Almost all characters who dance across the pages of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur die. Sometimes these characters die spectacularly; sometimes they perish off-screen. Some are killed in battle, some felled by (mis)fortune, and some succumb to illness (sometimes love-related and sometimes not). Often the dead disappear the moment they are killed, their role in the text as complete as their lives. But on occasion – and I would argue that it is not an insignificant number of occasions – the dead do not quite exit the story. They appear in the minds and voices of characters and narrator alike. They haunt the Morte, its living characters, and our experience of it. As a prominent example, Gawayne, shortly after dying, appears like a ghost to King Arthur in a dream. This Gawayne offers a reparative path for Arthur: a plan to restore ties with Launcelot and win the ongoing war against Mordred. Ghost-Gawayne, however, is not the only Orkney to haunt Malory's Morte Darthur. Indeed, throughout the text, King Lot and his sons have rather robust afterlives, though they are generally not quite as spectral as Gawayne's ghost. An investigation of the ways in which King Lot functions as a ghost, and of how his sons, in turn, haunt Arthur's court and the text itself, helps us understand the Orkney family's centrality to the story and the problems that centrality produces and reveals.

Before delving into the text and thinking about the Orkneys’ percolating presence in ghostly terms, I want to lay out a few ideas to piece together both the role of the dead in the Middle Ages and how hauntings function in a society. Nancy Mandeville Caciola provides a clear sense of the relationship between the living and the dead in the medieval imaginary. Caciola explains that ‘[t]he dead are poised in a peculiarly vivid symbolic position’. She notes that they are connected to one's past (namely ancestry), but that there is more to it than that. They are also connected to the future, ‘the thickly veiled, imagined realm of postmortem hopes and fears’. She goes on to say that the dead ‘are at the intersection of fundamental ideas about identity and society, fertility and decay, temporal limitations and eternal transcendence.

David Spurr argues that ‘[a]rchitecture, as the art of building, gives concrete form to the external world according to the structures of imagination; whereas literature, as the art of written language, gives symbolic form to the same world.’Spurr uses this similarity to explain his decision to discuss them together, to examine architecture resounding in the modern literature he studies.Likewise, my aim throughout this book has been to see how castle architecture participates in our understanding of the world and the people of the Morte. The castle, both imagined and concrete, creates and maintains the book’s society. That same society constructs the social space of the castle. Through actions both regular (swearing the Pentecostal Oath, or returning upon the completion of a quest, for example) and sporadic (a tumble from the window, an imprisonment far from the comfort of home), Malory’s characters define the castle – and implicitly tell the reader about it. At the intersection of space and society we can learn how and what it means to be in Malory’s Arthurian world.

When my husband and I drove away after visiting Bamburgh Castle, one of Malory’s possible Joyus Gardes, we were forced into the ditch by an approaching truck. This pause allowed one more opportunity – if unexpected and perhaps unwelcome – to look back at the castle as a whole, as a single unit. From that vantage point Bamburgh was both magnificent and compact, and differently so from how it had been as we approached hours earlier. It now contained discrete rooms and areas, each serving their individual purposes. I had contemplated the parts in situ (indeed, that was the very purpose of the visit), but distance rendered the distinctions between them invisible, fuzzy. I could not easily differentiate the walls from the keep, for example, though I had not long before stood between the two, thinking of Launcelot walking to the walls to speak to his king (though, admittedly, Alnwick Castle makes much more sense to me as the setting for that conversation and battle). The castle was now an assemblage that encompassed and blurred these several parts.

This book has roamed – as investigator, tourist, interloper – through the castles of Malory’s text to make sense of them and, especially, to use the castle spaces to make sense of the text.

Castles litter the landscape of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, as they did – and still do – England itself. As such, these architectural and geographical landmarks serve as a constant reminder of the royal, noble, and chivalric settings of the Arthurian story. However, castles are much more than locations or settings, although that is a role they fill with more importance – and even panache – than one might expect. For example, Arthur’s conception occurs after a breach in castle security; Launcelot breaks into and falls out of castles at crucial junctures in his relationship with Queen Gwenyver; and the schism between Launcelot and his king plays out on and around the walls of Joyus Garde and Benwick. Castles also provide the starting and ending points for many quests, which help define the knights of Arthur’s Round Table. Thus, they are both the launchpads and the confirmations of knightly endeavors. Furthermore, they are seats of power – political, military, economic, and so forth. They are prisons and prizes and keepers of ritual. Just as important, they are homes for many in the text. In these several capacities, these architectural structures function as representations just as much as they occupy the space of and become the physical backdrop to the Morte. Castles operate as both physical and symbolic entities in Malory’s text, and they create meaning and identity – both individual and communal – through the literal and figurative forces they exert.

Throughout the Morte, castles influence the characters who tread around and within their walls. As a physical, a symbolic, and a social space, the castle inflects the behaviors and identities that it frames. These social and structural functions even work in conjunction with each other at times to manipulate the identities and actions on the page, augmenting and even creating meaning.

As the previous chapters have discussed, the castle is the site – architecturally, symbolically, and socially – that houses the king and his community and participates in defining both. However, while performing myriad public duties, castles remain the primary domestic space for the king and queen (though not always together), as well as many other knights. Indeed, the castle as fortress and residence necessitates the presence of the domestic, which here and throughout this discussion I understand broadly, as in its Latin root, domus, or home. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, offers a vast definition: ‘Of or belonging to the home, house, or household; pertaining to one’s place of residence or family affairs; household, home, “family.”’This potentially encompasses everything at or related to the house and family; this chapter explores several domestic areas, though it focuses primarily on love (and lust and marriage) and childrearing, and peers briefly at food (both its preparation and its consumption).Within the walls of the Morte’s castles, we see many acts of love and nourishment. These glimpses into the private sphere offer – or at least hint at – a rounded picture of the life in and around Arthur’s court, but often via controversy and trouble. Gaston Bachelard says, ‘We must first look for centers of simplicity in houses with many rooms. For as Baudelaire said, in a palace, “there is no room for intimacy.”’How true this is in the Morte Darthur, where we often see the uncomfortable and even impossible overlap between the domestic – the private – and other more public affairs. Indeed, I am not sure the domestic is ever entirely distinct from politics, war, community, etc. Specifically domestic resolution and success prove difficult to find. Malory’s castles, like those across much medieval literature and life, provide an exaggerated example of the home office, but one in which home is routinely sacrificed for office. The scenes of domestic life tend to have a significant impact on political and military action, and on the health of the Arthurian community as a whole. Marion Wynne-Davies has argued that ‘Malory’s main concern in the Morte Darthur is to examine the role of men in relation to their private desires and public responsibilities; however, as a natural adjunct to this central theme, the position of women in fifteenth-century literature is inevitably touched upon.’

An Associated Press article from November 2013 titled ‘National Restaurant Chains Exotic in Alaska’ details the excitement surrounding the arrival of an Olive Garden in Anchorage, Alaska.The article quotes a writer for the local newspaper, who enthused, ‘It’s like, “Oh, we’re actually a city now.” … People have always been wanting to feel we’re legitimate, we’re really a place. Somehow having an Olive Garden, for some people, makes it seem like that.’The title of the article implies that for the locals, this and other similar chains being built in the city and state are exotic. Paradoxically, however, these restaurants make Alaska decidedly less exotic in its own eyes. The Olive Garden – like the other chain establishments in town – creates a link between Alaska and the continental U.S., between the periphery (marked geographically and socially) and the core. These ties homogenize and ‘Americanize’ Alaska, which has been a state for over fifty years (since 1959).

The phrase ‘we’re really a place’ echoes the terminology used by human geographers, among others, to highlight the ways in which meaning can distinguish places. Cresswell, for example, explains that ‘When humans invest meaning in a portion of space and then become attached to it in some way (naming is one such way) it becomes a place.’I certainly do not want to imply that the quoted journalist, Julia O’Malley, is conversant in spatial theory (or that she is not); her phrasing does, however, imply a more general awareness of the ways in which we make sense of environments. O’Malley’s excitement and, especially, how she frames that excitement provide a useful framework for understanding both the impact of a restaurant chain’s arrival in a place that considers itself somewhat far-flung and the importance of castles in the socio-political milieu of Malory’s Morte Darthur – and medieval England in general.

Indeed, the idea that a building can legitimize a community and unify it with a larger socio-political unit resonates with the ways in which the castle functioned in Norman and post-Norman England, even into Malory’s own time. Although evidence indicates that fortified structures in England do predate William of Normandy’s arrival in 1066, there is no doubt that the castle is and was intimately connected to his reign and his subjugation of the land.

In a 2011 visit to Warwick Castle – home to the Beauchamp earls who loomed large in Malory’s formative years and then to Richard Neville, the 16th Earl of Warwick, known by the moniker ‘Kingmaker’ because of his role in the civil wars that dominated Malory’s later life – I saw ‘The Mighty Trebuchet,’ heralded on the castle website as ‘the largest working siege machine IN THE WORLD!’The site goes on to exclaim, ‘The colossal catapult is an authentic recreation of one of the biggest and most deadly military machines of all time.’ I cannot verify the first claim, as I am no expert in medieval weapon re-enactment, though I will say it was big.The second claim seems patently false, even in the era of the ‘alternative fact.’ The massive death tolls caused by bombs in the last century tragically dwarf the abilities of the trebuchet and other siege engines. But it is not just the numbers of casualties that separate modern and medieval weaponry. Today’s high-tech weapons (such as drones, long-range missiles, airplanes) and military tactics (midnight raids and air strikes, for example) allow much more physical distance – and potentially psychological distance, too – than even the most powerful of medieval siege engines could afford. Malory’s Morte Darthur, written in a time of war and changing military tactics, examines the personal side of confrontations staged in and around castles. The proximity of combatants in the wars that close the Morte and the heightened attention to the castle invite a look at the effect of space on war and that of war on space. Wars include not just combat itself, but also communication in the form of both letters and conversations. We see allies huddle together and opponents negotiate from opposite sides of sieges. These battles thus play out as personal conflicts shaped by and trying to shape the spaces where they happen. Lynch argues that ‘[f]ights provide … the major places in Malory.’He further notes the use of combat to map the narrative. I find this especially relevant as the Morte moves back into full-scale war toward its end.

Arthur’s political success is largely predicated on the workings of his Round Table community in and out of his castle spaces. That community defines itself via architectural and social space in a pronounced way. Inclusion and exclusion manifest through closeness and distance both within and in relation to Arthur’s central castles. Throughout Malory’s Morte, we see considerable inward movement, with space collecting knights to join the fellowship of the Round Table, and knights striving to enclose themselves within the court’s embrace – Gareth and Balyn come to mind as two who do this in decidedly different ways and with quite opposite results for their identities, for their communities, and for space. There are also knights whose presence at court is desired and welcomed by king and court, and reassuring to the social identity of the Round Table. Launcelot’s premier position coupled with his frequent absence exemplifies the fraught relationship between the court as a place (the castle) and the court as a collection of knights whose actions define both space and group. And, of course, there are others who traverse Arthur’s castle spaces less frequently; this, too, can tell us much about how the community functions and exists in space. This chapter aims to peer into castle spaces especially in times of gathering, to examine moments of inclusion and exclusion, to see who gets close – and who does not – and what that means for Arthur’s Round Table community and its spaces. Indeed, I believe that we cannot fully understand Malory’s Arthurian community without considering it in place.

Social space, the product of the relationship between a space and its inhabitants, makes the castle not only the literal space of the court, but also the embodiment of the court’s ideals and a crucial factor in the construction of the court’s communal identity. Bill Hillier sees space linking the abstract idea of a group and the concrete building in which it is housed:

As Chapter Two illustrates, community identity depends upon its spaces – how they are used and who gets to be there, for example. The use of space varies throughout the day, during the course of a year, and over a longer period, and ranges from the mundane to the remarkable, from the simple to the complex, and from the seemingly meaningless to that steeped in cultural importance. Deeply meaningful actions, especially those repeated in some form or fashion, like rituals, are particularly adept at telling us about their practitioners. Rituals suture together thought and action, belief and practice. Indeed, ritual demands meaning behind behaviors and actions. Catherine Bell elaborates on ritual theory: ‘ritual mediates thought and action,’ and ‘is a dialectical means for the provisional convergence of those opposed forces whose interaction is seen to constitute culture in some form.’Rituals thus become a lens through which we can make sense of a community, because they are a physical enactment of its belief system. Rituals, like all acts, occur in and thus interact with space, and participate in defining that space. Thinking about where rituals happen can tell us about both the place and the particular rite. Jonathan Z. Smith emplaces ritual for us, arguing that ‘[r]itual is, first and foremost, a mode of paying attention. It is a process for marking interest … It is this characteristic, as well, that explains the role of place as a fundamental component of ritual: place directs attention.’For Smith then, the locales in which rituals occur help us look, both literally and critically, at the right things, the important parts. Both movement across and pauses in ritual spaces – be they temples, homes, forests, or so forth – help us piece together how a ritual works and what it tells us about the community and its places. Moreover, thinking about the meaning imbued in spaces by ritual activity – and vice versa – helps us unpack narrative (or lived) moments of ritual. Ronald L. Grimes invites us to think about ritual space through a series of questions that ask whether the ritual occurs in a fixed or fluid location, in a natural or built environment, in a permanent or temporary location; how the space looks and feels; and how the people relate to the space – territorially, or hierarchically, for example.I aim to parse these details in my own discussion of some key rituals in King Arthur’s Round Table community.

A survey of castle prisons across the medieval period evidences considerable variety. Prison cells may occupy towers or gatehouses or underground chambers, for example. Records of captivity likewise hint at variability in the treatment of prisoners: some experience the relative comfort of a trapped guest, while others endure physical and emotional hardships. This holds true in Malory’s Morte Darthur. However, across these different types of prisons, commonalities emerge. Prison cells enforce containment, but one not easily established, as prisoners yearn for the world beyond the walls. By their nature, prisons also produce a hierarchical relationship between captor and captive, both of whom tend to look inward and outward, toward and away from the cell. The relationships of both jailer and jailed to the spaces of imprisonment prove complex and essential to understanding characters and spaces alike – this is no surprise, as the prison and its cells are, of course, social spaces. The social project of the prison cell (of the space at work) is to break the captive, to stop him or her from looking either inward or outward. Malory’s imprisoned knights and ladies cannot be thus conquered by the spaces, treacherous as these spaces may be at times. They are, with few exceptions, ever looking in and out, ever thinking in and out, and ever gesturing in and out. The prisons become porous in response to this. We can learn much about Malory’s castles and his characters on both sides of the imprisonment by inspecting the prisons and their inability to enclose. The mechanics of power implicit in castle structures as a whole, and particularly in their various prisons, which are designed to subjugate in an extreme fashion, constantly push against the opposing power and identity of the captives.

This chapter will roam far and away from Arthur’s own castles, as we so rarely see them used as prisons. Indeed, as Chapter Two details, we see Balyn’s imprisonment only in his release, a move that, though intentional, highlights that even the prisons of Camelot cannot hold. The porousness of Arthur’s prisons is not examined further in the text. Arthur and his knights win many prisoners over the course of the Roman War, but there it is the taking of the prisoners and not the keeping of them that seems to matter most.

As much as Gareth and his tale prove to be a template for the effective manipulation of visual lines in the production of masculinity, the surrounding tales indicate that it is not a static model. On the contrary, the methods of making male gender identity visible in “Gareth” provide a common point of departure both narratively and critically for a discussion of the role of vision in the constructions of masculinity undertaken by and for other knights individually and as a community. The extended narratives of Launcelot and Trystram engage the visuality of gender in similar fashion, both employing and elaborating on the cycle of intromissive sightlines and the resultant gender positioning exhibited by Gareth. Indeed, Malory intimately links the narratives of Trystram and Launcelot. Certainly there are several surface characteristics that make them a likely pair in critical discussion. They are the two premier knights of the Arthurian world and consequently portray ideal forms of knightly masculinity. This manifests itself not only in the prowess each displays, but also in their physical attractiveness. Indeed, ladies die for unrequited love of both Launcelot and Trystram. They both also possess a shared love and desire to be in the fellowship of each other. And perhaps most impor tantly, each loves his queen. Isode even notes that “there be within this londe but foure lovers, and that is sir Launcelot and dame Gwenyver, and sir Trystrames and quene Isode” (425.29–31). The two pairs of lovers thus become complementary and invite – almost require – the audience to compare and contrast them and their relationships, to see them commenting on each other. The similarities of their situations can be seen in the parallel episodes that their narratives contain. Although in neither case is the visual acquisition of love emphasized to the extent it is with Gareth – indeed Launcelot's is removed entirely – the relationships between the two pre-eminent knights and their respective queens certainly depend and focus upon visuality and, in particular, visibility. The adulterous and high-profile natures of these relationships intensify the clash between the public and private that love relationships often suffer. This clash introduces a tension between visibility and invisibility.