ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that 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 from the spiritual. In each example, blood serves as the interface between bodily and spiritual ability. The Morte's second book "Balin le Sauvage, or the Knight with the Two Swords" illustrates the enmeshing of disability, blood, and knighthood that will take center stage on the Grail Quest. 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. By closely linking disability to blood and the vessels that contain it, the tale attaches a spiritual connotation to disability that the Morte has previously overlooked or only insinuated.
