"Invisibility and Madness: Balin and Garlonde’s Individual vs. Communal Desires in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur"

Within Thomas Malory’s re-creation of “The Tale of Balin and Balan” in his Le Morte Darthur, he is able to most aptly display the individual and social weaknesses of Arthur and his Knights and foreshadow their passion-fueled destruction.  The rule of passion and self-interest is most evident in Malory’s brief presentation of Garlonde, the invisible knight, and in Garlonde’s symbolic interactions with Balin. Within Malory, invisibility is a vehicle for madness, a madness stemming from the imbalanced pursuit of one’s own desire in contrast with social and moral order.  Through this depiction of invisibility as madness, Malory not only reveals the shortcomings of the Arthurian society, but the medieval cultural fears of madness in light of individual and social division and unhappiness.