ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book discusses 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. It explains, Lancelot is not depicted as the wholly spiritual hermit that the text's hagiographical structure and impulses suggest. Indeed, Malory informs Lancelot's monastic experiences through the frame of his disabling love-madness as it is Guenevere's rejection and his physical and emotional responses to it that lead him to seek out an ascetic life. 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.
