual frames brings into relief the utterly constructed status of the so-called heterosexual original. Thus, gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but, rather as copy is to copy. […]. [T]he power regimes of heterosexualism and phallogogcentrism seek to augment themselves through a constant repetition of their logic, their metaphysic, and their naturalized ontologies” (41–2). 10 McRuer, Crip Theory, 31. 11 Throughout this chapter, I follow Tison Pugh in noting that “the queer” involves “both sexual acts and breaches of normativity [and] comprises sexual, amatory, and gendered practices that ostensibly depart from prevailing cultural norms” (3). As a result, my analyses consider non-normative bodies, behaviors, sexualities, and expressions of gender as “queer.” See Pugh, Sexuality and its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature (New York: Palgrave, 2008). 12 Kenneth Hodges, “Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” Studies in Philology 106, no. 1 (2009): 23. 13 Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, trans. Arthur Platt (Oxford: ­Clarendon Press, 1910), 653. 14 Jeffrey T. Schnapp, “Touch and Transport in the Middle Ages,” MLN 124, no. 5s (2009): 117n.3. 15 Ibid., 118. 16 Ibid., 118. 17 Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick, “Bodies Together: Touch, Ethics and ­Disability,” in Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory, eds. Marian Corker and Tom Shakespeare (London: Continuum, 2002), 62.

174 Notes 18 Price and Shildrick, 70. They quote Ros Diprose, “Sexuality and the Clinical Encounter,” in Vital Signs: Feminist Reconfigurations of the Bio/­logical Body, eds. Margrit Shildrick and Janet Price (Edinburgh: E ­ dinburgh ­University Press, 1998), 38. 19 Margrit Shildrick, Dangerous Discourses of Disability Subjectivity, and Sexuality (New York: Palgrave, 2009), 23. 20 Ibid., 30. 21 Julie Orlemanski, “How to Kiss a Leper,” Postmedieval 3, no. 2 (2012): 142–57, 149. For more on the leper’s kiss, see Catherine Peyroux, “The Leper’s Kiss,” in Monks, Nuns, and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval ­Society, eds. Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: ­Cornell University Press, 2000), 172–88. For a queer reading of the leper’s kisses shared by Margery Kempe and leper women, see Jonathan Hsy, “‘Be more strange and bold’: Kissing Lepers and Female Same-Sex Desire in ‘The Book of Margery Kempe’,” Early Modern Women, 5 (2010): 189–99. 22 Orlemanski, “How to Kiss,” 154. 23 Carolyn Dinshaw, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Preand Postmodern (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 151. 24 Robert McRuer and Abby L. Wilkerson, ‘Introduction’, in Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies, special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 9.1–2 (2003), 14. 25 Notable examples include John Boswell’s Same-sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Vintage, 1994); Allen J. Frantzen’s Before the Closet: Same-sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Dinshaw, Getting Medieval; Karma Lochrie, Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); and James Schultz, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 26 Lochrie, Heterosyncrasies, xix. 27 Richard Zeikowitz, Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of SameSex Desire in the 14th Century (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 25. 28 Gretchen Mieskzkowski, “‘Lancelot’s Galehot, Malory’s Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature,” Arthuriana, 5, no. 1 (1995): 28. 29 Lacan notes that the point de capiton quilts together the signifier and the signified, creating the illusion of a fixed meaning: “It’s the point of convergence that enables everything that happens in this discourse to be situated retroactively and prospectively” (268). See Jacques Lacan, The Psychoses: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book III, 1955–1956, trans. Russell Grigg, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (London: Taylor & Francis, 1993). 30 Pugh, Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents, 3. 31 Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 11. 32 Ibid. 33 Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment during the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (London: Routledge, 2006), 47. 34 Joshua Eyler, “Introduction,” Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, ed. Joshua Eyler (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 3. 35 Studies that have investigated medieval literature that links outward physical differences to inward sinfulness include Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind; Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, ed. Joshua Eyler (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010); Tory V. Pearman, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (New York:

Notes  175 Palgrave, 2010); and the special essay cluster on “Disability and the Social Body” in postmedieval 3.2 (2012): 142–94. 36 David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 63. 37 Wheatley, 134. See pp. 129–54 for an extended discussion of blinding as punishment for sexual transgression in medieval English literature. 38 Karen Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs and Launcelot’s Buttock: Ignoble Wounds and Moral Transgression in the Morte Darthur,” Arthurian Literature 31 (2014): 35–59. 39 Ibid., 39. Cherewatuk cites Genesis 24.2, 24.9, and 47.29 as biblical examples of this tradition. 40 See, for example, Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs” and Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance in Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006), 14–18, and 91; Daniel F. Pigg, “Caught in the Act: Malory’s ‘Sir Gareth’ and the Construction of Sexual Performance,” in Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a ­F undamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2008), 633–48; Hodges, “Wounded Masculinity,” 27; Christina Francis, “Reading M ­ alory’s Bloody ­B edrooms,” Arthurian Literature 28 (2011): 1–19; and Megan Leitch, “(Dis)Figuring Transgressive Desire: Blood, Sex, and Stained Sheets in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthurian Literature 28 (2011): 34. 41 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 38. Here, Cohen is discussing Geoffrey of Monmouth’s giant of Mount St. Michel, but his comments aptly apply to Malory’s version of the monster as well. 42 Irina Metzler, A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment (New York: Routledge, 2013). 43 Cohen, Of Giants, 38. 44 Ibid. 45 Corinne J. Saunders, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2001), 207–11. Saunders asserts that the giant of Mount St. Michel “represents the most monstrous example of a rapist in the Morte” (244). 46 Cohen, Of Giants, 37; Saunders, Rape and Ravishment, 208. 47 For a detailed discussion of the nuanced differences among the four versions of the scene, see Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 13–16. 48 D. Thomas Hanks, “Malory’s Way with His Source for ‘The Giant of Saint Michael’s Mount,’” Arthurian Interpretations 4, no. 2 (1990): 31n8. 49 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 17. 50 Donald L. Hoffman, “The Ogre and the Virgin: Varieties of Sexual Experience in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthurian Interpretations 1, no. 1 (1986): 20. 51 Terence McCarthy, An Introduction to Malory (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1988), 18. 52 Hoffman, “The Ogre,” 19. 53 Hanks, “Malory’s Way,” 29. Hanks cites the lines in the Alliterative Morte at 1150–51 for contrast. 54 Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), 68. 55 Larissa Tracy, “Introduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of ­Castration,” in Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013), 20.

176 Notes 56 Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs,” 42. 57 Ibid. 58 Joan Cadden explains Aristotle’s influential notion that heat of the male body refined blood, rendering it semen: “the male heart […] effected the refinement of a portion of useful blood into a white, spirituous substance subsequently stored in the testicles” (22), in Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See also Danielle Jacquart and Claude T ­ homassett, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans. Matthew Adamson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 50–52. 59 See Cherewatuk, Marriage, 14–23, for a discussion of the social implications of Gareth’s marriage to Lyonesse. 60 See Dhira B. Mahoney, “The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory’s Transformation of the Queste,” in Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak ­(Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), 109–28; and Sandra Ness Ihle, Malory’s Grail Quest: Invention and Adaptation in ­Medieval Prose Romance (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 4. See also Chapter 4. 61 Robert L. Kelly, “Wounds, Healing, and Knighthood in Malory’s Tale of Lancelot and Guenevere,” in Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spivak (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publication, 1985), 174. Stephen Atkinson, in “They…toke their shyldys before them and drew oute their swerdys…’: Inflicting and Healing Wounds in Malory’s Morte Darthur, in Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, eds. Larissa Tracy and Kelly DeVries (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 519–43, agrees that the wounds of the Grail Quest possess “the sort of spiritual significance attached to all elements of the Grail world” (539). K.S. Whetter, conversely, argues that the association with wounds and sin is not always so overt, even on the Grail Quest. See K.S. Whetter, “Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur,” in Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare, ed. Corinne Saunders, Françoise Le Saux, and Neil Thomas (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), 170. 62 Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs,” 40. 63 Jill Mann, “Malory and the Grail Legend,” in A Companion to Malory, eds. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 214. 64 Compare to the Chapter 1 discussion of Alexander the Orphan, who would also rather suffer the loss of his genitals than submit to Morgan’s sexual whims. 65 Mann, “Malory and the Grail,” 215. 66 See Tracy, “Introduction,” 19–24; Klaus van Eickels, “Gendered Violence: Castration and Blindness as Punishment for Treason in Normandy and ­A nglo-Modern England,” Gender & History 16 (2004): 588–602; Mathew Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism in the Middle Ages,” in A ­Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland, 1996), 279–306, 287–90. The most famous Western medieval example of castration as punishment is that of Peter Abelard, who was castrated for his sexual transgressions. For more on Abelard, see Tracy, “Introduction,” 12–19; Bonnie Wheeler, “Origenary Fantasies: Abelard’s Castration and Confession,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, eds. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New York, Garland, 1997), 107–28; Martin Irvine, “Abelard and (Re)Writing the Male Body,” in ­Becoming Male, 87–106; and Jacqueline Murray, “Mystical Castration:

Notes  177 Some Reflections on Peter Abelard, Hugh of Lincoln, and Sexual Control,” in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. Jacqueline Murray (New York: Garland, 1999), 73–91. 67 Eusebius’s fourth-century Ecclesiastical History recounts Origen’s life and self-castration. 68 Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism,” 283–5. 69 Tracy, “Introduction,” 5. See also Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism,” 286. 70 Jed Chandler, “Eunuchs of the Grail,” in Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages, 231. 71 Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York: Routledge, 2002), 175. 72 Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch, 19. 73 Tracy, “Introduction,” 8. 74 Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism,” 286, 284. 75 Ibid., 285. 76 Tracy, “Introduction,” 10; Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism,” 286–7; and The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 97–8. 77 Tracy, “Introduction,” 10; Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism,” 286–7. 78 Anna Klosowska, Queer Love in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 5. 79 The narrator surmises, “I trowe he were a gelding or a mare” (691). ­C haucerians generally agree that the Pardoner’s possible eunuchism, along with his indeterminate gender and sexuality, situate him as queer. See, for example, Monica McAlpine, “The Pardoner’s Homosexuality and How It Matters,” PMLA 95 (1980): 8–22; Stephen F. Kruger, “Claiming the ­Pardoner: ­Toward a Gay Reading of Chaucer’s ‘Pardoner’s Tale,’” ­E xemplaria 6 (1994): 115–39; Carolyn Dinshaw, “Chaucer’s Queer ­Touches/A Queer Touches Chaucer,” Exemplaria 7, no. 1 (1995): 75–92; and Richard Z ­ eikowitz, “Silenced But Not Stifled: The Disruptive Queer Power of Chaucer’s Pardoner,” The Dalhousie Review (2002): 55–73. 80 Klosowska, Queer Love, 23. 81 I follow Martin B. Shichtman and Kathleen Coyne Kelly in calling the woman “the Leprous Lady.” See Shichtman, “Percival’s Sister: Genealogy, Virginity, and Blood,” Arthuriana 9, no. 2 (1999): 11–20; and Kelly, “The Writable Lesbian and Lesbian Desire in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Exemplaria 14.2 (Autumn 2002): 239–70. 82 Shichtman, “Percival’s Sister,” 18. Kelly’s “The Writable Lesbian” also reads this scene as a lesbian union. 83 Kelly, “The Writable Lesbian,” 243, 264, author’s emphasis. Kelly explains, “The ‘writable’ lesbian in my title is an attempt to ameliorate the risk of reading the lesbian into a medieval literary text” (243). For Kelly, the “writable” suggest a text that is “permeable enough for the reader to enter into, ambiguous enough for multiple readings” (243). Ultimately, she contends “that the episode of Percivale’s sister and the Leprous Lady” emphasizes “gynesocial exchange and exclusivity, dramatizes certain cultural anxieties about feminine desire and its ‘proper’ object” (244). 84 Shichtman, “Percival’s Sister,” 15. 85 In the Middle Ages, leprosy and leprous-like illnesses were frequently linked with sins, often sexual, as both a cause and effect of the diseases; contradictorily, however, Christ’s miraculous cure of lepers in three of the gospels

178 Notes (Matthew 8:2–4, Mark 1:40–5, and Luke 5:12–6) as well as Lazarus’s supposed leprosy (although never directly identified) imbues the disease with Christological connotations and the promise of divine redemption. See Byron Lee Grigsby, Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (New York: Routledge, 2004); and Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006). For castration as a treatment for leprosy, see Luke Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 259–60. Hugh of Orival, bishop of London, pursued castration as a treatment for his leprosy; see William of Malmesbury, The Deeds of the Bishops of England, trans. David Preest (Woodbridge, B ­ oydell, 2002), 95. 86 Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchsim, 286; and Tracy, “Introduction,” 5. 87 Susan Murray, in “Women and Castles in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory,” Arthuriana 13, no. 1 (2003): 17–41, reads the lady’s illness as sexual in nature (30–4). 88 MED, 1a., 3b, 3c. This reading is indebted to Kathleen Coyne Kelly’s analysis of the staunching of Belleus’s blood, which contends that halting the flow of blood heals Belleus’s body while also containing the homoerotic tension of the scene as I will discuss later. See Kathleen Coyne Kelly, ­“Malory’s Body Chivalric” Arthuriana 6, no. 4 (1996): 61. 89 Hodges, “Wounded Masculinity,” 30. While her communion with the Leprous Lady might be short-lived, Chapter 4 demonstrates that Percival’s sister sets into motion a series of important reunions throughout the Grail Quest and proves invaluable to Galahad’s ultimate communion with the Grail. 90 Malory specifically uses the singular buttock, despite the fact that the plural is much more common in Middle English. See Cherewatuk, ­“Malory’s Thighs,” 45n28. Malory uses the word buttock four times (1104.28, 1105.9 and 15, and 1114.6), indicating that the arrow penetrates only one buttock. 91 As noted by Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs,” 47. 92 Ibid. 93 Edmund Reiss, Sir Thomas Malory (New York: Twayne, 1966), 166–8; Kelly, “Wounds, Healing, and Knighthood,” 186; Earl R. Anderson, “Malory’s ‘Fair Maid of Ascolat,’” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 87, no.  2 (1986), 244–5; Catherine LaFarge, “The Hand of the Huntress: Repetition and Malory’s Morte Darthur,” in New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts, ed. Isobel Armstrong, (London: Routledge, 1992), 263–80; Maud McInerney, “Malory’s Lancelot and the Lady Huntress,” in On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of ­M aureen Fries, eds. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst, (Dallas, TX: Scriptorium, 2001), 245–57; and Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs,” 51–9, all link the huntress to Diana. LaFarge also notes that the fairy Diana of Arthurian romance connects the huntress with figures like the Lady of the Lake (266–7), while Cherewatuk adds that one of Diana’s victims, Actaeon, is a parallel to Lancelot (53). 94 John Boswell explains, “[Sodomy] has connoted in various times and places anything from ordinary heterosexual intercourse in an atypical position to oral sexual contact with animals” (93n2), in Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980). See also Mark Jordan, The Invention of

Notes  179 Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Karma Lochrie, Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Dinshaw, Getting Medieval; and Robert Mills, “Homosexuality: Specters of Sodom,” in A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages, vol. 2, ed. Julie Peakman (Oxford: Berg, 2012), 57–79. 95 Critics have presented multiple readings of the symbolism of the wound, but all agree it indicates a punishment of some kind. Reiss argues that the hind represents Guenevere, and the arrow is thus a punishment for her behavior (166–8), while Kelly, “Wounds, Healing, and Knighthood,” finds that Lancelot is also punished by the injury (186–7). Anderson contends that the wound represents justice for the death of Elaine of Astolat (244–5). LaFarge’s “The Hand of the Huntress,” however, notes that because adultery is unspeakable to Malory, it resurfaces in the huntress scene as a way to punish Lancelot for his behavior. McInerney agrees that the wound is punitive, but asserts that the scene demonstrates that Malory feels personally betrayed by Lancelot’s behavior, in “Malory’s Lancelot” (255). Cherewatuk finds that the wound is multivalent: it demonstrates Lancelot’s affront to women, is symbolic of the inevitable fall of the Round Table, and positions Lancelot as an object of desire, in “Malory’s Thighs” (59). 96 McInerney, “Malory’s Lancelot,” 248. It is important to note that one of the scene’s source texts, La Mort le Roi Artu, describes the prey, there pursued by a male knight, as a stag, so Malory does change his animal from male to female. 97 Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs,” 56. 98 LaFarge, “The Hand of the Huntress,” 265. 99 Coined in the 1990s to describe those within the queer movement who expressed or experienced gender as queer, genderqueer is being used increasingly to describe people who do not fit within or identify with societal gender norms. Similar to the term queer, which opens up definitions of sexuality beyond a heterosexual/homosexual binary, genderqueer opens up definitions of identity beyond a masculine/feminine binary. Malory’s depiction of the huntress as possessing both masculine and feminine attributes positions her as genderqueer. See Riki Wilchins, “A Certain Kind of Freedom: Power and the Truth of Bodies—Four Essays on Gender,” in GenderQueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary, eds. Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins (Los Angeles, CA: Alyson, 2002), 23–66. 100 Lochrie, Heterosyncrasies, 104–5. 101 The OED cites the use of arrow for penis and quiver for vagina in Ecclesiasticus 26:15 of the Wycliffe Bible (“arrow,” OED, 2b.). The MED notes the use of hed(e) for the top or end of the penis in phrases such as “hed(e) of the yerd” (“yerd,” MED, 5a.). See also “head,” OED, 19d. 102 See Mieskzkowski, “‘Lancelot’s Galehot,” 21–51; McInerney, “Malory’s Lancelot,” 251–2; and Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs,” 48. 103 Mieszkowski, “Lancelot’s Galehot,” 47. 104 Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs, 46. 105 Even after Lavain’s marriage to Filelolly, he and Urry (and presumably Filelolly) continue their devotion to Lancelot until the conferral of earldoms, after which they recede from the text. 106 Kenneth Hodges, “Haunting Pieties: Malory’s Use of Chivalric Christian Exempla after the Grail,” Arthuriana 17, no. 2 (2007): 42. 107 Mieszkowski, “Lancelot’s Galehot,” 47. 108 Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs,” 50.

180 Notes 09 Kelly, “Malory’s Body Chivalric,” 60. 1 110 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 130. 111 “Quant Lancelot sant celui qui einsint le baisoit, si saut sus touz dsevez et cuide bien que ce soit dame ou damoisele: si l’aert a .II. braz. Et cil s’apercoit tantost et cuide que se soit li licheierres sa fames, si se desvoleppe de lui et aert a .II. braz.” [As soon as Lancelot felt the knight kissing him, he leapt on him all confused, thinking it must be some lady or damsel, and grabbed him with both arms. The knight immediately realized it was a man, thought it was his wife’s lover, loosed himself from Lancelot’s grasp, and seized him with both arms.] The French is from Lancelot: roman en prose du XIIIè siècle, vol. 5, ed. Alexandre Micha (Geneva: Libraries Droz, 1980), 44. The English is from Norris J. Lacy, Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, vol. 3 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2010), 217. 112 Kelly, “Malory’s Body Chivalric,” 60. 113 Ibid. 114 Compare to Lancelot’s attempt to fight in the tournament on All Saints Day after incurring his side wound and his immediate participation in the ­Candlemas tournament after receiving his buttock wound. In the first attempt, Lancelot is not fully healed and thus reopens his wound, leading to an extended time away from the battlefield. In the second attempt, he is able to return to his seat in the saddle and thus publicly reassert his masculinity and able-bodiedness. 115 In Gender and the Chivalric Community, Armstrong observes that the men do not speak until after Lancelot wounds Belleus, demonstrating that “[w]ithin the ideology of chivalry, it is acceptable—and even preferable— to be penetrated by the sword of another knight and die, masculinity intact, than the (literally) unspeakable alternative” (94). 116 Kelly, “Malory’s Body Chivalric,” 61. 117 In “Wounded Masculinity,” Hodges notes that the lady draws attention to Belleus’s physical wounds, as well as the psychological wounds she herself has endured during the ordeal, and indicates that a true healing will not be complete until Belleus’s (and, as a result, her) place in the social body matches his healed physical body (25–6). 118 Mieszkowski, “Lancelot’s Galehot,” 47. 119 Dinshaw, Getting Medieval, 151.

Chapter 4 1 Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 146. 2 Ibid., 161. 3 Stephen Atkinson, “They…toke their shyldys before them and drew oute their swerdys…”: Inflicting and Healing Wounds in Malory’s Morte ­Darthur, in Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, eds. Larissa Tracy and Kelly DeVries (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 539. 4 Dhira B. Mahoney notes that instead of selecting the more theological Queste, he could have made use of the Prose Tristan or Hardying’s Chronicle, both of which are more secular in tone. See Dhira B. Mahoney, “The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory’s Transformation of the Queste,” in ­Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), 112–13. 5 Vinaver, ed., Works, vol. 3, 1521–22.

Notes  181 6 Charles Moorman, “‘Tale of the Sankgreall’: Human Frailty,” in Malory’s Originality: A Critical Study of the Morte Darthur, ed., R.M. ­Lumiansky (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), 185–6; and Stephen C. B. Atkinson, “Malory’s Lancelot and the Quest of the Grail,” in S­ tudies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute ­Publications, 1985), 129. 7 Many scholars have followed Vinaver in noting Malory’s secularization of the Queste, which was long thought to have been authored by a C ­ istercian monk, as Pauphilet first claimed. Though recent critics generally agree that the Queste was not written by a Cistercian, some, such as Pauline Matarasso, contend its religious references are similar to those in ­Cistercian practice. Others, like Jill Mann, find no links between the text and the monastic order. See Albert Pauphilet, Ètudes sur la Queste del Saint Graal (Paris: H. Champion, 1980); Pauline Matarasso, The ­Redemption of ­C hivalry: A Study of the Queste del Saint Graal (Geneva: Droz, 1979); and Jill Mann, “Malory and the Grail Legend,” in A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 203–20. 8 Sandra Ness Ihle, Malory’s Grail Quest: Invention and Adaptation in ­Medieval Prose Romance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 4. 9 Mahoney, “The Truest,” 110. 10 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 145. 11 Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), 19. 12 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 20. 13 As discussed in the introduction, the normative drives of Malory’s text seek to prostheticize or control, cure, or eliminate disability. See David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependency of Discourse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). 14 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 19. Though Lynch’s study does not make use of concepts of disability or disability theory, his use of the binary “normal/disabled” intuits the prominent role disability plays in Malory’s text. 15 As noted in Chapter 3, I follow Martin B. Shichtman and Kathleen Coyne Kelly in calling the woman “the Leprous Lady.” See Shichtman, “Percival’s Sister: Genealogy, Virginity, and Blood,” Arthuriana 9, no. 2 (1999): 11–20; and Kelly, “The Writable Lesbian and Lesbian Desire in Malory’s Morte D ­ arthur,” Exemplaria 14, no. 2 (Autumn 2002): 239–70. 16 Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 156. 17 Bettina Bildhauer, “Blood,” in Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, ed. Carl Lindhal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 45. For a wider discussion of the discursive notions of blood in the Middle Ages, see also Bildhauer’s Medieval Blood (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006). 18 See Carolyn Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 19 According to legend Longinus, a blind centurion, pierced Christ’s side during the Crucifixion, causing the blood to drip into his, cure his blindness, and lead him to convert to Christianity. Though Malory does not mention the soldier’s blindness, the use of his spear to both cause and cure the Dolorous Stroke emphasizes the book’s reliance on disability and cure. For a survey of Longinus and blindness in medieval literature see Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 84–9.

182 Notes 20 Kisha G. Tracy, “Representations of Disability: The Medieval Literary ­Tradition of the Fisher King,” in Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, ed. Joshua R. Eyler (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 105. Tracy outlines three ways in which the Fisher King’s ­disability is represented in Arthurian texts: as a medium for character growth, a divine test from God, and a penance for sin. In Malory, as this chapter shows, he serves as an agent through which Galahad proves his own spiritual nature. Kristina Hildebrand notes that the presence of multiple disabled Grail kings in Malory suggests that disability “is the subject of confusion and slippage” that reveals disability to be “a site of anxiety for the intended audience” (77). See “Sitting on the Sidelines: Disability and Malory,” Arthuriana 27, no. 3 (2017): 66–80. 21 For a cogent discussion of the biblical and literary history of Joseph of Arimathea and Longinus, see Richard Barber, “Obscure Histories, Dubious Relics,” in The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 116–34. 22 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 74. Scholarship on the depiction and import of blood in the Morte is vast. Some notable works include include Laurie Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, “No Pain, No Gain: Violence as ­Symbolic Capital in Malory’s ‘Morte d’Arthur’,” Arthuriana 8, no. 2 (1998): 115–34; ­Kathleen Coyne Kelly, “Malory’s Body Chivalric” Arthuriana 6, no. 4 (1996): 52–71; Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms; Kenneth Hodges, “Wounded ­Masculinity: ­I njury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte ­Darthur,” Studies in Philology 106, no. 1 (2009): 14–31; and Catherine La Farge, “Blood and Love in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” in A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c. 1300–1500, ed. Peter Brown (Malden, MA: ­Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 634–48. A recent volume in Arthurian Literature features essays devoted to the topic of blood and sex in Malory; see “Blood, Sex, Malory: Essays on the ‘Morte Darthur,’” Arthurian Literature 28 (2011). 23 Atkinson, “They…toke their shyldys,” 521. 24 OED, sang royal, def. 1 and 2. 25 Emma Jung and Marie-Louise Von Franz, “The Central Symbol of the Legend: The Grail as Vessel,” in The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Dhira B. ­Mahoney (New York: Garland, 2000), 151. 26 See Jill Mann, “Malory and the Grail Legend,” in A Companion to Malory, eds. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 202–20 for a history of Grail’s development in literature. 27 Ihle, Malory’s Grail, 162–4. 28 See Charlotte Morse, The Pattern of Judgment in the Queste and Cleanness (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978); and Mann, “Malory and the Grail.” 29 Mann, “Malory and the Grail,” 208. 30 Christ’s wounds destabilize not only notions of gender and ability, but also sexuality and allow for queer readings of medieval mystical devotion. Karma Lochrie explains, “The polymorphousness of Christ’s body, with its feminine genital wound and its simultaneous masculine properties, introduces confusion at a very foundational level of religious language and, therefore, of religious devotion,” in “Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies,” in Constructing Medieval Sexuality, eds. Karma Lochrie, Peggy McCracken, and James A. Schultz (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 194. 31 Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for this insight.

Notes  183 32 René Girard notes that the pharmakos “is considered a polluted object, whose living presence contaminates everything […] and whose death purges the community of its ills” (100). See Girard, Violence and the ­S acred ­(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). 33 Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (London: The Athlone Press, 1981), 129; author’s emphasis. 34 Ibid., 127–34. 35 Emphasizing the sight of the Grail differs from Queste’s concern with the knights’ ability to “savoir la verite del Graal” [to know the truth of the Holy Grail]” (61). See also Ihle, Malory’s Grail; Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 150; and Molly Martin, Vision and Gender in Malory’s Morte Darthur ­(Woodbridge, D.S. Brewer, 2010), 118–47. 36 With regard to blindness in particular, scholars have found that the impairment was sometimes used as punishment for crime in medieval ­Western Europe, particularly as a sentence for crimes of treason and sexual transgression. Blinding also appears in the bible as a punishment for the ­Sodomites’ same-sex desires and in some saints’ lives as punishment for various sins. New Testament representations of Jews as “blind” to spiritual truth further conflated physical blindness and inward sinfulness. For blinding as punishment, see Genevieve Bührer-Thierry, “‘Just Anger’ or ‘Vengeful Anger’? Punishment of Blinding in the Early Medieval West,” in Anger's Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. B ­ arbara H. Rosenwein (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998), 75–91; Klaus van Eickels, “Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding as Punishment for Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman England,” Gender & History 16 (2004): 588–602; Tory V. Pearman, “Refiguring Disability: Deviance, Blinding, and the Supernatural in Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal,”Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 3 (2009): 131–46. Wheatley has documented the confused notions of metaphoric and physical blindness in medieval religious and literary discourse, maintaining that literature that features the blinding as punishment exploits the impairment’s catachrestic interpretations, in Stumbling. For example, John Gower’s “Tale of Constance” and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” feature a murderer who is blinded by a divine agent. 37 See Mitchell and Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis, esp. 47–64. 38 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 74. 39 Wheatley, Stumbling, 10–12. Spiritual and physical blindness specifically intersect in the late medieval practice of the elevatio, or the elevation of the host, which made it possible to visually “confess” by participating in the Eucharist with the eyes, a practice that would have excluded the visually impaired. See G. J. C. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 55–60; Wheatley, Stumbling, 15–16; and Tory V. Pearman, “Blindness, Confession, and Re-membering in Gower’s Confessio,” Accessus: A Journal of Pre-Modern Literature and New Media 1, no. 1 (2013). 40 Atkinson, “Malory’s Lancelot,” 130. 41 For instance, Vinaver maintains that Malory strives to “rehabilitate” Lancelot by stressing his knightly actions over his spiritual understanding (Works, 1536–37). 42 Atkinson, “Malory’s Lancelot,” 130. 43 Ihle, Malory’s Grail, 141–60. 44 Mann, “Malory and the Grail,” 217; Mahoney, “The Truest and Holiest Tale,” 122; and Atkinson, “Malory’s Lancelot,” 145.

184 Notes 45 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 150. 46 Ibid., 151, 158. 47 MED, def. 1a., 1b., 2a., 2b., 4b., and 3a. 48 MED, def. 4a., 2a. 49 MED, def. 1a., 3a. 50 Mann, “Malory and the Grail,” 217. See also See also Mann’s The Narrative of Distance. 51 Martin, Vision and Gender, 129–31. Ihle adds that Lancelot focuses on “right action” over “spiritual insight or understanding,” while the Queste insists that “here is no right action without spiritual perfection” (144). See Ihle, Malory’s Grail, 144. 52 See Pauphilet, trans., La Queste del Saint Graal (Paris: Chamption, 1923), 61, for the French; and Matarasso, trans., The Quest of the Holy Grail (New York: Penguin, 1969), 85–6, for the English translation. 53 At the request of a chapel priest, Lancelot adopts the hair shirt of a recently deceased man who had broken his religious vows. The priest conjures a demon that then explains that the man had been ambushed by enemies that attempted to slay him and then burn his body. Although the man did eventually die, his clothing and skin remained uncharred. Lancelot is so taken by the dead man’s story that he lies beside his body all night (925–27). As Ihle has pointed out, Malory’s Lancelot is able to see the devil, while his French counterpart is not, thus allowing the Queste author to highlight further Lancelot’s spiritual blindness through the metaphoric use of literal blindness (Malory’s Grail, 149). Malory’s allowing Lancelot to see the fiend again places the focus not on spiritual inability, but on corporeal ability. 54 Ihle notes that the hair shirt is pleasurable for the Queste’s Lancelot, (Malory’s Grail, 153). 55 Ihle, Malory’s Grail, 149. 56 Vinaver, Works, 1579. Martin adds that the possible misreading adds to Malory’s emphasis on using combat as one way to evaluate knights: “[E]ven if the consequence of a mistake, Malory’s scene becomes both more tangible and more consistent with the now ingrained model of assessing knights’ (masculine) performances” (Vision and Gender, 136). 57 Metzler, A Social History, 88. See pp. 87–91 in Metzler’s book for a sustained discussion of dwarfs in medieval society. 58 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 159. 59 Mann, “Malory and the Grail,” 217. 60 Ihle, Malory’s Grail, 155–60. 61 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 159–60. 62 MED, def. 10a. Dorsey Armstrong’s modern translation of this scene translates both instances as separate acts of donning the hair shirt. See Armstrong, trans., Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur: A New ­Modern Translation Based on the Winchester Manuscript (West Lafayette, IN: ­Parlor Press, 2009), 529. 63 Mahoney, “Truest,” 124. 64 Barbara Newman, Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2013), 94. 65 Megan Arkenberg argues that, in addition to being a virgin, Galahad is asexual and, unlike his fellow knights who must guard themselves from sexual temptation, does not exhibit any sexual desire. See Megan Arkeberg ­“Galahad’s Asexuality in Le Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 24, no. 3 (2014): 3–22. 66 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 70.

Notes  185 67 Mann, “Malory and the Grail,” 210. 68 Ibid., 21, 28. 69 Although beyond this discussion here, we might, perhaps, read this visual and physical link between Galahad and (dis)ability prosthetically in that these objects of chivalry help produce his very identity as the Grail Quest’s best knight. For an astute examination of the ways in which the technologies of chivalry serve prosthetic ends, see Richard Godden’s “Prosthetic Ecologies: Vulnerable Bodies and the Dismodern Subject in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Textual Practice 30, no. 7 (2016): 1273–90. 70 Disability scholars often use the acronym TAB, or temporarily able-­bodied, to expose the transitory nature of able-bodiedness. The label is not without controversy, however, for it simplistically casts disability as inevitable instead of possible. I use it in reference to the Grail Quest knights as bodily injury is obligatory to knighthood. 71 Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, 238–12. 72 Shichtman, “Percival’s Sister,” 13. 73 This destabilization is similar to what Ato Quayson calls “aesthetic nervousness,” a textual “anxiety” that occurs at between characters, across a text’s narrative structure and themes, and between the reader and the text. See Ato Quayson, Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). See also the Introduction. 74 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 72. 75 Lisa Robeson, “Women’s Worship: Female Versions of Chivalric Honour,” in Re-viewing the Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes, eds. K.S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005), 118. Although Robeson notes that Malory uses “worship” in reference to women of rank, those who support chivalric endeavors, and those who follow sexual and social mores, she finds that Percival’s sister is the only woman to earn worship with regard to actions that mirror those of knightly combat. 76 Ibid., 115–16. 77 Ibid., 116, 116–21. In the Queste, Galahad and Lancelot merely identify Percival’s sister’s body and then move their discussion to Galahad’s feats of prowess (251). 78 For Percival’s sister as a Mary figure, see Mahoney, “The Truest,” 109–128; Philippa Beckerling, “Perceval’s Sister: Aspects of the Virgin in the Quest of the Holy Grail and Malory’s Sankgreal,” in Constructing ­Gender: ­Feminism and Literary Studies, ed. Hilary Fraser and R.S. White (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 1994), 39–54; and Karen Cherewatuk, “Born-Again Virgins and Holy Bastards: Bors and Elyne and Lancelot and Galahad,” Arthuriana 11, no. 2 (2001): 52–64, esp. 61n4. For Percival’s sister as Christ-like, see Donald L. Hoffman, “Perceval’s S­ ister: Malory’s ‘Rejected’ Masculinities,” Arthuriana 6, no. 4 (1996): 72–83; and Maureen Fries, “Gender and the Grail,” Arthuriana 8, no. 1 (1998): 67–79. For women in Malory as allegorical and Percival’s sister in particular as a figure for Christ, see Mary Etta Scott, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Study of Malory’s Women,” Mid-Hudson Language Studies 5 (1982): 21–9. For Percival’s sister as both a conduit for and a block to the divine, see Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 138–46. 79 Byron Lee Grigsby, in Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (New York: Routledge, 2004), explains that lepers played an

186 Notes important role in the spiritual economy for laypeople and clerics alike as they offered opportunities to enact charity and demonstrate spiritual singularity: “While they still remain outcasts of society, lepers also become the medium for good deeds and salvation for both the lay the clerical populations” (50). As Chapter 3 notes, the leper was an exceedingly ambivalent figure associated with both sin and redemption (see p. 31n85). 80 Beckerling, “Perceval’s Sister,” 44. 81 See Shichtman, “Percival’s Sister,” 18. Kelly reads this scene as a lesbian union (“The Writable Lesbian”). 82 Medieval literature frequently linked leprosy and leprous-like illnesses with sexual sins. See especially Grigsby, Pestilence; and Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006). Susan Murray’s “Women and Castles in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory,” Arthuriana 13, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 17–41, argues that the lady’s illness is sexual in nature (30–4). The Leprous Lady’s disease is indeed socially disabling; her “mesell” is disfiguring, leaves her castle-bound, and persists for a lengthy period of time. 83 See Chapter 3. 84 As Atkinson has shown, Malory replaces the text’s usual verbiage for such treatments, “search,” with the word “anoynte,” thus drawing attention to the spiritual aspects of Galahad’s healing in contrast to those of the text’s leeches or surgeons (539). He explains that medical practitioners in the Morte “perform only one activity: they ‘search’ the wound” (536). “Searching” involved “examining,” “probing,” and “applying some form of salve or ‘dressing’” to a wound (537). See Atkinson, “They toke,” 536–9. 85 See Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast: The Religious ­Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of ­California Press, 1987); Elizabeth Robertson, “Medieval Medical Views of Women and Female Spirituality in Ancrene Wisse and Julian of Norwich’s Showings,” in Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature, eds. Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 142–67; Liz Herbert McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), esp. 28–63 and 64–95; and Tory V. Pearman, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave, 2010); esp. 1–18, 19–35, and 113–49. Chapter 5 1 Catherine LaFarge, “The Hand of the Huntress: Repetition and Malory’s Morte Darthur,” in New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts, ed. Isobel Armstrong (London: Routledge, 1992), 271, 272. 2 Catherine Batt, “‘Hand for Hand’ and ‘Body for Body’: Aspects of ­M alory’s Vocabulary of Identity and Integrity with Regard to Gareth and Lancelot,” Modern Philology 91, no. 3 (1994): 269–87. 3 See, for example, Robert Kelly, “Wounds, Healing, and Knighthood,” in Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Publications, 1985), especially 184–5; C. David Benson, “The Ending of the Morte Darthur,” in A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), especially 222–3; Raluca L. Radulescu, “Now I Take uppon Me the Adventures to Seke of Holy Thynges”: Lancelot and the Crisis of Arthurian Knighthood,” in Arthurian Studies in Honour of P.J.C. Field, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004): 287–8, and “Malory’s Lancelot and the Key to Salvation,” Arthurian Literature 25 (2008): 93–118; and K.S. Whetter,

Notes  187 “Weeping, Wounds and Worshyp in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthurian Literature 31 (2014): 61–82. 4 Barbara Newman, Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 101. 5 Newman, Medieval Crossover, esp. 92–109. Newman writes, “When sacred and secular meanings both present themselves in a text, yet cannot be harmoniously reconciled, it is not always necessary to choose between them” (7–8). 6 Benson, “The Ending,” 222. 7 Kelly, “Wounds,” 189. 8 Ibid., 285. 9 Stephen C.B. Atkinson, “Malory’s ‘Healing of Sir Urry’: Lancelot, the Earthly Fellowship, and the World of the Grail,” in Studies in Philology 78, no. 4 (1981): 345. 10 Batt, “‘Hand for Hand’,” 285. 11 Kenneth Hodges, “Haunting Pieties: Malory’s Use of Chivalric Christian Exempla after the Grail,” Arthuriana 17, no. 2 (2007): 38. 12 Kelly, “Wounds,” 185. 13 This is not the first time Lancelot has fought against his fellow Round ­Table knights, of course. For example, he fights Round Table knights when dressed as Sir Kay (277.4–278.16), disguises himself when fighting against Tristram (568.28–569.2), wears a disguise at Guinevere’s request during tournament at Surluse (653.30), and dresses as woman when jousting Sir Dinadan at the same tournament (669.15–36). 14 As reported by Vinaver, in the Mort Artu, Elaine’s lovesickness is not mentioned, and she makes the request in the name of whatever he loves most: “Gentis chevaliers, done moi un don par la foi que tu doiz a la reins el monde que tu mieuz ainmes (p. 10, ll. 10–11),” in Works, vol. 3 (1601n1068). The English: “Worthy knight, grant me a boon by the faith you owe to whatever you love best in the world,” from “The Death of Arthur,” in The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, vol. IV, trans. Norris J. Lacy (New York: Garland, 1995), 93. 15 In the same episode, Elaine informs Lavain that Bors can be identified “by a wounde in hys forehede” (1082.34). 16 Karen Cherewatuk, “Malory’s Thighs and Launcelot’s Buttock: Ignoble Wounds and Moral Transgression in the Morte Darthur,” Arthurian Literature 31 (2014): 46. 17 Kelly, “Wounds,” 184. 18 K.S. Whetter, “Weeping.” 19 Cherewatuk, “The Saint’s Life of Sir Launcelot: Hagiography and the ­Conclusion of Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 5, no. 1 (1995): 62–8, and “Malory’s Launcelot and the Language of Sin and Confession,” ­Arthuriana 16, no. 2 (2006): 68–72; and J. Cameron Moore, “Outward Seeming: Lancelot’s Prayer and the Healing of Sir Urry in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 24, no. 2 (2014): 3–20. 20 Molly Martin, Vision and Gender in Malory’s Morte Darthur (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010), 121. Martin offers a detailed summation of the scholarship on the Grail’s value system on 118–21. See also Kevin T. Grimm, “Sir Thomas Malory’s Narrative of Faith,” Arthuriana 16, no. 2 (2006): 16–20 for a discussion of the Grail’s blended values. 21 Hodges, “Haunting Pieties,” 29. 22 Newman, Medieval Crossover, 101. 23 On Malory’s revisions to the tale, see E.M. Bradstock, “The Juxtaposition of ‘The Knight of the Cart’ and ‘The Healing of Sir Urry,’” AUMLA 50 (1978): 208–22; Charles Moorman, The Book of Kyng of Arthur: The

188 Notes Unity of Malory’s Morte Darthur (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), 79–85; R.M. Lumiansky, Malory’s Originality: A Critical Study of Malory’s Morte Darthur (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U ­ niversity Press, 1964), 224–30; Janet Jesmok, “Malory’s ‘Knight of the Cart,’” The Michigan Academician 13, no. 1 (1980): 107–15; and John Michael Walsh, “Malory’s ‘Very Mater of La Cheualer du Charyot’: C ­ haracterization and Structure,” in Studies in Malory, ed. James Spisak (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1985), 199–226. 24 Kelly, “Wounds,” 188–9. 25 Reference to the cart occurs one final time in the rubric of “The Healing of Sir Urry,” which I discuss later. 26 Terence McCarthy, “Malory and His Sources,” in A Companion to Malory, eds. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 88. See also Benson, “The Ending,” 225–7. 27 See also Ralph Straus, “Carriages and Coaches—Their History and Evolution,” in A History of the Horse-drawn Carriage, Kindle ed. (Hunstanton, Norfolk: Whitley Press, 2013). 28 Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (London: Routledge, 2006), 172. 29 Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur: The Seventh and Eighth Tales, ed. P.J.C. Field (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977, rpt. 2008), 168–22. 30 Benson, “The Ending,” 226. 31 P.E. Tucker, “A Source for ‘The Healing of Sir Urry’ in the Morte Darthur,” Modern Language Review 50 (1955): 490–2. Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 154–5, also discusses the similarities between the two tales. 32 Kelly, “Wounds,” 189. 33 Siobhán Wyatt, Women of Words in Le Morte Darthur: The Autonomy of Speech in Malory’s Female Characters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 149. 34 LaFarge, “The Hand of the Huntress,” 265. 35 See Beverly Kennedy, “Malory’s Lancelot: ‘Trewest Lover, of a Synful Man’,” Viator 12 (1981): 436–40, and Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992), 293–4. 36 Bradstock, “The Juxtaposition,” 212; and Maureen Fries, “Commentary: A Response to the Arthuriana Issue on Adultery,” Arthuriana 7, no. 4 (1997): 96. 37 Malory increases the number of wounded knights; in the French sources, it is only Kay who is wounded and sleeping in her antechamber. 38 Dhira B. Mahoney, “Symbolic Uses of Space in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” in Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur, eds. K.S. Whetter and Raluca Radulescu (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005), 97. 39 Peggy McCracken, The Curse of Eve, The Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 12. 40 Megan G. Leitch, “(Dis)Figuring Transgressive Desire: Blood, Sex, and Stained Sheets in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthurian Literature 28 (2011): 31–2, 33. 41 Kelly, “Wounds,” 188. 42 Christina Francis, “Reading Malory’s Bloody Bedrooms,” Arthurian Literature 28 (2011): 1–20, 14. 43 Batt, “‘Hand for Hand’,” esp. 274–6. Batt notes that although the phrase “hand for hand” as well as general references to hands are common in

Notes  189 tales depicting a knight’s physical skill, Malory’s use of hand imagery with regard to Lancelot is unique. For Lancelot, “hands feature[s] in more complex ways” that involve the psychological and social aspects of selfhood (280). Timothy O’Brien finds that Malory uniquely emphasizes hand imagery in the “Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,” particularly “The Knight of the Cart,” in ways that draw attention to the instability of Lancelot’s performance of gender and thus integrity, both to himself and the chivalric community. See “Hand Imagery, Masculinity, and Narrative Authority in The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,” English Language Notes 39, no. 3 (2002): 1–18. 44 In “‘Hand for Hand’,” Batt reports that Evelake’s man in the “Sankgreal” has an injured hand, as does Urry, and both of these injuries are miraculously healed (280). Additionally, Galahad slices off the hand of a knight after he wounds Melyas (885.14–15). 45 Batt, “Hand for Hand,” 280–1. 46 O’Brien, “Hand Imagery,” 11. 47 The insertion of Lavain into this scene is original; Vinaver notes that, in the French, “Lancelot tells no one about his meeting with the Queen” (Works, 1609, n.1131.35–1132.2). 48 Obrien, “Hand Imagery,” 11. 49 Aristotle, “On the Soul,” in A New Aristotle Reader, ed. J.L. Ackrill (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 200. 50 Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, trans. Margaret ­Tallmadge May (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 71. 51 Kathryn L. Lynch, “‘What Hands are Here’: The Hand as Generative Symbol in Macbeth,” Review of English Studies 39, no. 153 (1988): 34. See also Lynch’s The High Medieval Dream Vision: Poetry, Philosophy, and Literary Form (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 38–41. 52 Batt, “Hand for Hand,” 275; and O’Brien, “Hand Imagery,” 4. 53 Piotr Sadowski, The Knight on His Quest: Symbolic Patterns of Transition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996), 130. 54 Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Parson’s Tale,” in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd. ed., ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 318.851. 55 Irina Metzler discusses the judicial mutilation of prisoners and war and criminals, citing examples of blinding, castration, and the amputation of fingers, hands, feet, and ears as punishment in A Social History of D ­ isability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical ­Impairment (New York: Routledge, 2013), 15–32. Noting the law of Ine, king of Wessex, who ordered the hands or feet of thieves cut off, Metzler explains, “The desired effect of judicial mutilation was to act as a visible deterrent, at least in theory, but in a more practical if not brutally direct fashion mutilation prevent a law-breaker from committing the same crime again” (22). 56 Michael Goldberg and David F. Payne, “Left Hand, Right Hand,” in A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, ed. David L. Jeffrey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 442–3. 57 Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur,” 155. See also Hodges, “Haunting Pieties,” 41. 58 Sadowski, 131. 59 Richard Bond, “Sins, Seven Deadly,” in A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, ed. David L. Jeffrey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 699. 60 Rudolph Arbesmann details these in “The Concept of ‘Christus medicus’ in St. Augustine,” Traditio 10 (1954): 1–28.

190 Notes 61 Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 155. 62 Lynch, “‘What Hands,’” lists the following examples: Matthew 8: 2–3, 14–15, 9: 24–5, 27–30 (32). 63 Ibid. 64 Tucker, “A Source,” 490–2. 65 Bradstock, “The Juxtaposition,” 213–14. 66 Atkinson, “Malory’s ‘Healing’,” 342. 67 Benson, “The Ending,” 229. 68 Radulescu, “‘Now I take’,” 295. 69 Edmund Reiss, Sir Thomas Malory (New York: Twain, 1966), 171–2. 70 Kennedy, Knighthood, 301–4; Bradstock, “The Juxtaposition,” 212–13. 71 See Moore, “Outward Seeming”; Corey Olsen, “Adulterated Love,” in Malory and Christianity: Essays on Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, eds. Janet Jesmok and D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. (Kalamazoo, MI: ­Medieval Institute, 2013), 29–55; and Sue Ellen Holbrook, “Endless Virtue and Trinitarian Prayer in Lancelot’s Healing of Urry,” in Malory and Christianity: Essays on Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. Janet Jesmok and D. Thomas Hanks, Jr., (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2013), 56–76. 72 Kristina Hildebrand notes that this scene acts “almost as a parody of the knights who ride through the world seeking adventure, accompanied by lovely damsels,” in “Sitting on the Sidelines: Disability in Malory,” ­Arthuriana 27, no. 3 (2017): 71. 73 Metzler, Disability, 169. 74 Ibid., 169–72. 75 Atkinson, “They…toke,” 538. 76 Ibid., 540–1. 77 Hodges, “Haunting Pieties,” 41. 78 Ibid. 79 Batt, Malory’s Morte, 153–4. 80 See also Mark Lambert, Style and Vision in “Le Morte Darthur” (New Haven: : Yale University Press, 1975), 58–65; Batt, “Hand for Hand,” 285; and Hodges, “Haunting Pieties,” 43. 81 Atkinson, “Malory’s ‘Healing of Sir Urry,’” 344. 82 Lambert, Style, 57; and Kelly, “Wounds,” 178–9. 83 Hildebrand, “Sitting on the Sidelines,” 71. 84 Atkinson, “Malory’s ‘Healing of Sir Urry,’” 344 85 Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick, “Bodies Together: Touch, Ethics, and Disability,” Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory (London: Continuum, 2002), 70. 86 O’Brien, “Hand Imagery,” 9. 87 Batt, “Hand for Hand,” 286. 88 Batt, Malory’s Morte, 155. 89 It is possible, but admittedly tenuous to draw a further connection between the two men’s wounds. Up to this point over the course of the Morte, Lancelot incurs the following wounds: he injures his hand when attempting to help Sir Blyaunte, is wounded in the thigh by a boar, is slashed in the thigh by Mador, is speared in the side by Bors, is struck in the buttock with the huntress’s arrow, and wounds his hands on Guenevere’s window. If we count his love-madness as a wound to the heart, as it is portrayed in medical and literary texts, then his wound-count equals seven, the same number suffered by Urry.

Notes  191 90 Hodges, “Haunting Pieties,” 42–3. 91 Lambert, Style, 65. 92 Ibid. 93 LaFarge, “The Hand,” 272. 94 Ibid. 95 Lambert, Style, 58. 96 Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), 45. 97 C.S. Lewis, “The English Prose Morte,” in Essays on Malory, ed. J.A.W. Bennett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 7–28, 20. See also Olsen, “Adulterated Love,” 47; and Moore, “Outward Seeming,” 6–7. 98 Eugène Vinaver, “On Art and Nature: A Letter to C.S. Lewis,” Essays on Malory, 38. 99 Reiss, Sir Thomas Malory, 172. 100 Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, 7. 101 Moore, “Outward Seeming,” 12. 102 Kennedy, Knighthood, 303. 103 Lumiansky, Malory’s Originality, 231. 104 Atkinson, “Healing,” 349. 105 Moore, “Outward Seeming,” 4. 106 The only other Middle English use of this phrase appears in Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale” in reference to Absolon, who after realizing what part of ­A lisoun he has kissed, weeps like “a chylde that is ybete” (3759). As Batt has suggested, Lancelot’s tears indicate autonomy, while Absolon’s petulant crying suggests a lack of self-awareness. See Batt, Malory’s Morte ­D’Arthur, 156–7. Atkinson, in contrast, finds that the two men weep for similar reasons: “humiliation and remorse at the recognition of a misspent life,” in “Healing,” 349. 107 Batt, Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, 157. 108 Whetter, “Weeping,” 77. 109 Earl R. Anderson, “Malory’s ‘Fair Maid of Ascolat,’” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 87, no. 2 (1986): 247. 110 Ibid., 249n24. 111 Earl Anderson, “‘Ein Kind wird geschlagen’: The Meaning of Malory’s Tale of the Healing of Sir Urry,” Literature and Psychology 49, no. 3 (2003): 45–74. 112 Batt, “Hand for Hand,” 283. 113 See also Walsh, “Malory’s ‘Very Mater’,” 215. 114 Vinaver, Works, 1614n.1154.12–13. 115 Walsh, “Malory’s ‘Very Mater’,” 215. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid., 216–22. 118 Hodges, “Haunting Pieties,” 42. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 43.

Afterword 1 For example, the recently founded journal Critical Military Studies features articles that incorporate disability in their investigations of the military, militarism, and militarization, and a more historically contextualized understanding of disability and combat might help to further nuance

192 Notes such discussions. Likewise, readings of medieval texts can benefit from connections to modern-day warfare and the wounds it generates. Daniel ­McGuiness’s “Purple Hearts and Coronets: Caring for Wounds in Malory,” Arthurian Interpretations 4, no. 1 (1989): 43–54, examines the author’s own experience in the military with that of Malory’s knights. Including disability as a category of analysis in similar studies would only deepen modern and medieval notions of disability on and off the battlefield. 2 Kenneth Hodges, Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 2. 3 Robert McRuer, “Composing Bodies; or De-Composition: Queer Theory, Disability Studies, and Alternative Corporealities,” JAC 24, no. 1 (2004): 52. See also McRuer’s Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and ­Disability (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 4 Barbara Newman, Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 102–3. 5 See Karen Cherewatuk, “The Saint’s Life of Sir Launcelot: Hagiography and the Conclusion of Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 5, no. 1 (1995): 62–8. 6 Newman, Medieval Crossover, 106–7. 7 Ibid., 107. 8 Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 3. 9 Many scholars have pointed out the Morte’s nostalgic qualities. See, for example, Hodges, Forging Chivalric Communities, 155; A.S.G. ­Edwards, “The Reception of Malory’s Morte Darthur,” in A Companion to Malory,  ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 241. Though viewing Malory as nostalgic has been criticized for oversimplifying his book as merely a romanticism of the past, scholars have complicated Malory’s use of nostalgia, noting that he explores longing, despair, and hope in his view of chivalry and points out a hopefulness in the future through the destruction of the past. See Martin B. Shichtman, “Politicizing the Ineffable: The Queste del San Graal and Malory’s ‘Tale of the Sankgreal’,” in Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 173–4; and Katherine Marie ­Miscavige, Recapturing Camelot: Nostalgia for the Failed Ideas of Arthurian Legend, Stony Brook University, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2016. 10 Hannah Skoda, “The Medieval Longing for the Good Old Days,” History­ Extra.com, BBC History Magazine, 28 December 2017. Skoda cites the fourteenth-century as being particularly productive of nostalgic discourse. 11 Alex Davis, “Coming Home Again: Johaness Höfer, Edmund Spenser, and Premodern Nostalgia,” Parergon 33, no. 2 (2016): 37–8. 12 Thomas Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press: 2018), 27–9, 40. See also Johaness Höfer, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by ­Johannes Hofer, 1688,” trans. Carolyn Kiser Anspach, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 2 (1934): 376–91. 13 Helen Cooper, “Introduction,” in Sir Thomas Malory Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript, ed. Helen Cooper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xii.

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Index

Actaeon 84, 178n93 adultery 48, 58, 73, 79, 103–5, 133–5, 137, 140, 143, 148–9, 179n95 affective piety 105 Aggravain 148–9 Alexander the Orphan 16, 21, 30, 36, 37, 40–5, 47, 131, 164n26, 169n90, 176n64 Alliterative Morte Arthure 5, 72–3, 175n53 Alpheus 124, 141 Alys, La Beale 30, 43–5 Amazons 85 amor eroes: vs. amor heroes 27; see also lovesickness Andreas Capellanus 27, 164n30 Annowre 33 Aristotle 11, 28, 29, 67 136, 165n42, 176n58 armor 52, 56, 88, 113, 132, 135, 157n2 Armstrong, Dorsey 5, 9, 10, 20, 36, 41, 44, 62, 64, 73, 88, 92, 93, 104, 108, 113, 162n1, 162n2, 163n23, 167n78, 171n24, 171n35, 173n2, 175n47, 180n115, 183n35, 184n62 Artemis 85 Arthur 7, 53, 94, 145, 148 164n27; conception of 6, 25; crowning of 26; death of 1, 35, 36, 62, 130, 147, 149, 153–4; and giant of Mount St. Michel 64, 71–4, 78, 91; and Guenevere 32, 73, 95, 129; and his knights 8, 14–15, 23, 60, 110, 123, 125, 128, 141–3, 148; and Lancelot 61, 103, 110, 123–4, 129, 130, 142, 145; last battle 158n6; and Nyneve 32–3, 35–6; and Urry 141–3, 146 Atkinson, Stephen 1, 93, 97, 103, 139, 140, 141, 145, 157n2, 176n61, 186n84, 191n106

Augustine, St. 138 Avalon 1, 36, 149, 153 Avicenna 26, 29, 163n25, 165n43 Badwyn 86, 127–8, 138 Bagdemagus 111; daughter of 88 Balan 125 Balin 9, 18, 93–7, 99, 111, 113, 125 Bartholomeus Anglicus 57 Batt, Catherine 37–8, 48, 58, 59, 122, 125, 134, 137, 141, 143, 145, 146, 162n1, 167n74, 167n76, 185n78, 188n31, 188n43, 189n44, 191n106 Beckerling, Phillipa 115, 185n78 Bedevere 153 Bellengerus le Beuse 44 Belleus 88–90, 178n88, 180n115, 180n117 Benson, C. David 123, 139 Benson, Larry 40 Berbeus 95 blind(ness) 5, 26, 27, 29, 30, 96, 99, 100–2, 105–6, 107, 112, 117, 182n19, 182n39, 184n53; blinding as punishment 33, 34, 70, 100–2, 107 175n37, 183n36, 189n55 blood: of battlefield 1, 13, 41, 74–5, 76, 83, 86, 97, 112, 114, 126, 152, 168n82; and family line 75, 97, 110, 112, 127, 164n27; and breastmilk 96; and gender 10–12, 75, 76, 82, 83, 115, 118–19, 134, 152; and Grail 18, 92–7, 98–9, 101, 118, 119; and healing 81, 95–6, 97, 117, 118, 139, 165n36, 178n88, 181n19; as holy 77, 93, 96, 97, 101, 105, 112, 119; liminality of 12–13, 112, 120; and semen 75, 176n58; and sex 75, 76, 81, 83, 86, 115, 119, 134; on sheets 75, 133–4; staunching of 39, 82, 89, 95, 112,

208 Index 114, 117, 135, 145, 156, 178n88; see also menstruation; wounds Blyuante 50, 56–8, 60, 134, 190n89 Bors 7, 59, 82, 86, 89, 90, 99–103, 106, 109, 113, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 126, 127, 187n15, 190n89 Bovaird-Abbo, Kristin 34, 167n58, 168n78 Bradstock, E.M. 133, 138, 140, 187n23 Brascias 85–6 Brunor; see La Cote Male Tayle Bullough, Vern 28 Butler, Judith 9, 65–6, 173n9 Bynum, Caroline Walker 13, 95 Cadden, Joan 165n41, 176n58 Camelot 73, 110, 120, 122 cart 121, 123, 130–4, 140, 147–8, 188n25; see also horse-litter; Morte Darthur: “The Knight of the Cart” Castor 61 castration: of Gareth 74–5, 78, 81, 83, 84, 85; of Giant of Mount St. Michel 71–4, 91; and holiness 79; of Lancelot 74, 82, 83–6, 87, 90; as literary motif 64–5, 71, 79; as medical treatment 79, 82, 178n85; of Percival 74, 76–8, 81, 83, 84, 85; as punishment 74, 77, 79, 84, 91, 176n66, 189n55; as queer/crip 65, 79–81, 82, 91; symbolic vs. literal 17, 64–5, 71–8, 79, 81, 82, 84, 90–1; see also eunuch(ism); thigh wounds; wounds Chandler, Jed 79 Chapel Perilous 139, 164–5n36 Charny, Geffroi de 4, 159n25 Chaucer, Geoffrey 154; “Knight’s Tale” 164n31; “Man of Law’s Tale” 183n36; “Miller’s Tale” 89, 191n106; “Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” 80, 177n79; “Parson’s Tale” 137; Troilus and Criseyde 24; “Wife of Bath’s Prologue” and “Tale” 34, 70–1 Cherewatuk, Karen 71, 75, 77, 83, 84, 87, 129, 175n39, 176n59, 178n90, 178n93, 179n95 Chestre, Thomas 33–4 chivalry: as ability/disability system 4–5, 6–9, 16, 26, 58, 62–3, 66, 121, 152; bodily vs. spiritual 7,

17, 18, 62, 76, 92–3, 109–10, 113, 133, 139; in fifteenth century 8; as heteronormative 17–18, 64–6, 73, 75, 173n2; ideals of, in Pentecostal Oath 8, 64, 73; liminal chivalry 113–115, 119, 120; women and 20–2, 36–7, 63, 66; see also Pentecostal Oath Chrétien de Troyes 48, 98, 130–1 Christus medicus 138, 189–90n60; see also healing; Jesus Christ chronic illness/disease 1, 5, 26, 47, 159n27; see also disability; lovesickness: as chronic illness/ disease Cleanness 70 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome 4, 72, 175n41 Columbe 94 compulsory able-bodiedness/ mindedness 64–6, 69, 89–91, 152, 173n3 compulsory heteronormativity 17, 63, 64–6, 69, 152 Constantine the African 26–7 Cooper, Helen 34, 155, 166n58 Corbenic 10, 60, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 106–8, 117, 118 courtly love 22–3, 24, 27, 34, 38 Craig, Leigh Ann 49, 159n26, 170n17 Cresseid 34, 71, 167n64 Criseyde 24 Cupid 24 Dagonet 53, 55, 171n30; see also foolishness, fools Dame Brusen 56, 58, 59, 60, 61 Davis, Lennard 3 deaf(ness) 5, 33, 71, 108 Derrida, Jacques 99 Diana 84, 85, 179n93 Dinshaw, Carolyn 68, 90–1 disability: as difference 4; and feminization 10, 30, 33, 37, 43, 49–50, 53, 58, 71, 75, 76, 82, 85, 98, 119, 152; and illness 5, 26, 104; and liminality 12–13, 26, 50, 72, 75, 79, 92, 97, 104, 106, 108–9, 126, 128, 152, 153–4; in literature 2, 5–7, 15, 33–4, 70; and masculinity 9–11, 12, 14, 16–17, 47, 65–6, 72, 75, 98–9, 160n37, 163n23; medical model 3, 14; models of 3–4; and narrative 5–7,

Index  209 15, 16, 25, 26, 64–5, 77, 79, 93–4, 151, 152, 154–5, 181n13, 185n73; religious model 47–8, 70–1, 105, 170n6; and sexuality 17–18, 58, 64–7, 69–78, 80–1, 83–5, 90–1, 115, 152, 161n70; and sin 34, 47–8, 58 70–1, 75–6, 78–9, 100–2, 103, 105–6, 107–9, 116, 117, 122, 123, 126–7, 137–8, 140–1, 143–5, 174n35, 176n61, 177–8n85, 183n36, 186n82, 189–90n60; spectrum of 1, 5, 6–7, 52; and women 16, 17, 20–22, 24, 28–30, 37, 44, 45, 62–3, 83–4, 165n41; see also chivalry: as ability/disability system; chronic illness/disease; impairment Doggett, Laine 24 Dolorous Stroke 94–6, 111, 181n19 Doob, Penelope 48, 49, 57 Douglas, Mary 13 Dronzek, Anna 33 dwarf(ism) 56–7, 60, 106–7, 168n80, 171n30, 172n37, 184n57 Dynadan 55 Dynas 71 Ector 62, 100, 102, 112, 119, 133 Edward IV 8 Elaine of Astolat 27, 33, 34, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90, 124, 127, 138, 164n36, 179n95, 187n14, 187n15 Elaine of Corbyn 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 83, 84, 139 enchantment 16, 17, 20, 21–3, 31, 36, 38, 39, 40, 59, 124, 152, 154; see also magic envy 137, 141, 143, 148–9 Ettarde 27, 31–7, 164n36, 166n57 eunuch(ism) 65, 79–82, 91, 177n79; see also castration; thigh wounds Evelake 101–2, 111–12, 116, 189n44 extramission 27, 164n32 Eyler, Joshua 3, 70 Fair Unknown 40–1, 46, 168–9n83, Faramon’s daughter 27, 171n34 Fisher King 71, 97, 182n20; see also Maimed King; Pellam; Pelles Filelolly 87–8, 179n105 Fitzhenry, William 44 Fries, Maureen 48, 133, 162n1, 166n58, 186n78

foolishness 49, 52, 137; see also Dagonet; fools; intellectual disability; madness fools 51–3, 55, 60–1, 171n27; see also Dagonet; foolishness Galahad 18, 94, 97, 104, 122, 123, 125, 137, 160n49, 184n65, 185n69, 189n44; conception of 55, 58–60, 61, 139; death of 119–20; and Grail 97–100, 101, 107, 109, 110, 117, 119–20, 178n89; and healing 14, 23, 67, 97, 99, 109–113, 117, 118, 119, 139, 153, 182n20, 186n84; and Percival’s sister 81–2, 87, 113–119, 153, 178n89, 185n77; virginity of 73, 77, 101, 115, 117, 119 Galehot 90, Galen 12, 28, 29, 47, 136, 165n43 Gareth 7, 13–14, 16, 21, 36, 37–41, 44, 46, 59, 65, 66, 71, 74–9, 81, 83–5, 91, 126, 128, 167n74, 167n76, 167n77, 167–8n78, 168n80, 176n59 Garlon 95 Gawain 7, 31–4, 111, 112–13, 125, 138, 141, 157n2, 166n57 Geoffrey of Monmouth 72, 175n41 giant(s) 53–4, 64, 66, 71–4, 91, 116; see also Giant of Mount St. Michel; Tauleas Giant of Mount St. Michel 71–4, 77, 78, 79, 81, 84, 85, 91, 175n41, 175n45 Gilbert 139 Gower, John 16, 24, 70, 154, 161–2n78, 183n36 Grail 7, 18, 48, 59, 62, 77, 79, 87, 103, 104, 105, 117, 119–20, 129, 142, 178n89, 183n35; and Christ 97–9, 101–2, 118; and disability 93–4, 97, 99–102, 104, 106–9, 120, 121–2, 153; and healing 58, 61, 100, 104, 110, 118, 119, 120, 153; history of 97–8; as pharmakon 99; see also Grail Quest; Morte Darthur: “Tale of the Sankgreal” Grail kings; see Fisher King; Maimed King; Pellam; Pelles Grail Quest 7, 16, 18, 23, 76–8, 91, 92–120, 121–2, 124, 125, 129, 130, 131, 137, 139, 140, 144, 145, 146, 153, 172n41, 176n61, 178n89,

210 Index 187n20; see also Grail; Morte Darthur: “Tale of the Sankgreal” Green, Monica 163n8, 165n41 Gryngamour 168n80 Guenevere 22, 127, 163n13; abduction and rescue of 130–3; accused 35, 125–6; and adultery 90, 103, 105, 121–2, 124, 133–7, 140, 148, 172n41, 179n95, 190–1n89; and Arthur 32, 73, 129; death of 62, 164n26; and Lancelot’s lovemadness 21, 48, 50, 55, 58–60, 61–3, 83, 88, 153–4 hagiography 96, 115, 129, 131–2, 140–1, 153, 183n36 Hallewes 27, 164–5n36 hand(s) 24; and healing 111, 125, 137–8, 142–5, 146; injured 5, 57–8, 88, 101, 111, 121, 123, 133–7, 139, 140, 142, 143, 148, 172n41, 189n44, 190n89; as sign of ability 38, 123, 134, 136–7, 167n74, 188–9n43; and sin 134, 137, 141, 143, 148; see also touch; wounds Hanks, D. Thomas, Jr. 73, 175n53 hardinesse 7–9, 100, 105, 116, 120, 127, 152, 168n82 Harris, E. Kay 62 healing: by Balin 95; by Galahad 18, 67, 93–4, 99, 109–15, 117–20, 153, 186n84; by Isode the Fair 40, 43, 50–1; by Isode the White Hands 40, 43; by Lancelot 19, 65, 89–90, 121–5, 130, 138–49, 153, 178n88; of Lancelot 58, 60, 81, 86, 123, 125–30, 180n114; by Lavain 85–8; by Lyonesse 37, 40; by Lyonet 37, 39–40, 43, 74, 75; and magic 17, 21–4, 47, 139, 140; miraculous 19, 68, 100, 109, 119, 121, 123, 124, 125, 139, 154, 189n44; by Morgan le Fay 42–3, 44, 66; by Nyneve 30–7, 66; by Percival’s sister 18, 81, 93, 95, 113, 115, 117–19, 146, 153; power of love 24; as queer 18, 65, 66–9, 81, 90–1, 152; and touch 65, 67–8, 81, 91, 132, 138, 142; and whole “bodies” 14–16, 42–3, 58, 67, 68, 77, 95, 97, 125, 128, 141–2, 145, 148, 155, 160n33, 180n117; and women 16–17, 20–4, 36, 41, 44–5, 46, 62–3, 64, 88, 124, 154; see also Christus medicus; Grail; Morte Darthur: “The Healing of Sir Urry”

Helena 72 Heng, Geraldine 22, 162n1 Henryson, Robert 34, 71 Hildebrand, Kristina 141, 157n2, 182n20, 190n72 Hildegard of Bingen 21 Hippocrates 13, 47, 57 Hodges, Kenneth 10, 12, 33, 35, 67, 82, 87, 126, 130, 141, 144. 148, 151, 157n2, 160n37, 166n58, 167n65, 180n117 Höfer, Johaness 154–5 Hoffman, Donald 73, 163n13, 185n78 Holy Grail, see Grail, Grail Quest, Morte Darthur: “The Tale of the Sankgreal” Hood, Gwenyth 48 horse-litter 25–6, 42, 56, 123–4, 164n26; see also cart Howel, Duke 71 hunt(ing) 57–8, 71, 83, 84 Huntress, the 82–7, 89, 90, 121, 126, 128, 133, 178n93, 179n99, 190n89 Huot, Sylvia 60, 171n27 Igrayne 1, 6, 16, 21, 25, 27, 30–2, 34, 163n23 Ihle, Sandra Ness 93, 98, 106, 184n51, 184n53, 184n54 imitatio Christi 70, 81, 115 impairment: as punishment 71, 75, 101–2, 116, 183n36, 189n55; vs. disability 3–4 172n37; see also disability intellectual disability 52, 171n28; see also foolishness; madness intromission 27, 164n32 Isidore of Seville 28 Isode the Fair 23–4, 37, 40, 48, 50–1, 54–5, 59, 71, 88, 171n34, 172–3n1 Isode the White Hands 23–4, 37, 40 Jerome, St. 30, 80 Jesus Christ 68, 117, 137, 186n78; blood of 97–8, 101, 102, 112, 118–9; body of 16, 96–7, 102, 118–19; crucifixion 77, 96, 102, 112; as healer 68, 70, 115, 138, 141, 177–8n85, 181n19, 189–90n60; resurrection 67; wounds of 98, 102, 115, 140–1, 143, 181n19, 182n30; see also Christus medicus, imitatio Christi, Grail: and Christ; wounds

Index  211 Jose, Laura 49 Joseph of Arimathea 96–8, 101, 110–12, 117, 119, 182n21 Julian of Norwich 119, 186n85 Kafer, Alison 65–6, 173n3 Karras, Ruth Mazo 64, 172–3n1 Kay 7, 37, 131, 145, 164n26, 187n13, 188n37 Kaufman, Amy 33, 34, 166–7n58 Kehydyns 51, 54–5, 172n 36 Kelly, Kathleen Coyne 10, 81, 88–9, 157n1, 160n50, 162n6, 170–1n24, 177n81, 177n82, 177n83, 178n88, 181n15, 182n22, 186n81 Kelly, Robert 76, 123, 126, 129, 131, 132, 141, 179n95, 186n3 Kempe, Margery 119, 172n38, 174n21 Kennedy, Beverley 8, 48, 53, 133, 140, 145, 157n2 Klosowska, Anna 80–1 Kuefler, Richard 79, 80 La Cote Male Tayle 37, 40–1, 168n82 La Mort le Roi Artu 90, 179n96 La Queste del Saint Graal 76, 93, 181n7, 184n52 Lacan, Jacques 80, 174n29 Lady of the Lake 32, 32, 178n93; see also Nyneve Lady of Lyle 9 LaFarge, Catherine 85, 133, 144, 178n93, 179n95 Lambert, Mark 15, 141, 144 Lancelot 33, 43, 94, 113, 116, 164–5n36, 167n74, 169n2, 173n2, 178n43, 179n105, 183n41, 184n51, 184n53, 184n54, 185n77, 187n13, 188–9n43, 189n47, 191n106; as best knight 103–4, 110, 113, 122, 123, 125, 129, 132, 139–40, 142; death of 25, 62, 153–4; and Grail 7, 18, 58, 62–3, 92, 97, 98, 99, 102–9, 110, 111, 117, 121, 129–30; and Guenevere 21, 22, 35, 50, 55, 59, 61–2, 73, 88, 90, 103, 105, 126–7, 129, 131, 133–7, 148, 153–4, 172n41; and love-madness 10, 17, 21, 25, 45, 46–7, 49, 52, 55–63, 66, 88, 153, 169n1,172n37, 173n3, 191n89; and queer encounters 18, 65, 66–7, 82, 86–91, 152, 180n115; and Urry 18–19, 35, 86–7, 122, 123–5, 132, 138–49,

153, 190–1n89; wounded 5, 7, 10, 17, 57, 58, 65, 71, 74, 83, 121, 126–7, 128, 129, 133–7, 144, 146, 148, 153, 164n26, 172n41, 179n95, 180n114, 190–1n89 Lancelot, French 58 Lanceor 9 Lanfranc of Milan 15 Lavain 18, 65, 66–7, 82, 85–8, 90–1, 124, 127–8, 132, 135, 138, 147, 152, 179n105, 187n15, 189n47 Leitch, Megan 134 leper’s kiss 68, 115, 174n21; see also leprosy; Leprous Lady leprosy 5, 34, 71, 79, 82, 159n26, 177–8n85, 186n82; see also leper’s kiss; Leprous Lady Leprous Lady 21, 81–2, 87, 95, 97, 113–15, 117–18, 146, 162n6, 177n81, 177n83, 178n89, 181n15, 186n82; see also leper’s kiss; leprosy; Percival’s sister Lewis, C.S. 144 liminality 13; see also blood: liminality of; chivalry: liminal chivalry; disability: and liminality Lochrie, Karma 69, 85, 182n30 Longinus 96, 100, 102, 111, 117, 181n19, 182n21 love-imprint 27, 31, 47, 51, 87, 124, 164n31; see also lovesickness; love-madness lovesickness 1, 6; of Alexander 36, 41, 43–5, 46; as chronic illness/ disease 5, 26, 47; of Elaine of Astolat 27, 33, 87, 90, 127, 164n36, 187n14; and feminization 27–8, 30, 32, 33, 152; of Filelolly 87–8, 124; of Gareth 36, 37–41, 46; gendered dynamics of 16–17, 24–30, 32–7, 63, 152; of Kehydyns 51, 54–5, 172n36; of Lavain 86–8, 127; literary representation of 16, 27, 31, 47, 54–5, 164n31; of Matto le Breune 55; medical view of 29–30, 31–2, 54–5, 164n31; of Palomides 54–5, 172n36; of Pelleas 14, 31–7, 166n57; symptoms of 27, 30, 31, 38, 47, 172n36; treatments for 25, 32, 86, 163–4n25; of Tristram 51, 59, 88, 171n34; of Urry 87, 124; of Uther 21, 25–6, 32, 63; see also amor eroes; chronic illness/disease; love-imprint; love-madness

212 Index love-madness: as chronic illness/ disease 5; and clothing 51–2, 56, 61, 171n24; and exile 54, 55, 59, 60; and feminization 17, 30, 46, 49–50, 52, 66; and identity 48, 50, 54, 60–1, 63; of Lancelot 10, 17, 21, 25, 45, 46–7, 49, 52, 55–63, 88, 153, 190–1n89; literary representations of 47–50, 52; and magic 17, 46, 50, 60; medical view of 49; and restraints 57, 172n38; and sin 47–8, 49, 58; symptoms of 47, 49, 62, 172n36; of Tristram 17, 45, 46–7, 49, 50–5, 60, 63, 88; and wilderness 50, 51–2; and women 46, 50, 54–5 59, 61–3; see also foolishness; intellectual disability; lovesickness; madness; wild man Llull, Ramon 4–5, 159n23 Lynch, Andrew 13, 14, 15, 74, 94, 97, 101, 110, 111, 114, 145, 157n2, 171–2n35, 181n14 Lynch, Kathryn L. 136–7, 138, 189n51, 190n62 Lyonesse 13–14, 16, 37–40, 44, 74–6, 167n76, 167n77, 176n59 Lyonet 16, 23, 37–9, 43, 74–5 167n76, 167–8n78 madness 26, 47, 159n26; love as 17, 47–8, 59; medieval definitions of 48–50, 52; see also intellectual disability; foolishness; lovemadness; magic: and madness; wild man Mador de la Porte 83, 121, 126, 191n89 magic 14, 16, 17, 34; as cure 32, 33, 37, 75, 139; black magic 23, 36, 41–2; love magic 22, 24, 31, 40, 46; magic potion 51, 59, 60; and madness 59, 60; magic ring 40, 75, 168n80; natural magic 21–2; progression of in Morte 23–4; wounds caused by 139–40; see also enchantment Mahoney, Dhira B. 93, 109, 133, 181n4, 185n78 Maimed King 97, 99, 111–13, 117–18, 139; see also Fisher King, Pellam, Pelles Maledysaunte 16, 168n82 Malory, Thomas: as author 5–6, 19, 33, 42, 47, 72–3, 76, 89, 90, 93, 94, 98, 103, 106, 109, 114, 130–3,

135, 148, 157n4, 169n91, 175n41, 179n96, 183n35, 188n37; identity of 2, 157n4, 158n6, 158n8, 169n91 Manderson, Lenore, and Susan Peake 10–11 Mann, Jill 15, 77, 78, 98, 104, 107, 110, 161n72, 181n7, 182n26 Marie de France 24, 33, 71 Mark 23, 41, 42–3, 44, 50, 51, 54–5, 60, 71, 145, 169n90 Martin, Molly 27, 44, 48, 49, 105, 162n1, 164n23, 167n77, 171n35, 184n56, 187n20 Mary of Oignies 119 materiality of metaphor 70, 101 Matto le Breune 55 McCarthy, Terence 6, 73 McCracken, Peggy 12, 134, 165n44 McGuiness, Daniel 24, 40, 191–2n1 McInerney, Maud 84, 179n95 McRuer, Robert 17, 64–6, 68, 152, 173n3 Meleagant 122, 130, 132–7, 148 Meliot de Logres 139, 164–5n36 Melyas de Lyle 101–2, 112, 137, 189n44 menstruation 10, 11–12, 28, 75, 76, 118–19, 152, 165n44, 166n45; see also blood mental illness, see intellectual disability; love-madness; lovesickness; madness Merlin 22–3, 25–6, 32–3, 34, 41, 94, 96, 125 Metzler, Irina 2, 3, 13, 52, 70, 106–7, 131, 140, 184n57, 189n55 Mieskzkowski, Gretchen 69 Mitchell, David 3, 6, 15, 70, 101, 181n13 Moore, J. Cameron 129, 145 Moorman, Charles 93 Mordrains 101, 113, 116, 139 Mordred 41, 44, 113, 148–9 Morgan le Fay 17, 22, 23, 32, 36, 41–4, 66, 160n49, 163n13, 176n64 Morse, Charlotte 98 Morte Darthur: “Alexander the Orphan” 41–4; “Balin le Sauvage or the Knight with Two Swords” 93–7, 125; “The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” 6, 18–19, 121–49, 167n74; “The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones” 23, 37, 43, 46, 50, 55, 170n2; “La Cote Male Tayle” 40, 169n82; “The Fair

Index  213 Maid of Astolat” 126–8; “Gawain, Yawain, and Marhalt” 30–7; “The Great Tournament” 128–9; “The Healing of Sir Urry” 35, 123, 125, 130, 138–49; “King Mark” 54–5; “The Knight of the Cart” 130–8, 140, 147–8, 188–9n43; “The Noble Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius” 73–4; “The Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake” 88–90, 173n2; “The Poisoned Apple” 35, 125–6; “The Tale of the Sankgreal” 18, 62, 77, 92–120, 121, 122, 125, 189n44; “The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney” 7, 37–41, 74–5 Nacien 116, 132–3 Nagy, Gergely 53 narrative prosthesis 6–7, 18, 94, 153, 181n13 Neaman, Judith Silverman 47, 48, 52, 169–70n3, 170n24 Nebuchadnezzar 52 Newman, Barbara 109, 122, 130, 153–4, 187n5 nostalgia 154–5, 192n9 Nyneve 14, 16–17, 23, 30–7, 43, 66, 166–7n58, 167n65; see also Lady of the Lake oath, see Pentecostal Oath O’Brien, Timothy 134–5, 137, 142, 188–9n43 Origen 79, 177n67 Orlemanski, Julie 68 Ovid 27, 84 Palomides 7, 13, 54–5, 148, 171–2n35, 172n36 paralysis 38, 105, 107, 112 Patrice 35, 126 Pellam 95–7; see also Fisher King, Maimed King, Pelles Pelleas 14, 16, 21, 31–7, 43, 166n57 Pelles 61, 97, 100, 117; see also Fisher King, Maimed King, Pellam Pentecostal Oath 8, 64, 73, 95 Percival 17, 21, 65, 66, 71, 74, 75–8, 79, 81, 82, 83–5, 91, 100–2, 109, 112, 114, 115–119, 126, 128, 161n70, 164n27 Percival’s sister 18, 23, 81–2, 89, 92, 95, 113–19, 120, 146, 153, 160n49, 177n83, 178n89, 185n75, 185n77, 185n78; see also Leprous Lady

Peter of Spain 30 Pfau, Aleksandra 49, 57 Plato 47, 99, 165n43 Pliny 28 point de capiton 69, 80–1, 174n29 Price, Janet 67–8, 142 Prose Lancelot 48, 89, 90, 130, 131, 138, 147, 169n1, 170n9 Prose Tristan 42, 169n1 Pugh, Tison 69, 173n11 Quayson, Ato 2, 185n73 queer/crip 17, 65, 78–82, 85, 152, 173n3 Queen of North Galis 36 Queen of North Wales 42 Queen of the Wastelands 36 Radulescu, Raluca 139 Reiss, Edmund 140, 144, 179n95 Robert de Boron 98 Robeson, Lisa 8, 114, 185n75 Rolle, Richard 16 Rooney, Anne 57–8 Round Table (object) 21, 73, 95, 110, 164n27 saints’ lives; see hagiography Sandowski, Piotr 138 Saracen(s) 55, 171–2n35 Sarras 118, 139 Saunders, Corinne 21–3, 41, 43, 163n7, 169n91, 175n45 Schnapp, Jeffrey T. 67 Secrets of Women (De secretis mulierum) 28 Seven Deadly Sins 137–8, 141 Shakespeare, Tom 3, 10, 11 Shichtman, Martin 11, 81, 114, 162n6, 177n81, 181n15, 182n22, 192n9 Shildrik, Margrit 67–8, 142, 174n18 Siege Perilous 110 Singer, Julie 4, 27 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 138, 157n2 Snyder, Sharon 3, 6, 15, 70, 101, 181n13 sodomy 84, 178–9n94 Stanzaic Morte Arthur 5 Suite du Merlin 33 Taleus 53–4; see also giant(s) tears; see weeping thigh wounds 64, 71, 87, 134, 152, 161n70; of Gareth 13–14, 17,

214 Index 38–9, 58, 74–5, 83, 91, 126, 128; of Lancelot 17, 58, 83, 121, 126–7, 128 190n89; of Pellam 98; of Pelles 116; of Percival 17, 76–8, 83, 91, 101, 112, 126, 128; of Tristram 7; see also castration; eunuchism; wounds Thomas the Apostle 67 Thomson, Rosemarie Garland 20, 158n9 Tintagel 51 Tirry 86, 127, 128 touch 67–8, 81, 90–1, 118, 124–5, 137, 139, 142–3; see also hand(s); healing: touch Tracy, Larissa 74, 79, 176n66 Tristram 7, 13, 17, 23–4, 40, 43, 44–5, 46–55, 56–7, 59, 60, 61, 63, 66, 71, 88, 131, 148, 164n26, 169n2, 171n34, 172–3n1, 173n3, 187n13 Towtown, Battle of 2, 158n6 Troilus 24 Trotula 22, 163n8 Tryamour 34, 167n68 Urry 18–19, 35, 36, 65, 86–7, 122–5, 131, 132, 137–49, 153, 164n26, 179n105, 189n44, 190–1n89 Uther 1, 6, 16, 21, 25–8, 30–2, 34, 63, 131, 163n23, 164n27 Uwayne 111 Vinaver, Eugène 93, 106, 144, 147, 169n1, 181n7, 183n41, 187n14, 189n47 virginity 72, 75–8, 85, 119, 134; of Galahad 73, 77, 101, 109, 117, 119, 184n65; of Percival 78, 101; of Percival’s sister 81–2, 113–5, 117, 119 Wace 72 Wack, Mary Frances 26–7, 28, 30, 32, 166n51 Walsh, John Michael 147–8 Wars of the Roses 2 Watson, Nicholas 3

weeping 50, 62,124, 144–6, 166n51, 199n106 Wendell, Susan 4, 5, 26 Wheatley, Edward 3, 70, 100, 138, 170n6, 175n37, 181n19, 183n36, 183n39 Whetter, K.S. 129, 145–6, 157n4, 176n61 wild man 52, 171n25; see also lovemadness; madness Wilkerson, Abby 68 Wolfram van Eschenbach 71 womb 11–12, 28, 49, 59, 165n43 worship 160n38, 167n74; of Arthur 74; of Lancelot 83, 103, 105, 136, 145, 146; of Percival’s sister 114–15, 146, 185n75; role of (dis) ability in 6, 7–9, 10, 12–15, 26, 37, 53, 71, 94, 96, 101, 116, 129, 141, 151; spiritual 100, 102, 126; of Urry 124, 147; women’s role in 16, 17, 38–40, 43–5, 62–3, 64, 66, 152, 167n76 wounds 1, 2, 5, 8, 66–7, 95, 97, 131, 161n55, 168n82, 180n117, 187n15, 188n37; of Arthur 7, 35, 36, 149, 153; of Balan and Balin 125; as disabling 13–14, 39, 41, 42–3, 71, 112, 121; of Gawain 7, 111, 112–13, 125; and gender 10–12, 58, 98–9, 153, 160n37, 180n115, 180n30; of Lancelot 5, 7, 10, 17, 57, 58, 65, 71, 74, 83, 121, 126–7, 128, 129, 133–7, 144, 146, 148, 153, 164n26, 172n41, 179n95, 180n114 190–1n89; of Lancelot’s horse 132–3, 179n95, 180n114; love as wound 24, 27; of Meliot 139, 164–5n36; and spirituality 18, 76, 78, 101–2, 111, 116, 140, 144, 176n61; of Urry 37, 122, 123–5, 139–49, 190–1n89; see also blood; castration; hand(s): injured; thigh wounds; Jesus Christ: wounds of Wyatt, Siobhán 132 Zeikowitz, Richard 69