Elizabeth Archibald, through her insightful interventions, has promoted and contributed to an evolving re-evaluation over recent times of the complex imaginative world, the intelligence and the ultimate value of Le Morte Darthur. One aspect of the deep value-system of that world lies in what Malory encourages readers to see in their mind’s eye of the non-verbal communication between his characters. Such body language is the focus of this essay.

To confront the question of defining what body language includes is immediately illuminating about Malory’s distinctive estimation of bodily signs. Is non-verbal communication confined to such consciously performed bodily signals as gestures of greeting and parting, kneeling, various motions and gestures of the hands and head, smiles, embraces and kisses, the making of various sounds, or the bestowal of looks? Or should body language also be understood to comprise any involuntary symptoms that the sentient body may display, such as laughing or weeping (where not ‘put on’), blushing or pallor, trembling and swooning? In practice, such distinctions tend to be blurred by Malory’s method in the Morte, where much body language contributes to a ceremonialized order of conduct as observance. Here, therefore, body language is taken at its broadest, and Malory’s distinctive patterns of both willed and involuntary bodily signals in the Morte will be traced.

Body language is not necessarily significant in the Morte because Malory imports more gestural detail than in other accounts of the same Arthurian episodes, although at significant junctures Malory may indeed add powerful body language.