Disability and Knighthood in Malorys Morte Darthur

This book considers the representation of disability and knighthood in Malorys Morte Darthur. The study asserts that Malorys unique definition of knighthood, which emphasizes the unstable nature of the knights 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 knights movement between disability and ability is also essential to the project of Malorys book, as well as its narrative structure, as it reflects the texts 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 the texts multiple and sometimes disparate chapters into the "hoole book" that Malory envisions. The Morte, thus, construes disability as an as an ambiguous, even liminal state that threatens even as it shores up the cohesive notion of knighthood the text endorses.