26 - Malory's Language of Love

Summary

The language Malory uses to describe love draws on a long tradition of mutuality that has its thematic and syntactic roots in Anglo-French romance. It exists in interesting symbiosis in the Morte with the language of reciprocity in combat. His treatment of the story of Alisaundir is paradigmatic of his procedures.

Malory is not a writer noted for his love scenes. His most moving encounters between men and women are not the moments familiar from other romances, when the man gazes on the woman and is struck by the arrow of the God of Love, or when the lovers overcome all obstacles to achieve a passionate meeting, but moments of parting or disaster: Lancelot and Guinevere taking leave of each other before he breaks out of her bedchamber through the ambush of armed men, or the scene in the nunnery when she refuses him a last kiss. His sex scenes are notable for the fact that they may well be taking place between the ‘wrong’ people – Igrayne believes Uther to be her husband, Lancelot thinks Elaine of Corbin to be Guinevere – and even when two lovers are involved, Malory shows a reticence about what actually happens that does no more than cue the reader's imagination in ways that bypass physical detail. None the less, there are a few pairs of lovers who love both deeply and mutually, and for those Malory reserves a distinctive syntax and style that sets them apart from the other characters and encounters in his work.