ABSTRACT
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. "Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere" is punctuated by disabilities and cure, and, although other knights do suffer disabling wounds, Lancelot receives the greatest number of them. 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". The placement of Lancelot's wounds is also significant. As Catherine 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.".
