Le Morte d’Arthur: Imagery 3 key examples

This is really Sir Gareth of Orkney, Arthur's nephew. He shows up in disguise and asks Arthur for three gifts. Sir Kay means the nickname "Beaumains" as an insult: this strange new visitor doesn't seem (to Kay) to deserve the gifts Arthur is granting him. He has shown up "leaning" on the shoulders of other men, as though he cannot walk by himself. He looks to Kay and others like he is able-bodied: "large and long and broad in the shoulders," and sporting "the largest hand[s] that ever man saw," he seems like he would be well-suited to the kind of feats the knights regularly perform. But his hands and face are extremely fair, suggesting that he mostly stays inside and avoids work and daring feats.

Sir Kay is interpreting what he sees in the wrong way. While the image of this man hoisted on others' shoulders could be read as a sign that he uses others inappropriately for his own gain, it could also be an encoded sign that he is of "superior" noble blood and that he outranks the people who are traveling with him. In a world where outward appearance can reflect inner character, his statuesque frame, too, might suggest that he is strong and noble. His prominent fair hands do not necessarily mean that he has never done daring feats. Instead, they might be a sign that he is highly honorable and has kept his hands "clean" of sin and error. When Beaumains is eventually revealed to be Sir Gareth of Orkney, this second interpretation of the image proves to be correct. "Beaumains" comes to mean that Sir Gareth is a very good knight, not a villain as Sir Kay first believes. This is not the only instance in which the narrator introduces imagery that a knight misinterprets. Malory is interested in disguises and trickery broadly, and this is a moment where a knight (Kay) must learn not to trust what he thinks he sees.

The castle is "fair" and sits on a "fair plain." In front of the castle are many multicolored tents. Two sets of knights are fighting, and they are color-coded: some appear white, and some appear black. Given broader connotations of light (good) and dark (evil) in Malory's text and more broadly at this time, it may seem like Launcelot should help the white knights. But on closer examination, it is difficult to tell what he should do. The black knights are with the "fair" (i.e. white) castle, so it is possible that they really are aligned with good. Furthermore, it is difficult to tell how the colorful tents play into the binary between black and white. Launcelot, using his best judgment, disregards the colors and chooses to support the black knights because they seem weaker. Later, he finds out that in fact the black knights were clothed in black because they had sinned. The white knights, on the other hand, were pure after all.

The color imagery helps emphasize the way Launcelot has been allowing earthly political questions to complicate basic religious questions. The black knights' alliance with a white castle is inconsequential. Knights in this book frequently change their affiliation. Tristram, for example, is loyal to King Mark until they both fall in love with the same woman, and King Mark turns out to be a treacherous ally. Knights are judged far more by their individual morality and faith than by their consistent loyalty to a single castle (except, perhaps, with the exception of Arthur). The black knights could be temporarily affiliated with a white castle and still be corrupted; the white knights could be unaffiliated with the white castle and still be pure. Launcelot's error was in failing to see what the colors told him about the knights' individual morality. The book is not too harsh with Launcelot for his mistake. It recognizes that he does indeed find himself in the midst of a complicated political situation. His difficulty keeping morality simple means only that he might not be suited to the Grail quest or to be the paragon of chivalric purity.

The imagery in this dream is somewhat confusing to follow. The narrator first mentions that the chapel is flanked by a "wormeaten and feeble chair" on the left and flowers on the right. But the man in the vision asks whether it would not be "great folly" to allow the flowers to die so that the "rotten tree" might live. The discrepancy opens the question of whether it is a chair or a tree that stands to the left of the chapel. One explanation that seems likely is that the "chair" is a sort of throne carved out of a living tree. If we imagine that this is the case, it becomes easier to interpret the dream as a message to Sir Bors about fathers and sons. Over the course of the book, Sir Bors is the most loyal supporter of both Galahad (in his quest for the Sangreal) and Launcelot (in the civil war with King Arthur). Launcelot has long held the seat of power among the knights of the Round Table, paling only to Arthur. But Merlin's prophecy has long held that Galahad, who has sprung from Launcelot like a flower from a tree, will surpass his father. At this moment in Book 16, it seems as though Launcelot's power may be rotting away while Galahad's blossoms. In response to the man's question, Sir Bors answers that he would preserve the flowers over the tree. This choice may represent his present loyalty to Galahad.

Still, Sir Bors's later loyalty to Launcelot suggests that the tree and flowers might not be fixed symbols of Launcelot and Galahad. We can further decode the imagery with information about how the whole book ends, with a civil war that uproots individual knights from the Round Table. On the right side of the chapel, there is not just a single flower, but rather two flowers, as well as "many flowers, and great fruit plenty" coming out of each. There is an abundance of life springing from two flowers that have broken off from the throne carved from the rotten trunk. In light of the civil war, the two flowers evoke Launcelot and Arthur. These two set aside the rotting sacrament of the Round Table to fight one another. In the process, they set all the knights free from the Round Table so that they all start anew. While Malory frames the story of Arthur's death as a tragedy, this prophetic vision suggests that it could simply give way to new life, free from a Round Table that was not long for this world anyway.